17 Surreal Stock Photos With Worrisome Contexts

Stock photography has given the world some of its most iconic memes. From Hide The Pain Harold to Distracted Boyfriend this uniquely 21st-century phenomenon has provided some of the funniest and most useful formats of meme culture.

Visual culture scholars like Paul Frosh suggest that stock photography is so weird because unlike other kinds of photography, it is aiming to look generic rather than to look good. Genericity means it looks simultaneously highly specific and also instantly recognizable. Since the stock photography websites are optimized to provide businesses and advertisers with exactly the image they require, stock photographers are incentivized to create increasingly niche and odd images that represent something highly specific in a very obvious manner.

Ultimately, this market with odd incentives has produced both true horrors and considerable hilarity. It's made stock photography the perfect place to find new meme formats. It's also made stock photography one of the weirdest kinds of image-making human beings have ever engaged in.