Imagine waking up one day and finding out that your face is associated with the phrase “worst person you know” on the Internet. It sounds like a nightmare, but for one man, it’s real life. Josep Maria Garcia, a 42-year-old man from Catalonia, Spain, had no idea he had become a global Internet meme until he received a call from his brother-in-law, telling him not to panic but to search the phrase “worst person you know” on Google. As soon as Garcia hit the search button, paranoia washed over him. His face was everywhere. Trying to figure out why he had become the face associated with such a negative phrase, Garcia eventually realized it was all connected to an event in 2014. It was then that his brother-in-law, a professional photographer, had taken a test photo of Garcia to check the lighting, which he then uploaded to Getty Images as a stock photo. Garcia says he vaguely remembers his brother-in-law telling him that his photo was used for a satirical article in 2018, but he didn’t pay much attention to it. As it turns out, that article was about the worst person you know making a great point, and since Google’s algorithm doesn’t seem capable of telling the difference between news and satire, Garcia’s photo started showing up for the phrase “worst person you know,” eventually becoming a social media meme. Although he has mostly shrugged off the hateful reactions to his photo, apparently the abuse got so bad that his brother-in-law eventually deleted the photo from his online portfolio. Still, his face will forever be associated with the phrase “worst person you know” and there’s virtually nothing he can do about it.
