Doesn't actually answer the question, but the source of the image is I think super relevant.
I could sort of imagine some automated process making Imgur thumbnails of images from links shared on some social media site, and going awkwardly self-recursive and getting to 3.2M.
https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/2uzas7/i_found_out_th...
They found (as I did, with a simple Google reverse image search) that the image was used to illustrate a Forbes article in 2011:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/venessamiemis/2011/04/04/the-ban...
https://twitter.com/EricaGlasier/status/563770191440404480
Doesn't actually answer the question, but the source of the image is I think super relevant.
I could sort of imagine some automated process making Imgur thumbnails of images from links shared on some social media site, and going awkwardly self-recursive and getting to 3.2M.