From: Scary4Kids.com
Featured in a top 5 list video by a channel called "They Will Kill You"
The Smile dog meme was spawned by that lot of fine folks down at 4chan/encyclopediadramatica in 2007. The same lot behind CreepyPasta. Chain letter originators extraordinaire.
The Smile dog is a ridiculous story that claims an internet picture, which can't really be found on the internet, makes people go crazy and haunts their dreams until they die, unless they, you guessed it, spread the word.
The hoax goes on to claim that the "real" picture can't be found and only imitations of Smile.jpg or Smile Dog are seen on the web, and that when the "real" Smiley devil dog face shows up, it makes people mad and refuses to let itself actually be contained in a file, or something absurd like that.
The whole idea is to make this stupid picture sound like something that has a mind and a life of its own, so that people will be scared of something that doesn't actually exist.
* * *
🐕CP: I first met in person with Mary E. in the summer of 2007.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Maybe, maybe not. This hoax started in 2008. There might be a Mary e, and there might not be. I'm sure there are lots of Mary E.'s but yours is either completely fictional or else she's a real person you wove a hoax around.
🐕CP: I had arranged with her husband of fifteen years, Terence, to see her for an interview.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Another fake interview that never actually took place. and why arrange with her husband to get an interview with her anyway? sounds really sexist to me.
🐕CP: Mary had initially agreed, since I was not a newsman but rather an amateur writer
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yeah, amateur…
🐕CP: gathering information for a few early college assignments
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: College kid, well, I'm surprised you're that old, actually.
🐕CP: and, if all went according to plan, some pieces of fiction.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Such as this piece of fiction. There's enough Bs in the news and bad reporters out there already, so do everyone a favour and just stick to writing fiction, but in the future, don't try to pass it off as fact…
🐕CP: We scheduled the interview for a particular weekend when I was in Chicago on unrelated business,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Way to spend your student loans, flying around the USA.
🐕CP: but at the last moment Mary changed her mind and locked herself in the couple’s bedroom, refusing to meet with me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because she realized you're a creepypasta creep?
🐕CP: For half an hour I sat with Terence as we camped outside the bedroom door,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well that's inconsiderate, if Terrance had any backbone, he'd just tell you the interview was off instead of sitting right outside Mary's room with you, chatting it up and probably making her more freaked out.
🐕CP: I listening and taking notes while he attempted fruitlessly to calm his wife.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Sheesh, what imbeciles.
🐕CP: The things Mary said made little sense but fit with the pattern I was expecting:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not expecting, making up in your own head.
🐕CP: though I could not see her, I could tell from her voice that she was crying,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And of course you just have to make sure to include this detail like so many other chain letter creators. *Rolling eyes* Again, you and Terrance are first class jerks.
🐕CP: and more often than not her objections to speaking with me centered around an incoherent diatribe on her dreams — her nightmares.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Then it's not a diatribe. A diatribe is an angry rant, not a person flipping out over nightmares.
🐕CP: Terence apologized profusely when we ceased the exercise,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: A jerk apologizing to a jerk instead of to his own wife for his part in making her upset, way to go, what a loser, that Terrance.
🐕CP: and I did my best to take it in stride;
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: right, setting up the whole thing. Terrance is the husband of Mary E. who is this totally high-strung, flipped out, overly emotional woman, and you are the calm, cool, collected one taking everything all in stride as Terrance apologizes to you for his wife's behaviour. *Scowl* I'm not impressed…I'm not buying it.
🐕CP: recall that I wasn’t a reporter in search of a story, but merely a curious young man in search of information.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: that description still fits any young male news reporter… And you're not out to get information, you're out to pass off hokum as information…
🐕CP: Besides, I thought at the time, I could perhaps find another, similar case if I put my mind and resources to it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, sure, you mean fabricate another case story, well yeah, you would have to use your mind and various questionable sources for that.
🐕CP:Mary E. was the sysop for a small Chicago-based Bulletin Board System in 1992 when she first encountered smile.jpg
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong. That hoax was started by you in 2008.
🐕CP: and her life changed forever.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: in your brain…
🐕CP: She and Terence had been married for only five months. Mary was one of an estimated 400 people who saw the image when it was posted as a hyperlink on the BBS,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, it wasn't, the hoax wasn't created until 2008.
🐕CP: though she is the only one who has spoken openly about the experience.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which explains why she wouldn't talk to you and you couldn't make heads or tails out of her supposed incoherent ramblings.
🐕CP: The rest have remained anonymous,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because that's what hoax originators often do.
🐕CP: or are perhaps dead.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No one, dead or alive, has ever been harmed by a fictional picture called Smile dog.
🐕CP: In 2005, when I was only in tenth grade,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which put you at around 18 when you started this hoax, either barely graduated from high school or first year college… Figures…
🐕CP: smile.jpg was first brought to my attention by my burgeoning interest in web-based phenomena;
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So you had been fermenting that hoax idea around for three years before you decided to loose it into cyberspace. Wow. So not impressive.
🐕CP: Mary was the most often cited victim of what is sometimes referred to as “Smile.dog,” the being smile.jpg is reputed to display.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So she was the first person you decided to inflict this hoax on, no wonder she didn't want to see you.
🐕CP: What caught my interest (other than the obvious macabre elements of the cyber-legend
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not so much…
🐕CP: and my proclivity toward such things)
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: your propensity to make up this lame stuff and try to pass it off as "searching for information".
🐕CP: was the sheer lack of information,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: well gee, maybe because the darn thing isn't real.
🐕CP: usually to the point that people don’t believe it even exists other than as a rumor or hoax.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: We don't 'believe' it only exists as a hoax, we know it's only a hoax. So don't try to pull this "Some people think it's a hoax, but…" crap with me.
🐕CP: It is
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not
🐕CP: unique because, though the entire phenomenon
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's a hoax, not a phenomenon.
🐕CP: centers on a picture file,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which never existed.
🐕CP: that file is nowhere to be found on the internet;
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But of course. Just like the nonexistent Happy appy show, the imaginary dora episode, and the myriad of other dumb crap creepypastas are always claiming are mysterious lost episodes/series/pictures of things… Not unique at all.
🐕CP: certainly many photomanipulated simulacra litter the web, showing up with the most frequency on sites such as the imageboard 4chan, particularly the /x/-focused paranormal subboard.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Where this hoax started, of course. 4chan. they're behind much if not all of the cruddy pastas.
🐕CP: It is suspected these are fakes
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not suspected. Known. It is known these are fakes. Nothing real ever comes from a hoax picture in your head.
🐕CP: because they do not have the effect the true smile.jpg
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: there is no "true smile.jpg" unless you create a jpg file and actually name it smile.jpg. Sure, there are real pic files named smile.jpg, but they have nothing to do with this stupid hoax and would be part of somebody's personal collection of photos and icons.
🐕CP: is believed to have,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Or so you wish… I don't believe your crummy bollox.
🐕CP: namely sudden onset temporal lobe epilepsy and acute anxiety.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Much as you'd love it, no picture in your head can make anybody else get seizures or anxiety attacks. You just don't have that kind of power.
🐕CP: This purported reaction in the viewer is one of the reasons the phantom-like smile.jpg is regarded with such disdain,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: nope, wrong! The reason it's disdained is because it's a dumbarse creepypasta hoax spammed by obnoxious trolls and believed by the very young or very easily manipulated into fear, and certainly the very gullible.
🐕CP: since it is patently absurd,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: it gets smashed here. Don't think you can impress or make me into a believer by pretending to bash your own hoax. It won't work.
🐕CP: though depending on whom you ask
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Sure. Ask a 4chan idiot and he'll tell you "Yeah! it's real!" ask a person with common sense who dislikes trolls and hoaxers as much as I do, and you'll get a very different answer.
🐕CP: the reluctance to acknowledge smile.jpg’s existence
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's not reluctance, it's common sense.
🐕CP: might be just as much out of fear
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Bull! How you wish!
🐕CP: as it is out of disbelief.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's not just disbelief, it's common sense.
🐕CP: Neither smile.jpg nor Smile.dog is mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hah! WRONG!
🐕CP: though the website features articles on such other, perhaps more scandalous shocksites
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: the only difference between yours and the more scandalous ones is that yours doesn't involve scandal, just stupidity.
🐕CP: as ****** (hello.jpg) or 2girls1cup; any attempt to create a page pertaining to smile.jpg is summarily deleted by any of the encyclopedia’s many admins.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Gee, I wonder why? *Sarcasm, sneer* 4chan freaks think Wikipedia is run by fascists anyway. wikipedia don't like trolls such as the chains messing with their site.
🐕CP: Encounters with smile.jpg are the stuff of internet legend.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Exactly, legend, as in sometimes growing out of something that started out true and turned into a tall tale, or something that started out as phoney as all heck to begin with (that would be Smile Dog and all other Creepypastas), myth, as in hoax, as in not factual, as in utter hogwash.
🐕CP: Mary E.’s story is not unique;
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, it's anything but, even though you just contradicted yourself, because somewhere in the above, you tried to convince me that Smile Dog was so unique… Mary E.'s story, well, not wanting to talk to some nosy reporter-wanna-be and having a husband who acted like such a nimbat trying to force the issue, and it had been his idea in the first place, well, not unique either, just sad. makes one wonder what other cruel games Mr. Niceguy Terrance played on his wife at her expense just so he could make her look like she was losing it and then pretend to be all embarrassed and ashamed of her in public. Manipulative, devious creep.
🐕CP: there are unverified rumors
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's what rumours are, either unverified, or else proven false, and it's the latter in this case. Once verified as fact, it's no longer a rumour. So you were redundant. Gosh, I wonder when the last time was that this happened in a chain letter? *Sarcasm*
🐕CP: of smile.jpg showing up in the early days of Usenet and even one persistent tale that in 2002 a hacker flooded the forums of humor and satire website Something Awful with a deluge of Smile.dog pictures, rendering almost half the forum’s users at the time epileptic.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong. This hoax was only started in 2008 and pictures don't cause epilepsy. I thought I explained that already. Yes the something awful site is associated with chan, so not surprising they would be in on keeping the hoax going with phoney claims.
🐕CP: It is also said that in the mid-to-late 90s that smile.jpg circulated on usenet and as an attachment of a chain email with the subject line “SMILE!! GOD LOVES YOU!”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: there may have been a smile.jpg attached to a chain email, but the hoax was only started about the mad picture in 2008.
There are chain emails with that blasphemous subject line, blasphemous because the ones behind these things are misusing God's name to get people clogging the net with obnoxious virals.
This one for example, which is smashed here.
🐕CP: Yet despite the huge exposure these stunts would generate,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Ah-ha! You finally admitted it is a stunt!
🐕CP: there are very few people who admit to having experienced any of them and no trace of the file or any link has ever been discovered.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: There is nothing to "admit" and people are always admitting to being freaked out or moved in some way by chain letters, so why would smile Dog be any different? There are no admissions because there are no mind-altering haunted pictures, never were, never will be. That's a fact.
🐕CP: Those who claim to have seen smile.jpg often weakly joke that they were far too busy to save a copy of the picture to their hard drive.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: translation: They're just adding to the hoax with that contrived excuse. It doesn't hold up anyway. everybody who'd got a copy of Smile.jpg was suddenly too busy to save it, when people take a few seconds to save scads of pictures to their hard drives all the time? Bull!
🐕CP: However, all alleged victims offer the same description of the photo: A dog-like creature (usually described as appearing similar to a Siberian husky), illuminated by the flash of the camera, sits in a dim room, the only background detail that is visible being a human hand extending from the darkness near the left side of the frame. The hand is empty, but is usually described as “beckoning.” Of course, most attention is given to the dog (or dog-creature, as some victims are more certain than others about what they claim to have seen). The muzzle of the beast is reputedly split in a wide grin, revealing two rows of very white, very straight, very sharp, very human-looking teeth.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Huh? A large dog with human looking teeth, now that really doesn't fit. if anything, it would make the dog look far less threatening. Human teeth are much, much smaller than dog teeth, and are not sharp compared with those of a dog. Dog teeth can tear through mounds of raw tissue and muscle, and break bones. They can chew up things in a household and cause damage in very short order, the sort of damage it would take a human mouth days or weeks to manage if any human was persistent at it.
A dog's tongue is much larger than a human's too, especially when you're talking about medium to large dogs. I explained that in the smash of the Humans Can Lick, Too chain.
A dog's face is such that it can't smile or grin. It's facial structure is completely different from a human's, it is shaped so differently that it is impossible for a dog to make facial expressions unique to humans, such as smiling and frowning.
🐕CP: This is, of course, not a description given immediately after viewing the picture,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Malarkey. anyone viewing a picture can describe it right away. You're just trying to make this stupid hoax sound creepy and you're failing.
🐕CP: but rather a recollection of the victims,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: trolls&hoaxers pretending to be
🐕CP: who claim to have seen the picture endlessly repeated in their mind’s eye during the time they are,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: NOT,
🐕CP: in reality, having epileptic fits.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: One dweeb started this hoax, made out as if the fake epidemic was going on, and his pals who would make claims to back up this bulltosh are in on the hoax.
🐕CP: These fits
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which, in reality, never happen,
🐕CP: are reported
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: falsely,
🐕CP: to continue indeterminably, often while the victims sleep,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because even trolls and hoaxers dream…
🐕CP: resulting in very vivid and disturbing nightmares.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which, if the troll remembers upon waking, goes, "Oh! Wow! I'll make a hoax out of that! It'll scare the pants off young people and annoy everyone else! Lulz lulz lulz!"
🐕CP: These may be treated with medication,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because trolls often are so obnoxious that annoyed people often tell them to get back on their meds.
🐕CP: though in someses
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: In what? I didn't get that.
🐕CP: it is more effective than others.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because some trolls are thought to be self-medicating, as in, high.
🐕CP: Mary E., I assumed, was not on effective medication.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You assumed… Given what sort of possibly very dark and miserable existence she could have with Terrance, you just assumed your hoax made her go mad. *Rolling eyes*
🐕CP: That was why after my visit to her apartment in 2007 I sent out feelers to several folklore- and urban legend-oriented newsgroups, websites, and mailing lists, hoping to find the name of a supposed victim of smile.jpg who felt more interested in talking about his experiences.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, you just wanted to find out how many people you duped, if your dumb hoax actually made it to any urban legend related sites, and if they were sensible enough to debunk it or if they fell for it. Bet you would've got a big charge out of seeing your infamous smile Dog hoax archived on some UL site and discussed on newsgroups. You surely would've got a bang out of anyone you actually managed to scare with this junk.
🐕CP: For a time nothing happened and at length I forgot completely about my pursuits,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: well if you just checked out the sites and lurked, how would they know you were the hoaxer behind this swill?
🐕CP: since I had begun my freshman year of college and was quite busy. Mary contacted me via email, however, near the beginning of March 2008.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But your hoax was only unleashed onto the net in July of that year.
🐕CP: To: jml@****.com
From: marye@****.net
Subj: Last summer’s interview
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* like some fake email you wrote yourself is going to convince me of anything, well, now I'm pretty sure Mary E. isn't even the name of some real person you know, but she and Terrance are complete fiction. Of course, if she really is a person you know and included in this hoax, along with this Terrance, they are your partners in this stupidity, right up to their eyeballs.
Mary E.: Dear Mr. L.,
I am incredibly sorry about my behavior last summer when you came to interview me. I hope you understand that it was no fault of yours, but rather my own problems that led me to act out as I did. I realized that I could have handled the situation more decorously; however, I hope you will forgive me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Vomits*
Mary E.: At the time, I was afraid.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: i'll bet - getting afraid of not only getting stuck in this rotten role, but what else this hoaxer would put you through as a fictional character. On top of that, the dread of further humiliation at the hands of this dude and your fellow fictional character husband, Terrance, who was an accomplice in this whole rotten thing.
Mary E.: You see, for fifteen years I have been haunted by smile.jpg.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 15 years… 15 years of Terrance.
There we have it folks, Smiley doggie has a name! Terrance! I disliked that insidious character right off the bat.
Mary E.: Smile.dog comes to me in my sleep every night.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Everybody has bad dreams sometimes, Mary, some people have recurring nightmares, usually that's because of trauma and side effects of drugs. Mary E. You seem to have the trauma and possibly that overly controlling husband is drugging you too.
Mary E.: I know that sounds silly, but it is true.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Nightmares often don't make sense.
Mary E.: There is an ineffable quality about my dreams, my nightmares, that makes them completely unlike any real dreams I have ever had.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: All dreams are real in the sense that dreams occur. But no smile dog dream has, can, or will ever come true…
Mary E.: I do not move and do not speak. I simply look ahead, and the only thing ahead of me is the scene from that horrible picture.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: it's not a horrible picture, it's a pretty comical, stupid looking one, going by the description somewhere above. And many people dream they are unable to move, especially in fear dreams. I've had such a dream, but of course, it wasn't about the smile dog. It was about escaping a labor camp and nearly getting partly run over when collapsing on the side of the road.
Mary e.: I see the beckoning hand, and I see Smile.dog. It talks to me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: oh sure, as in "Woof woof."
Mary E.: It is not a dog, of course, though I am not quite sure what it really is.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Doesn't matter, it's a hoax.
Mary E.: It tells me it will leave me alone if only I do as it asks.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Sounds like Terrance has made sure you are in a drugged state so he can terrorize you. *Scowl*
Mary E.: All I must do, it says, is “spread the word.” That is how it phrases its demands.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Chortles* Oh, brother, how corny! How lame! How stupid! You dream about some stupid picture telling you to pass on a chain letter. I really think Terrance and Mr. L have a lot to answer for.
Mary e.: And I know exactly what it means: it wants me to show it to someone else.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You can't show something to someone else that lives inside your head via the mind of the hoaxer who made you up.
Mary E.: And I could. The week after my incident I received in the mail a manila envelope with no return address. Inside was only a 3 ½ -inch floppy diskette. Without having to check, I knew precisely what was on it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: oh, right, the ever so scary old diskettes. Those things went out ages ago, and the smile dog hoax only started in 2008.
You're not scaring me.
Mary E.: I thought for a long time about my options. I could show it to a stranger, a coworker… I could even show it to Terence, as much as the idea disgusted me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You were sure a lot nicer to Terrance than he ever was to you. You had no idea he and mr. L were behind this whole thing all along… or at least Terrance, the college news boy only came along later, wanting to make up a hoax and Terrance jumped at the chance to use him to humiliate you. As for the time thing, well, 15 years can go by in a blink during the time it takes to make up that hoax.
Mary E.: And what would happen then?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Terrance and his and your creator would get a big belly-laugh at your expense again. *Scowl*
Mary E.: Well, if Smile.dog kept its word I could sleep. Yet if it lied, what would I do?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Smile dog isn't the real problem, it's Terrance messing with your head.
Mary e.: And who was to say something worse would not come for me if I did as the creature asked?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's just a stupid hoax and crummy disket with nothing important on it unless Terrance knows about it because he somehow got the idea to use this particular hallucination against you.
Mary E.: So I did nothing for fifteen years, though I kept the diskette hidden amongst my things.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Although in reality that 15 years is only a neat little stat made up by your hoaxer…
Mary E.: Every night for fifteen years Smile.dog has come to me in my sleep and demanded that I spread the word. For fifteen years I have stood strong, though there have been hard times. Many of my fellow victims on the BBS board where I first encountered smile.jpg stopped posting; I heard some of them committed suicide. Others remained completely silent, simply disappearing off the face of the web. They are the ones I worry about the most.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Seems to me terrance has been in cahoots with a bunch of 4chan kooks to really head-game you. nobody got killed or went missing because of this stupid nonexistent picture.
Mary E.: I sincerely hope you will forgive me, Mr. L.,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl*
Mary E.: but last summer when you contacted me and my husband about an interview I was near the breaking point. I decided I was going to give you the floppy diskette. I did not care if Smile.dog was lying or not, I wanted it to end. You were a stranger, someone I had no connection with, and I thought I would not feel sorrow when you took the diskette as part of your research and sealed your fate.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You poor, poor character, Mary. Ganged up on in the most brutal psychological way by your character husband, the fictional news boy and by the one who made up you lot in the first place.
Mary E.: Before you arrived I realized what I was doing: was plotting to ruin your life. I could not stand the thought, and in fact I still cannot. I am ashamed, Mr. L., and I hope that this warning will dissuade you from further investigation of smile.jpg. You may in time encounter someone who is, if not weaker than I, then wholly more depraved, someone who will not hesitate to follow Smile.dog’s orders.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Gosh, Mary, you got caught up in one of the worst hoax anti-chains I've seen in a while. Smile Dog is nothing. That you didn't want to pass it along is good, but your reasons are whack. The reason you shouldn't pass it along is because it's dumb spam and a hoax. But Terrance and the hoaxer sure knew how to put you in your own private hell.*Scowl*
Mary E.: Stop while you are still whole.
Sincerely,
Mary E.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Stop what? It's too late for Mr. L or whatever he calls himself. It isn't possible to uncreate a hoax.
🐕CP: Terence contacted me later that month with the news that his wife had killed herself.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* Pity the next girl he gets his claws into. and you sure gave poor Mary a bum rap. *Glare*
🐕CP: While cleaning up the various things she’d left behind, closing email accounts and the like, he happened upon the above message. He was a man in shambles; he wept as he told me to listen to his wife’s advice.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh i'll bet he did. Really turned on the big crocodile tears to look as if he really cared and tried to avoid suspicion while garnering sympathy at the same time.
Well he ain't getting' it from me!
🐕CP: He’d found the diskette, he revealed, and burned it until it was nothing but a stinking pile of blackened plastic.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, no diskette. never was to begin with. he'd want to destroy evidence of his terrible mental cruelty toward his wife anyway.
🐕CP: The part that most disturbed him, however, was how the diskette had hissed as it melted. Like some sort of animal, he said.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That hiss isn't the diskette. It's me expressing my dislike.
🐕CP: I will admit that I was a little uncertain about how to respond to this.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And I should care because? It's all contrived anyway.
🐕CP: At first I thought perhaps it was a joke,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Don't give me that codswallop, you always have and still think it's a huge joke. Which, it is, a pathetic, un-funny one.
🐕CP: with the couple belatedly playing with the situation in order to get a rise out of me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* Could you possibly get any more ludicrous?
🐕CP: A quick check of several Chicago newspapers’ online obituaries, however, proved that Mary E. was indeed dead. There was, of course, no mention of suicide in the article.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: there was a Mary E. McTighe, from Chicago, who died in early 2009, not 2008 when you started your hoax. She did not commit suicide, and her husband's name was William, not Terrance.
Thankfully, your Mary E. was only a fictional character, not a real person subjected to the sick whims of a sinister Terrance, who, just as thankfully, is fictional as well.
🐕CP: I decided that, for a time at least, I would not further pursue the subject of smile.jpg, especially since I had finals coming up at the end of May.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So ever so studious you decided to combat summer boredom by starting this hoax that you had kicking around in your head probably for some time.
🐕CP: But the world has odd ways of testing us.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Trying to sound profound, but under that slick talk you're still a hoaxer.
🐕CP: Almost a full year after I’d returned from my disastrous interview with Mary E., I received another email:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Nope, you fabricated it.
To: jml@****.com
From: elzahir82@****.com
Subj: smile
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes*
elzahir: Hello
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Who are you supposed to be?
elzahir: I found your e-mail adress thru a mailing list your profile said you are interested in smiledog. I have saw it it is not as bad as every one says I have sent it to you here. Just spreading the word. (:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: A troll writing to himself.
🐕CP: The final line chilled me to the bone.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Chicken liver… It's not scaring me.
🐕CP: According to my email client there was one file attachment called, naturally, smile.jpg. I considered downloading it for some time. It was mostly likely a fake, I imagined, and even if it weren’t I was never wholly convinced of smile.jpg’s peculiar powers.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: right, pretending not to believe in your own hoax isn't going to convince me it's real or that you're a wonderful person.
🐕CP: Mary E.’s account had shaken me,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Shook up by your own moonbattery, wow.
🐕CP: yes,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Moron.
🐕CP: but she was probably mentally unbalanced anyway.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* Seems you gave Terrance a large piece of your personality.
🐕CP: After all, how could a simple image do what smile.jpg was said to accomplish?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Everyone with sense knows it can't, you dumbarse. Cut the BS already. It's getting very stale.
🐕CP: What sort of creature was it that could break one’s mind with only the power of the eye?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I believe the mythical Medusa was believed to wield that kind of power, turning people to stone. But unlike your hoax, classical mythology is interesting, and people aren't going around trying to scare little kids with it.
🐕CP: And if such things were patently absurd,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which they are…
🐕CP: then why did the legend exist at all?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: wow, that must mean you are willing to believe every crackpot idea out there, just because some people tell lies and others are gullible enough to believe them, by your standards, that makes it all true. What an idiot.
🐕CP: If I downloaded the image, if I looked at it, and if Mary turned out to be correct,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Bull…
🐕CP: if Smile.dog came to me in my dreams demanding I spread the word, what would I do?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Cut the fake fear, you look really stupid, pretending to be scared of your own hoax. Bottom line is, you want this perpetuating, and you're trying to slip past people's spam&hoax radar. You're a lot like Terrance. But i'm no Mary E.
🐕CP: Would I live my life as Mary had, fighting against the urge to give in until I died?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Unflinching scornful stare* You're boring me to death.
🐕CP: Or would I simply spread the word, eager to be put to rest?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Easy peasy! You spread the word. But not because of eagerness to be "put to rest". You did it for the attention and the power-rush all trolls/hoaxers get when their junk gets them a lot of attention or scares people.
You're not scaring me and I will not forward any smile dog.
🐕CP: And if I chose the latter route, how could I do it? Whom would I burden in turn?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You call it "burden" as if you were really concerned about people's welfare being endangered by some fictional threat. You wanted this thing spread far and wide so you could feed on people's fear through it.
🐕CP: If I went through with my earlier intention to write a short article about smile.jpg,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You have, only the problem is your article is dragging on and on, - AND ON!
🐕CP: I decided, I could attach it as evidence.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But it doesn't exist.
🐕CP: And anyone who read the article, anyone who took interest, would be affected.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: not in the way you keep claiming. I think I went through that explanation somewhere far above.
🐕CP: And even assuming the smile.jpg attached to the email was genuine,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Assumption unnecessary. it's all bogus.
🐕CP: would I be Ocean Elfcious enough to save myself in that manner?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* No saving necessary, the blasted thing is 100% fake…
🐕CP: Could I spread the word?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Any idiot can spam. It takes a special kind of idiot to actually start a hoax though.
🐕CP: Yes, yes I could.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: of course, because that's your whole game plan all along, scare people into spreading this ridiculous and useless bilge.
—
Finally, the end!
There is no "real" Smile Dog. Every last picture is fake and so are the tales about the so-called "real" Smil Dog picture.
Over and out!
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