30 Times People From Stock Photos Found Their Pics Being Used In Weird Ways

This takes place many, many years ago when foreigners were a rare sight in Japan. I'm a big, friendly looking white guy, and I was asked to do some photos of "a couple on a date."

So I go around to some scenic locals with a beautiful Japanese woman, the photographer, and his assistants. Fun day. Took tons of romantic photos. And that was the end of it...

Until a month or two later when my "date" and I showed up on posters all over the subway as part of an AIDS awareness campaign (because you can catch that from foreigners, y'know!)

Needless to say my friends and coworkers thought it was hilarious, and amazingly it didn't have any noticeable impact on my dating life. Looking back my only regret is that I didn't steal one of the posters.

I ended up finding myself on one of those “Now Hiring” posts on Facebook... for a company I was trying to get hired at

When I was a kid my mom took me for a photoshoot, then a month later I was on a pamphlet that said “Millions of children don’t have homes, adopt one today”

I knew a girl who was reaaaally full of herself, but really shouldn't have been.

One of her stock photos got used on an article about people who are self-centered.

It. Was. Perfect.

I have some friends that found one of their wedding pictures from Facebook somehow printed on a pillow in a market in a middle-eastern country. Like... they just randomly happened upon their wedding photo in a random street market.

They are from the U.S.

I modelled a bit in college and walked into a store in my local mall one day. They had this huge Valentine’s Day section with gift selections for different “types” of girls with pictures of models. There was the “sexy “girl, “adventurous” girl, “funny” girl and then my picture with just the word “other girl”...

We found out this past Christmas that my uncle’s stock photo of him at a spa had been turned into a hummus meme. Just him, soaking in a bathtub full of hummus.

For context, my ex and I were an interracial couple (Asian/White) and both born in the US.

We were used in some passport-style and portrait photo studios in Vietnam. We did some other photos, one which included us opening a car trunk near a beach-side town, pretending to be on vacation. One day a friend sent us screenshots from an Asian Female/Western Male dating website with our photos on the page.

Below each photo were "our" testimonials, written in Vietnamese with something along the lines of: "What a life! We're a real Cinderella story come true! She used to be a simple country girl and now she's about to get a green card to live a happy and fulfilling life in the US! Thanks (DATING SITE)!"

While peeing at a bar I found myself looking at myself.

I was used in a campaign about alcohol abuse. The particular pictures they used were drunk me about to punch my girlfriend, and drunk me pushing my friend while I was trying to get into my car to drive.

That night I ended up being rather popular with the bar patrons and had to reenact the photos with various strangers.

When I was a senior in high school, I was chosen to do a stock photo shoot for a big health company. They didn’t tell me what they were going to use my pictures for, I was just excited to get free clothes and a tiny bit of cash. The way I found out how they used my photo was when I went to the gynecologist about a year later and saw my picture on the wall - I was the face of teenage pregnancy counseling.

Edit: I was definitely NOT pregnant, I actually think I was still a virgin when the photo shoot happened

My husband and I did stock photos when I was pregnant with our first. I ended up seeing myself later on the side of a bus as well as in a pamphlet for young moms (flattering!) at my doctor's office.

The more interesting part, though, is that my husband took part in another "family" shoot, various poses cooking in the kitchen etc. Years later I was looking up a colleague on Facebook and her cover photo was her and my husband chopping vegetables in a stock photo.

My whole family modeled back in the 80s. Somehow my dad ended up in a brochure for some born again church that said he was a sinner and adulterer until he found jesus.

In college a photography student took some pictures of me playing classical guitar; I ended up in a viagra ad. I was 19.

I'm in the header of my university's grad school application. Whenever someone posts a screenshot of their acceptance email, Facebook facial recognition asks if I want to tag myself

My family did a stock photo shoot when our kids where young (like 1 and 3). A picture they took on our porch ended up in the opening credits for The Americans

Not me but my best friend: He did a photo shoot in some construction-worker garb and a hard hat. We live in North Carolina USA. I’m on a business trip in Chicago, and I stop by a Walmart for some supplies. I’m in the men’s work clothes isle and there’s my buddy prominently on the wrapping of 50ish packages of work shirts. It was a weird “wait, where am I?” moment. I knew he did some modeling, but not specifics.

I sent him a pic, he had no idea it had been used. The guy is in every Walmart in the country and had no idea.

I let a photographer friend take a stock photo of me. I looked sad in it and it ended up on some website about victims of abuse.

I did a stock photo shoot about 10 years ago and my photos show up in the weirdest places:

3 ex-boyfriends have texted me out of the blue after my stock photo showed up in their work training modules

Someone in my senior capstone class used my photo in their class presentation and didn’t realize it was me until everyone kept awkwardly looking at the screen and looking back at me.

Every so often, my face pops up in a “sassy black lady” meme, paired with text like “DEVIL DON’T TRY ME TODAY!” or “TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED! TYPE AMEN IF YOU AGREE!”

The weirdest in my opinion: My mom decided to join some crappy MLM makeup company because she was flipping through their catalog and saw that they had used one of my old stock photos as one of their makeup models. I was very obviously not wearing their makeup in the photos and my stock photo didn’t match any of the other models’ photos. Basically, whoever designed the catalog was like “oh snap, we need some diversity in here”, but they were too lazy to actually hire another model so they just grabbed a stock photo of a black chick and called it a day. The strange thing is that my mom joined the company because my photo was in the catalog, but she had to have known that I wasn’t wearing the company’s makeup....because she personally did my makeup for that stock photo shoot 5+ years earlier.

My ex used to work with a local photographer who is apparently pretty well known. He took a photo of me and my family and now it’s a permanent piece at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. So strange. I wonder how many people’s houses I’m in.

Not me, but a buddy of mine dated someone whose photo was used in picture frames. She hadn't mentioned this to my buddy, however. The two of them were in Macys one day and he turned to say something to her and realized behind her was a full wall of frames, all with her photo in it. She hadn't looked that way and apparently his expression was of sheer terror.