This Story About Two Guys With The Same Name Spending NYE Together Is The Internet At Its Best
He had flights booked to Tasmania within four hours of meeting on Facebook.
If you were the lucky kind of person who got a big Christmas break drinking beer on beaches with no work or internet bullshit in sight, today — the first day back at work for many office types — could be quite a shock.
Facebook is full of One Nation senators being homophobic and Jimmy Fallon grinning like a demonic troll doll at the Golden Globes. Twitter is stacked with slightly more sexual harassment than usual as Martin Shkreli and his associated trolls attack a Teen Vogue writer. Your emails are still there. But they’ve multiplied. And are now attempting to slowly drown you.
Happy new year, if there’s ever a time to have some faith restored in the internet it’s now!
Last night r/Australia went absolutely wild for a story told through imgur about two guys named Sam Mitchell. The first (a 19-year-old guy from Launceston) had messaged another (a 22-year-old Londoner visiting Melbourne) out of the blue on Facebook after searching his own name on Facebook. It went way better than should reasonably be expected.
After chatting for a while and getting along, the pair Photoshopped each other into their profile pics, got their friends involved in the joke (?), and eventually started talking about an IRL trip to meet up. Within just a few hours, Tassie Sam’s mates had chipped in $20 each and bought the other Sam a flight for New Year’s Eve.
He was at the airport the next morning for a 6am flight.
The Sams then met up for a full day of activities they called the “Sam Mitchell Olympics”. Because both these dudes are under 25 and living in Australia the games mainly involved drinking and doing ill-advised things like eating dog food and vomit-flavoured jelly beans. It was pretty cute though.
They then headed out to some bars for the countdown and smooched at midnight. Sam — the one who made the trip over there — described it as one of the definite highlights of his night (lowlights included the dog food and “jumping in the bucket after downing a whole beer”).
“I’m out travelling the world at the moment trying to have as many fun adventures and see as much as I can, so when something like this comes along — to spend time with some hilarious people, make some lasting memories and fly somewhere for free — you don’t say no,” Sam told Junkee.
“I’m happy [the story] is getting a lot of attention, everyone banging on about ‘2016 is the worst year ever’ blah blah blah… [It’s] good to kick the new year off with a nice fun story.”
He also said the whole thing wasn’t too much of a surprise to his friends who describe it as “a very ‘me’ thing to do”. “A lot of people [are] saying ‘why doesn’t this stuff happen to me?’. I’m not sure this happens to many people to be honest…”
Other Redditors are now sharing their own stories of connecting with namesakes on social media and it looks like he’s right.