# Screenshots of Despair Screenshots of Despair is a Tumblr blog started in February 2012 by Josh Kimball that collects status alerts and pop-up messages which read as cruel commentary on the viewer's social life. The project pulled captures like "You have no friends" and "It is not your turn in any of your games" out of their software context and reframed them as existential one-liners. By late March 2012, Rob Walker's Design Observer piece sent the blog through The Verge, TechCrunch and the Huffington Post as a touchstone for New Aesthetic writing. ## Origin Josh Kimball, an executive editor at a consumer trends research firm in Saint Paul, Minnesota, launched Screenshots of Despair on Tumblr on February 28th, 2012[4]. The first day carried three images, a notification from the iPhone Game Center, a Facebook message and a Spotify screen, each cropped to the alert text[4]. Kimball has credited Rob Walker's 2009 Murketing post "Gallery of Default Anonymity," a grid of blank social-media avatars, as the direct inspiration for the format[2]. Self-deprecating rage comics built around Forever Alone and Okay Guy had already paired similar notification screenshots with sad reaction faces, but Kimball stripped the character out and let the system text stand on its own[4]. - **Platform:** Tumblr - **Creator:** Josh Kimball - **Date:** 2012 ## Overview Each post on Screenshots of Despair is a plain screen capture, usually from a social app, a game or a music service, cropped tight on a single line of interface copy. Lines like "You have no history," "No one likes this" and "You have not received any gifts" sit without caption, so the UI text does all the work[1]. The humor leans dark and self-deprecating, treating a routine empty-state message as a verdict on the user's whole life. Josh Kimball described the appeal as the gap between what the designer meant and what the reader hears, telling TechCrunch the shots "inspire pangs of real isolation" because elements built as practical social features read as commentary on one's entire existence[2]. The Huffington Post called the lines "Dear John letters from the internet, delivered with fortune cookie frankness," and noted they tap middle-school fears of being told you have no friends[1]. Posts are rarely annotated beyond a short title, which keeps the focus on the native typography and chrome of iOS, Facebook and Spotify. Writers placed the blog under the New Aesthetic banner, the mix of physical and virtual visual language James Bridle was mapping that same spring[3]. Instead of glitch art or satellite tiles, Screenshots of Despair contributed a quieter artifact, the empty-list placeholder, as evidence that interface writing had turned into unintended confessional poetry. ## How It Spread Rob Walker wrote the first outside article about Screenshots of Despair for Design Observer on March 21st, 2012, roughly three weeks after the blog went live, and only learned afterward that his own 2009 avatar gallery had seeded it[4]. His piece set off a wave of coverage over the following five days. The Verge framed the blog on March 23rd as a catalogue of "existential bleakness" inside everyday apps, singling out "You have no history!" as a line readers no longer blink at[5]. TechCrunch followed on March 24th with an interview in which Kimball tied the project to "dark nerd humor" and the meaning of digital connectivity[2]. The Huffington Post ran its own roundup the same week, listing seven of the bleakest captures and calling the internet's tone toward users a "smidgen of contempt"[1]. Gawker titled its write-up "The Lonely Side of Social Networking," and the blog was also picked up by Refinery 29, the Washington Post, Neatorama and Laughing Squid during the same March 22-26 run[4]. After the 2012 press cycle, Screenshots of Despair kept posting as a quieter archive and was cited in later writing about New Aesthetic design and empty-state UX copy[3]. Its single-topic Tumblr format, one native screenshot per post with no caption, became a reference point for later "found UI" accounts. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Screenshots of Despair? It is a Tumblr blog by Josh Kimball that collects screen captures of app notifications and empty-state messages which read as insults about the viewer's social life, such as "You have no friends" or "No one likes this"[1]. ### Where did Screenshots of Despair come from? Josh Kimball, an executive editor at a Saint Paul, Minnesota trends firm, started the Tumblr on February 28th, 2012, inspired by Rob Walker's 2009 Murketing post on blank social-media avatars[2]. ### What does Screenshots of Despair mean? Writers read it as evidence that interface copy, built as a practical feature, often lands on users as commentary on isolation, which is why Kimball called the shots "pangs of real isolation"[2]. ### How do you use Screenshots of Despair? The common convention is one native screenshot per post, cropped on a single bleak line of UI text like "You have no history" or "It is not your turn in any of your games," with no added caption so the system voice does the work[1]. ### Is Screenshots of Despair still popular? Its peak press moment was the March 2012 run across The Verge, TechCrunch, Gawker and the Huffington Post, after which it kept posting as a quieter archive and a touchstone for New Aesthetic design writing[5]. ## References 1. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/screenshots-of-despair_n_1379588]() 2. [https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/screenshots-of-despair-reveals-the-new-human-condition/]() 3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Aesthetic]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/screenshots-of-despair]() 5. [https://www.theverge.com/2012/3/23/2896807/screenshots-of-despair]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/screenshots-of-despair Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library