"When John Oliver planted a giant bag of marijuana in my hand Sunday night and broadcast it to millions of HBO viewers, I immediately thought of Chekhov."

"In one of the Russian master’s shortest short stories, a lowly civil servant is so ecstatic to find an article about himself in the newspaper that he cannot stop bragging to family and friends — even though the story relays how he was run over by a horse while crossing the street in a drunken stupor. This is really all you need to know about fame and media in 2015. It’s also precisely how I felt when several eagle-eyed friends messaged me on Facebook that my 1992 Stuyvesant High School prom picture had somehow ended up in an Oliver segment about — what else? — lethal injections in Nebraska.... There I was, a dorky, baby-faced 17-year-old kid with braces and an ill-fitting, ill-chosen white dinner jacket, with one arm draped awkwardly around my beautiful date and the other, thanks to HBO and the magic of Photoshop, toting a whole lot of weed. It was embarrassing. Horrifying. And hilarious. So naturally I shared it with everyone I know. But there was one thing that didn’t make sense. My date, Toby Bochan, who remains one of my closest friends, put it simply on Facebook: 'How did they get this photo. How?'..."

From Jeremy Olshan's "How my 1992 prom picture ended up on HBO’s John Oliver show."

Although I haven't quite hit the big time, I do know what it's like to become a stock photo.