let me take you guys on a journey. one that will help you understand how annoyingly obsessive and hung up my brain can get......
so here is where our wild goose chase starts. I was going through a 2012 f1 blog's nico tag. it's actually pretty rare for early 2010s blogs to have comprehensive tagging systems so whenever I find one I try to go thru it all. and I come across this v cute nico image (cropped for posterity. payoff will be worth it promise)
here we have a picture, from 2012, and in classic 2012 fashion there is meme text on it. OP of the original pic deactivated. so I want to find the version without the meme text. pretty easy, just reverse google search right?
WRONG!
google reverse search is functionally dead and defunct and absolutely dogshit.
ok back to square one. I'm trying to sus out from whatever information I have.
the other meme watermark of f1humour.tumblr.com? deactivated.
okay 37 notes. maybe I can do something with this.
tumblr kind of breaks (?) with very old posts. so even if someone tagged it, I can't see it. ok but 14 people liked it!
of the 14 accounts only 7 actually show, including mine. so what I do is I go through 6 of those blogs, and their public archives because those accounts are all inactive for several YEARS now. and I check their blogs for April 2012.
no luck.
back to the drawing board.
the meme has a MOTORSPORT.COM watermark.
here's all the information I have: this was posted on April 24th, 2012, which means that's my upper limit on the date this could be taken. Nico got in Mercedes in 2010. So from anywhere between 2010-2012 motorsport images couldve taken this pic.
so, because I was born with excessive intelligence, I think hmmm... let me search the archives of Motorsport Images dot com. surely that is where Motorsport dot com would keep their Images.
two years of a racing driver's pictures means thousands of pictures. okay. let's start from April 2012. unfortch for keen eyed listening, April 2012 was also the Chinese Grand Prix aka Nico's first f1 win.
why is that relevant? because it means every photographer and their MOTHER took a picture of nico for his first win. over 900+ images.
while I am exhibiting extremely unemployed levels of behavior here, I don't actually have the time and brain capacity to sift through 900 images.
I go back to the original tumblr post. this time I go to the empty reblogs. there's lots!
but because there's no tags it can't help me. still I go through every one of them because you can see the blog I found the pic from @the-fastest-waffle is listed in the other reblogs even though they clearly had tags!
and I find my silver lining. from @fuckyeahf1drivers's tags
just this simple. #bahrain #lol
if this picture is from bahrain 2012 it changes everything, as in it narrows my search a shit tonne.
375 images. This means 1-15 pages and I know the exact picture I'm looking for. I feel like I'm SO close. I can't give up now. gambler mentality 💎
so I guess what. I go through all 15 goddamn pages. and I DONT FIND IT!!!!!!!!! SCREEEEEECH
now I've lost hope. if it's not from bahrain 2012 then it can be from anywhere from 2010-2012 taken by motorsport.com which is just too big a search. there isn't anything I can narrow it down with. my search is futile.
but I have one tiny little thought bugging my mind. how come motorsport images don't have the motorsport.com watermark... so I consult a fellow archivist @vegasgrandprix on the matter.
WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO ADDRESS WHY MOTORSPORT.COM AND MOTORSPORT IMAGES.COM HAVE THE SAME FONT
finally. finally
I go on motorsport.com
which is actually kind of not super user friendly interface finding their pics if you have excessive intelligence like I do. I go into this knowing if the bahrain 2012 long shot is actually NOT when that picture is from, I'm fucked.
I filter and say a prayer.
and lo and behold.
salvation.
one person's singular tag of 'bahrain 2012 lol' led me down this spiral, where if it wasn't for that bit of information this would be lost forever because finding the version of the pic without the meme text is otherwise near impossible. google reverse search is no help, and f1 drivers simply get photographed way too much. reblogs + tags with context literally are a holy grail. this is what I imagine archaeologists feel like. so if you ever want someone 12 years after you've posted something to go down finding out, tag your posts accordingly (assuming tumblr survives the next decade)
so why did I do it? why did I spend hours of my life on this? cause it's fun. it's like a mystery and it itches at my skin. many times I'm not successful which is why the times I am feels so rewarding because it feels almost like detective work, finding and refinding something, overturning evidence. and I have a brain that just functions Like This.
and now for the fruit of my labour, if you guys still want to see. the picture I spent hours to find the original version of. sitting proudly at the time of posting at 9 notes 😌😌 here's what goes behind actually finding and archiving 2010s retired f1 drivers online. click below!
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