Smile Dog

One of the strangest things about the internet are the stories that pop up in relation to it.  Of all the internet stories that I’ve ever heard – ranging from posting 10 comments to a youtube video to get a kiss from your crush to instant messaging 25 people with a rhyme in order to not get killed by a vengeful blind ghost – the one that has stuck with me for a long, long while was that of Smile.jpg – or better known now as… Smile.dog.

Smile.dog is a piece of what has become colloquially known as “creepypasta.”  Creepypasta is commonly a short anecdote that passes around the internet being claimed as real – what sets it apart from other anecdotes is that it is commonly accompanied by a picture or formatted in such a way as to emphasize the whole experience of reading it – much like the book House of Leaves if one thinks about it.
Smile.dog’s story consists of a classic horror set-up – an amateur writer visits the house of a lady who supposedly has a story for which he can borrow from.  Rather than speak, however, the lady has locked herself up in her room, crying and ranting about nightmares and visions and various other problems.  All of these center around a floppy disk she had been given that contain the image smile.jpg – which is smile.dog. 
Other cases of this have cropped up…

Viewing this image incites insanity, and no copy of the exact image exists on the web though likenesses of it do.  The true image of smile.jpg is recognized due to the effect it has on the viewer – that is, they wind up dead.  Attaching the file – that is, spreading the word, is the only way to save oneself from the smile.dog that appears in one’s dreams demanding to spread the word.  Some say that the original legend began with an image of the devil.

What is it, then, about smile.dog that sticks with the reader?  Reading it late at night in the dark and alone… seeing the haunting image of the original(?) or at least close to the original image..  it incites a sort of morbid hypnosis that makes one want to believe in it in a way.  Why not torture oneself for a little and believe an urban legend for the shear adrenaline rush it produces?

Why not spread the word a little, oneself?  After all, how much hurt could it do?