Meme Celebrities
Disaster Girl: the smile in front of the fire
Zoƫ Roth was four when her father photographed her grinning in front of a burning house. The fire was a training exercise; the smirk became immortal.
In January 2005 the fire department in Mebane, North Carolina, set a house on fire on purpose to train its firefighters, and neighbours came to watch. Dave Roth, an amateur photographer, brought his four-year-old daughter Zoƫ. As the flames went up he took her picture - and she gave him a small, knowing smile, as if she'd lit it herself.
The internet's arsonist
Her father entered the picture in a photography contest and won, and from there it escaped. People pasted Zoƫ in front of every disaster in history and captioned her as the cheerful villain behind them. Disaster Girl became one of the most recognised faces online - while the real Zoƫ was just going to school.
Disaster Girl: Disaster Girl is a photo of a young girl smiling knowingly at the camera while a house burns behind her.
Taking it back
For years the family had no say over where the picture went. In April 2021 Zoƫ, by then a university student, sold the original as a digital collectible for about $500,000, keeping the copyright and a share of future sales. She asked for advice from other meme celebrities first, including Bad Luck Brian and Success Kid's mother. She used the money to pay off her student loans and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Watch her tell it
I Accidentally Became A Meme: Disaster Girl (BuzzFeedVideo, YouTube)
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