‘Man Suffers Heart Attack at Work Selfie’ Photo Is Not Real

The viral image labeled “man suffers heart attack at work while workers gather for a selfie” is not a real photo. The picture first appeared on Reddit in 2016 and merely shows a man sleeping at his desk.

The man, who posts on Reddit as TheOrangeDuke, spoke to the Huffington Post about the photo in 2016. In 2016, the man was christened “Sleeping Intern.” The Canadian Broadcasting Company identified him as Montreal man Eduard Paraschivescu. He had been working at the tech company Gsoft.

The original picture became a viral sensation as many used their Photoshop skills to create different versions. TheOrangeDuke told HuffPo, “One of the associates noticed me sleeping. And it just went downhill from there.” To make matters worse, the photo was taken on the third day of the man’s internship with a technology company. The original thread has been removed. It was titled, “TIFU by falling asleep at the job on my second day.”

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Paraschivescu told the Huffington Post that he had been diagnosed with anemia, which caused him to be “ultra sleepy.”

The photo was first posted on Reddit’s Photoshop Battle thread. The subreddit is described as, “Photoshop contests on Reddit. A place to battle using image manipulation software, play Photoshop tennis, create new images from old photos, or even win Reddit gold.”

You can see some of the best Reddit photoshop efforts here. Interestingly, the last thread that TheOrangeDuke has commented on is a thread titled, “How did the letter Z become associated with sleeping or snoring?”

The picture reappeared in 2019 after it was posted on iFunny with the headline, “Man suffers heart attack, dies at work, coworkers gather for group selfie thinking he’d fallen asleep.” On iFunny, the picture has garnered over 100,000 likes and over 2,000 comments. That version of the photo includes a watermark for the handle, “Official.Agnew.”

Sleep.org recommends napping at work in order to increase productivity. The website says that naps should be taken between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. The “power nap” should last around 20 minutes and can increase productivity by 34 percent. The article goes on to state, “A space that’s relatively quiet and private will help you relax. Perhaps you can nap in your office — you could close the door and hang a sign that reads ‘back in 20 minutes.’ Or you could nap in your car or on an outdoor bench.”

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