Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is best known for founding Facebook.

But if you had to pick something for second place in the list of reasons Zuck is famous, it would be a deeply bizarre and deeply creepy viral image of him surfing in Hawaii last summer with enough sunscreen on his face to all Facebook staff. .

Finally, Zuckerberg explained what it was about, and although it wasn’t the weirdest explanation (water mime class), it’s still very, very strange.

According to comments he gave during an appearance on Instagram Live with Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, the reason for Zuck’s deadly sunscreen is very simple: He was trying to get rid of the paparazzi.

As Zuckerberg told Mosseri:

“I noticed that there was this type of paparazzi following us, and so I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want him to recognize me, so you know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to put a ton of sunscreen on my face. ”

Well, turning into Marcel Marceau is surely a way to throw in the papparizzi, right? Except the fact that, of course, this had the opposite effect, arguably making it even After recognizable as Mark Zuckerberg by transforming into Mark Zuckerberg in Joker cosplay.

Zuck himself admitted it wasn’t his best-laid plan.

“…[T]hat turned on him … The delta between how cool you think you look and the worst picture a paparazzi can take is pretty funny. “

You can say it again – the internet has had an absolute field day with the sunscreen photo, spawning billions of memes comparing it to everyone else. Halloween the killer Michael Myers to Mrs. Doubtfire and even a molting lizard. Fortunately, Zuckerberg has a sense of humor about it all.

As he told Mosseri:

“If anyone wants to post a sunscreen meme, that’s cool. I’m happy to make the internet laugh.”

Good thing, because the internet is laughing about it again.

So for future reference, turning into a ghostly apparition from the depths of hell on a surfboard isn’t an effective way to escape photographs – note it.