Ancient Web: Eric Wu Turned Email Requests Into an Emotion Photo Archive

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A reader sends in an emotion. Eric Wu makes a face. Somehow, this arrangement became a durable little institution of internet comedy.

Visit Eric Conveys an Emotion.

Wu launched the site in 1998 while at the University of Florida. Its premise was deliberately restricted: stage and photograph himself portraying the feelings and situations proposed by visitors. Some requests were ordinary—happiness, fear, anger. Others stretched the meaning of an emotion into miniature comic scenes.

Readers provided the punch lines

The Netstorian's 2017 examination documents the site's progression from basic facial expressions toward elaborate prompts. Among its remembered pieces is Realizing That Your Hair Just Caught on Fire. One response to a request for Procrastination was a label declaring the photograph unfinished. A request for being 'stoned' could be interpreted with actual stones.

The jokes depended on a direct exchange between a webmaster and strangers sending suggestions by email. That is importantly different from a platform's reaction emoji: the audience requested a performance, and the performer chose how to interpret it. The archive accumulated those small collaborations rather than burying them in a chronological feed.

The site earned documented attention beyond its own guestbook. Newspaper reports appeared in 1999 and 2000; a 2002 Sacramento Bee article discussed its appeal, and it was a nominee for a 2003 Webby Award. These are particular signs of visibility, not a guessed audience size.

Its present landing page still identifies the project and exposes old frame-based navigation, but a modern text reader cannot reliably display the photo gallery embedded in those frames. The original address remains important; the independent retrospective helps reconstruct what the pictures and the jokes contained.

By 2008 the long-running updates had slowed, leaving a collection strongly tied to the pre-social-media web. A joke could last a decade because it required only a camera, a simple premise, and a mailbox that people kept writing to.

Explore the original site alongside the illustrated historical review.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.