Quotes of the Day

It started with angry old people. When Reno Dehareng's friend purchased a photo of an unsmiling elderly couple from a vintage store, the 33-year-old Brussels social worker had an idea. The ensuing website, Happiest People Ever ! (exclamation point purposely spaced), has become the latest addition to a growing Internet trend: blogs that catalog uncomfortable photos of strangers. (Awkward Family Photos and Goths in Hot Weather are two worthwhile examples.)

"I love photography in general and unsmiling, non-photogenic people have always made me laugh," Dehareng explained in an e-mail to TIME. Readers are invited to submit their own pictures, though in all likelihood, most photos on the site are probably found objects similar to the vintage-store snapshot. The concept is catching on. Happiest People Ever ! has been around for less than a month, but it's already getting about 6,000 hits a day. In part that's because the qualifications for entry are minimal. Anyone bored, lonely, grumpy or dejected (preferably all four) is welcome. Smeared makeup is a plus. So is a dingy background, like a fast-food joint or a room with wood paneling.

Dehareng's blog has a small but active base of commenters. A picture depicting bored women eating a candleless cake inspired one reader to note, "The cake sucks, the trashy candleholder is pathetic ... but I love the decorations on top of the air conditioner." And the three teenage girls with hair hanging in their faces? A reader reached back to the '90s with "The Hansons wonder what happened to their careers."

So who is the unhappiest person on Happiest People Ever ! ? Is it the drunk man with a baby? The depressed woman alone at a party? Nope — think again. The award goes to the elderly people wearing clown costumes, almost certainly against their will. Now that is awkward. And hilarious.

Read "Rosebud! Stella! 100 Movie Lines in 200 Seconds."

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• Claire Suddath
• The latest entry in a bizarre trend: blogs chronicling uncomfortable photos of strangers