Smile Dog

The Smile Dog is the main antagonist of the Creepypasta story "Smile.jpg". He is a supernatural entity that haunts the lives of any who see his face, driving them to insanity and suicide.

Biography
Smile dog's story consists of a classic horror trap: a novice writer visits the home of a lady who supposedly has a story to tell him. However, she ends up locking herself in her bedroom while she cried and complained of nightmares and visions. Anyway, it was all about a floppy that she got. The floppy disk contained the image smile.jpg, the infamous Smile.dog. There have been other similar cases ...

It is said that seeing this image loses mental sanity. There is no exact copy on the Internet, although there are some similar ones. The authentic image is recognized by the effect it has on the viewer - death. The only way to save yourself from Smile.dog is to "water it"; that is, send it attached to an email, for example.

The History
The first time I met Mary E. personally was in the summer of 2007. Her husband, Terence, to whom she has been married for fifteen years, made an arrangement with me to be able to interview her. Initially, Mary agreed, as I was not a journalist, but a novice writer who wanted to get information to complete some college assignments. Also, I planned to write some fiction if the interview ended well. We agreed that the interview was going to be during a weekend in which I was in Chicago. However, Mary refused the interview at the last minute and locked herself in her and her husband's bedroom. For half an hour Terence and I stood in front of the door of that bedroom. I listened and took notes while Terence tried to calm his wife down, to no avail. The things Mary said made little sense, but they followed the pattern I was expecting: even though I couldn't see her, it was clear that she was crying; and her objections to talking about her with me centered on an incoherent tirade about her dreams, or rather, her nightmares. Terence apologized when we finally gave up. Although I was disappointed, I remembered that I was just a curious young man looking for information, not a reporter looking for a story. I thought I would find another similar case anyway if I concentrated on it.

Mary E. was in charge of a Bulletin Board System in 1992, the year she came across the smile.jpg image; her life changed forever. By then, she was married to Terence for only five months. Mary was one of 400 people who viewed the image when it was posted as a hyperlink on the Bulletin Board System, but she has been the only person who has spoken openly about the experience. The other victims have remained anonymous, or may have died.

In 2005, when I was in the tenth grade, my curiosity about images arose from my burgeoning interest in phenomena that occurred on the Web. Mary was the most mentioned victim of what was sometimes referred to as "Smile.dog", the creature supposedly featured in the smile.jpg image. What got my interest (aside from the obvious hideous elements of cyber legend and my penchant for such things) was the paucity of information, to the point where people thought it was just a rumor or a joke.

What I find curious is that even though the phenomenon focuses on an image, that image is nowhere to be found on the Internet. Sure, there were a lot of knockoffs, which appeared frequently on sites like the 4chan image board, particularly on / x /, where paranormal topics are discussed. These images are said to be false as they do not have the same effect as the real one, specifically the sudden onset of epilepsy and severe anxiety. This supposed reaction in the victim is one of the reasons why the mysterious smile.jpg is considered so despicable, as it is patently absurd. Although, depending on who you ask, the fact that people do not want to admit the existence of smile.jpg may be due to fear, rather than disbelief.

There is no Wikipedia article on smile.jpg or Smile.dog, although the website does have articles on possibly more outrageous things (hello.jpg and 2 Girls 1 Cup, as examples). Any page created involving smile.jpg is quickly deleted by one of the many encyclopedia administrators.

Encounters of the malevolent image are legendary myths on the Web. Mary E.'s story is not the only one; there are several unverified rumors suggesting that smile.jpg appeared during the Usenet startup. There is even a consistent story that in 2002 a hacker filled the forums of Something Aweful, a humor and satire website, with a plague of Smile.dog images, causing epilepsy in half of the forum users. .