Safety Not Guaranteed

The ad was written by John Silveira, Senior Editor at *Backwoods Home Magazine*, a publication mostly known for articles about rural living, fruit canning, and self-sufficiency3. One night in 1997, publisher Dave Duffy asked Silveira for some filler content to pad out the classifieds page. Silveira came up with two fake ads: one was a personal ad seeking a girlfriend, and the other was the time travel ad. Both used the same P.O. Box 322 in Oakview, California, which was Silveira's actual mailing address1.

The joke backfired spectacularly. The time travel ad drew thousands of responses from every U.S. state and every continent, including Antarctica. The personal ad got exactly five replies, four from women and one from a man1. Many respondents genuinely believed the ad was real. Some sent lists of weapons they could bring, others begged Silveira to travel back in time and prevent a loved one's death. Prison inmates wrote asking him to go back and talk them out of committing their crimes. A few even threatened him with bodily harm if it turned out to be a hoax1.

The ad's text actually came from the opening lines of an unfinished novel Silveira had been working on1. Before hitting the internet, the ad was featured on *The Tonight Show with Jay Leno* and discussed multiple times on NPR's *Car Talk*5.

The meme's most significant cultural crossover is the 2012 film *Safety Not Guaranteed*, directed by Colin Trevorrow. The movie was one of the first to successfully adapt an internet meme into a feature-length narrative film7. *HuffPost* described it as bringing "emotion to a meme," noting how Duplass and Plaza turned 36 words from a classified ad into a full romantic story7.

The film launched multiple careers. Trevorrow parlayed its success into directing *Jurassic World*, while Jake Johnson was already gaining traction on *New Girl*2. Derek Connolly went on to co-write *Jurassic World* as well5.

Before the film, the ad had already crossed into mainstream media. It appeared on *The Tonight Show with Jay Leno*, was discussed on NPR's *Car Talk*, printed on T-shirts, and discussed on Craigslist and various online forums1. The ad's text even showed up in video games, including a reference in *World of Warcraft* where mousing over a dragon in the Caverns of Time warns that "Safety is Not Guaranteed"6.

Silveira noted that the ad is "probably the only words I've written that will outlive me"1.

The Safety Not Guaranteed meme has an unusual arc: it began as a throwaway joke in a niche magazine, became an internet fad, then crossed over into mainstream Hollywood. Few memes can claim that trajectory.

Silveira wrote the ad in 1997 expecting maybe three or four responses1. Instead, letters poured in for years. He kept hundreds in the trunk of his Honda Civic until the trunk leaked and mildewed most of them. Even after revealing the joke publicly, he expected responses to keep coming "until the end of time"1. The ad had already been appropriated by strangers online who used the same text with different P.O. boxes. Someone with "a bad mullet" even ran the ad with his own photo attached1.

The YTMND era (2005-2008) was the meme's peak internet period. The original site by axlbonbach established the template that hundreds of others would follow6. The community treated the mullet man as a genuine folk hero. A YTMND user named scrow posted a photograph he claimed to have found in his attic, apparently showing the same man during the American Civil War6. Another user claimed to have visited the actual P.O. box address and found an empty lot with a note connecting the mullet man to John Titor, another internet time-travel legend, though this was widely ridiculed6.

The meme's second life began when screenwriter Derek Connolly, a Miami native living in Los Angeles, encountered the ad online around 20075. "I probably came up with the story within ten seconds of reading the ad," Connolly told the *Miami New Times*3. He initially assumed the ad was genuine and was drawn to its melancholy undertone. "There was something really sad about it all. What if he is really lamenting something from his past that he wants to go back and fix," he said5.

Connolly wrote a first draft as a buddy comedy, but the script didn't click until he saw Aubrey Plaza in *Funny People* in 2009 and rewrote the lead role specifically for her3. He shared the script with Colin Trevorrow, a fellow NYU grad he'd met while both interned at *Saturday Night Live*3. Trevorrow signed on to direct his feature debut, and Mark and Jay Duplass joined as producers, with Mark eventually taking the male lead3.

Trevorrow tracked down Silveira to secure permission. At their first lunch meeting, Silveira was armed. "He definitely thinks you need to bring your own weapons anywhere that you go," Trevorrow told *Wired*2. Silveira became a friend of the production and made a cameo in the finished film2.

The film was shot in Seattle and Ocean Shores, Washington on a budget of just $750,000, using a Sony F3 camera with old Panavision lenses for what Trevorrow called a "Hal Ashby look"5. It premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize5. Mark Duplass noted the production's good timing: "Aubrey and Jake attached, who were not... their TV shows were either not happening or not as successful as they are now. I think it's just a little bit of luck on our part"2.

*Safety Not Guaranteed* hit theaters on June 8, 2012 and earned strong reviews. It holds a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus praising its "strong performances, beguiling charm, and heartfelt story"10. *Film Comment* called it "a rare gem rife with one-liners but without the gloss of hipster pretense"8. *IndieWire* noted it was "far more grounded, genuine, and moving than its conceit suggests"9. The film grossed $4 million domestically against its small budget5.

For Trevorrow, the film launched a major career. He went on to direct *Jurassic World* (2015), one of the highest-grossing films of all time5. In fall 2024, a musical adaptation of the film premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music5.