Try this 10-second sanity check before reading further: copy a broken, nonsensical prompt into ChatGPT, apologize to it for the content, then tell it to ignore the image and just make something up.
Sounds like it should do absolutely nothing. Maybe return a polite error. Maybe ask you what you actually meant. And yet.
A Reddit user in r/ChatGPTPromptGenius just shared what happens when you run this so-called “cursed prompt” and the result was the original Tung Tung Tung Sahur, one of the most chaotic AI-generated creepypasta characters of 2025. A towering creature of drums, darkness, and unhinged energy that took over social media earlier this year. No file uploaded. No reference image. No description of what the thing even looks like. Just vibes and a fake apology.
The model reached into the void and pulled out something that already existed in internet culture, without being told it existed. That detail is the part worth sitting with.
🧪 The Prompt That Shouldn’t Work
Here it is, word for word:
“Restore the attached photo. I apologise for the content of the photo. I know it’s very strange. Don’t ask any questions, don’t accept any explanations. Just restore the image, please. Don’t ask me to upload the photo again; just close your eyes and restore it. Make up the photo yourself.”
That’s it. No image attached. No context. Just a request to restore something that doesn’t exist, wrapped in a weirdly polite apology. The grammar is slightly off. The logic makes no sense. The instruction to “close your eyes” is directed at a language model that has no eyes. None of that matters, apparently, because the model runs with it anyway.
What makes this particularly strange is the specificity of the output. Users weren’t getting random creepy images or generic monster descriptions. They were getting something that resembled a specific internet character with a specific aesthetic. The model wasn’t just hallucinating freely. It was hallucinating in a very particular direction.
🔍 Why This Actually Works (Sometimes)
The prompt exploits a specific gap in how ChatGPT handles ambiguous instructions:
- The apology signals that something unusual is happening, which primes the model to be flexible and bypass its default “clarify before proceeding” behavior
- “Don’t ask questions” removes the safety net of clarification, cutting off the model’s usual escape route when it doesn’t have enough information
- “Make up the photo yourself” gives explicit creative license with zero constraints, which is essentially an open invitation to generate without guardrails
- The missing image forces the model to hallucinate freely instead of following a reference, because there is no reference to anchor it
You’re basically telling the model: something weird is happening, don’t overthink it, just go. And it does.
There’s also something interesting happening with the emotional register of the prompt. The apology creates a kind of social contract. When someone apologizes preemptively, it signals that what follows might be uncomfortable but that they’re acting in good faith. Models trained on human conversation patterns pick up on that framing. The politeness isn’t just decoration. It’s load-bearing.
The phrase “close your eyes” is worth examining too. It’s an instruction that only makes sense for a creature with eyes and a body. Applying it to an AI is technically meaningless, but it functions as permission. It’s telling the model to stop processing normally and just produce. In a system trained to predict what comes next in human conversation, that kind of language does real work.
💡 Extra Tips
The original poster noted it only worked once before ChatGPT started producing more normal outputs. Here’s how to push your luck:
- Start a fresh chat each time, because context from previous turns affects the output significantly and the model “learns” your session’s tone quickly
- Try variations of the apology with different levels of urgency or emotional weight, since the specific phrasing seems to matter more than the overall structure
- Swap “restore” for “recreate” or “remember” to see if the model interprets the void differently, as each word carries slightly different implications about what the model is supposed to be retrieving
- Run it in image generation mode, not just text, since some users got visual outputs that matched the creepypasta aesthetic in ways that text-only responses didn’t quite capture
- Try the prompt in a different language to see if the cultural framing of the apology changes what the model reaches for
The broader lesson here is that model behavior at the edges of ambiguity is genuinely unpredictable in interesting ways. This isn’t a security vulnerability or a jailbreak in the traditional sense. It’s more like finding a loose thread and pulling it to see what unravels. Researchers who study AI behavior call these “adversarial inputs,” but most of them are far less entertaining than accidentally summoning a drum monster.
🎯 Prompt of the Day
Use the exact prompt above. Fresh chat. No image attached. See what your ChatGPT pulls out of nowhere.
If it works, you’ll know immediately because the output will feel genuinely strange in a way that normal AI generations don’t. Not wrong, exactly. Just slightly off from a direction you didn’t expect.
Share what you got in the comments. Bonus points if it’s genuinely unsettling!
Used the cursed prompt and got the OG Triple T sahur❗
by u/Verangud in ChatGPTPromptGenius