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241543903: What's the story behind the heads in the freezer search result?

Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 3:14 PM by Vivian Mutsoli

241543903 went viral in 2009 in Japan and Brazil. Today, when you search on Google about this number, you will see pictures of people with their heads on freezers. How much do you know about the number?

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Have you come across the number 241543903? What was it's origin and what does it mean? Here is everything you need to know about the mysterious number.

What is 241543903?

This is a numerical keyword related to a photo meme in which people freeze their heads and share the photos online. It is sometimes referred to as "head in freezer".

It comes from a combination of numbers. Those of the refrigerator serial number and the barcodes on a bag of edamame and a package of frozen soba noodles that were stored in the freezer.

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What's behind the 241543903 meme?

David Horvitz, an artist based in NY, was the first to post a head-in-the-freezer image on his SanPedroGlueSticks Flickr account. He titled the image “241543903”. Days later, a numeric sequence identical to his number became part of a Tumblr post with the following instructions,

Take a picture of your head in a freezer.
Post the picture on the internet.

The idea was to tag the photo with 241543903, which will become apparent when you search for it. After becoming a popular Flickr tag, it soon became an international sensation, with large followings in Japan and Brazil.

Therefore, a Google search for “241543903” in image search engines gets pages upon pages of images of people’s heads in freezers. It went viral in 2009.

Horvitz later explained in an interview how he conceived the idea. It happened after he suggested to his sick friend Mylinh that she try putting her head in a freezer.

Why people put their heads in freezers?

241543903 meme is one of the most curious “mysteries” of the digital world. As a result, there are many photos of people's heads in freezers on the internet. But, ever wondered why someone would put their head in the freezer?

According to the instructions David and his acquaintances shared, people were to take photos with their heads in a freezer and post them. Therefore, people started taking photos with their heads in freezers. Within no time, there were plenty of 241543903 images online.

This is all you need to know about the 241543903 numerical. A high level of search engine optimisation can be readily obtained by marking a sequence of image files with a cryptic number.