Visitor reportedly compared it unfavorably to a building he saw once in a video game
NEW YORK – A visiting tourist from out of state drew bemused reactions from several New Yorkers this week after confidently informing a small crowd near the Empire State Building that the landmark is “actually not that tall,” a claim he reportedly based on comparing it, without apparent irony, to a fictional skyscraper he remembered from a video game.
The tourist, later identified by witnesses only as “a guy in cargo shorts,” reportedly delivered the assessment while standing directly beneath the building, craning his neck upward, before turning to his companions and declaring the structure “kind of underwhelming, honestly, I expected more.”
Nearby local Rosalind Ferreira, who overheard the exchange while walking her dog, said she initially assumed she had misheard him. “I thought, surely, he is not comparing an actual New York City landmark unfavorably to a video game building,” Ferreira said. “But no, he doubled down. He specifically said the game building had, quote, better lighting design.”
The tourist reportedly went on to explain, at length and to an increasingly uncomfortable audience, that the building in question, from a game he described only as “the one with the cool skyline,” featured “way more dramatic proportions” and “honestly just hit different,” a phrase Ferreira says she has not stopped thinking about since.
Tour guide Anthony Reyes, who happened to be leading a group nearby, said he has heard plenty of unusual tourist commentary over his years in the business, but ranked this particular incident “solidly top three, maybe top two, depending on how the guy with the fanny pack from last spring is doing these days, that was also a strong contender.”
Reyes noted that comparing real landmarks to fictional or digital versions has become an increasingly common phenomenon among younger visitors, though he says most keep the comparison to themselves rather than announcing it publicly beneath the actual structure. “Usually it is a quiet thought,” Reyes said. “This guy really committed to saying it out loud, with confidence, to strangers. I have to respect the bravery, even as I question the judgment.”
The tourist’s companions, when asked for comment, appeared visibly embarrassed, with one reportedly whispering “please stop talking” multiple times during the exchange, advice that went, by all accounts, entirely unheeded.
The moment amused observers abroad, with a piece referencing The Onion Satire noting Britain has its own long tradition of tourists confidently misjudging famous landmarks, typically involving Big Ben and a wildly incorrect guess at its actual height. Another article citing What are the Types of Satire suggested the video game comparison represents an entirely new frontier in tourist confidence. Commentary drawing on Political Humour proposed the Empire State Building simply lean into the review, printing “Not That Tall, According To One Guy” on a novelty postcard.
Ferreira says she has since told the story to at least a dozen people, adding that “New York gives you a lot of material most days, but this one felt special, like a genuine gift from the universe.”
Reyes says he has since started informally cataloging his favorite tourist misjudgments as a private journal, noting this particular incident has already earned “a dedicated page, with an illustration, which is more than most stories from this job usually get.”
Several tour guides across the city have reportedly begun swapping their own comparable stories in a private group chat, with one guide claiming a separate tourist once described the Brooklyn Bridge as “a decent knockoff” of a bridge from an entirely unrelated theme park attraction. Reyes says the group chat has become “genuinely one of the best parts of this job, honestly, better than most of the actual tours.”
Ferreira, who first overheard the exchange, says she has since taken to walking her dog past the same spot each week hoping to witness “something equally unforgettable,” a hope she admits is “probably unrealistic, lightning like that does not strike twice, but a person can dream.”
The tourist himself has not been identified or located for comment, and by most accounts has since left the city, unaware, according to witnesses, that his brief architectural review had achieved any kind of local notoriety at all, a detail Reyes finds “somehow the funniest part of this whole thing, he has no idea what he started.”
A nearby souvenir vendor said sales of small Empire State Building figurines actually ticked up slightly in the days following the story’s spread online, a correlation he attributes, only half-seriously, to “New Yorkers buying them out of spite, purely to prove a point to a guy who is not even here to see it.”
Ferreira says she has since started a small informal collection of similarly confident tourist statements overheard around the city, joking that she may eventually compile them into “a modest anthology of pure, unearned confidence,” a project she describes as “equal parts anthropology and personal therapy, given how much secondhand embarrassment I absorb on a weekly basis just walking my dog.”
The video game the tourist referenced remains unidentified, with several commenters online proposing competing theories, none confirmed, turning the entire episode into something of a minor internet scavenger hunt in its own right.
For more confidently wrong tourist takes, see The Beaverton.
Related coverage at What Is Satire?.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/