London Man Loses His Camera On Trip. An Australian Woman Finds It, and Now TikTok Is Cooking up a Romcom: ‘And That Kids, Is How I Met Your Mother’

The internet longs for a meet-cute moment between two strangers. Although most are isolated in long-winding TV series or movies, that’s not the case with two travelers on TikTok, who are connected because of a lost camera.

Joel (@joelsoffthegrid), from London, is a travel influencer on TikTok. Sometime last year, he lost his DJI Action 5 Pro camera during his travel in Thailand. He felt hopeless about his lost camera, but just as he was about to buy a new one, a woman slid into his DMs.

“Hey! This might be a long shot, but I think I may have found your camera at the airport late last year. I actually tried to find the owner at the time. I posted about it on TikTok hoping someone would recognize it or connect me with you, but I never got any responses,” the woman messaged. Her name is Jade Jeremiah (@jeremiah.jade), and she’s from Australia, vacationing when she found the camera at the Bangkok International Airport in Thailand.

Although she wanted to find the owner, she didn’t want to pry into the camera for privacy’s sake. Nevertheless, she kept the camera in hopes of reuniting it with its rightful owner.

“This is like the craziest chance,” Joel said. Jeremiah was coincidentally in Bali at this point in time, where he is also currently on his trip. What are the chances of two strangers from different parts of the globe being at the exact place and time?

“I’m going to meet her now; she’s a savior from heaven,” Joel gushed on TikTok. Now that she’s returning his camera, he wouldn’t have to spend extra on a new one. He added, “I don’t know, I believe everything happens for a reason.”

TikTok writes a fanfic about two strangers

Social media users just couldn’t help themselves. Some commenters believe that Joel probably lost his camera because he’s destined to meet a friend. As one social media comment reads, “A lifelong friendship has been made.”

Others online have taken an even more extreme spin to the story.

One commenter wrote, “And that kids, is how I met your mother.” It’s an obvious reference to How I Met Your Mother. Ted, the main character of the series, is a hopeless romantic who looks into every interaction with rose-tinted glasses. Joel isn’t Ted, though—it’s the commenters who are hoping for something magical to happen.

Another TikTok post said, “This is not a coincidence. The universe sent you your soulmate. If this is not your sign then what is?” It seems that TikTok is definitely starved for a good romcom. Did it happen, though?

Despite all the online goading, Joel and Jeremiah met up and not much happened on screen. She just gave his camera back, and he couldn’t be any more thankful for the gesture. Although he tried to offer her compensation, she refused, saying that she just wanted the camera to find its way back to him. She explained that if it was her, she’d want someone to return her missing thing to her, too.

It’s not the ending most people had hoped for, but it goes to show that the world still has some good people in it. There are many others who wouldn’t have returned the camera. Many would have kept it for themselves, thinking that it’d be impossible to find the owner anyway. Other people would even go above and sell the camera for their own gain. Even if it didn’t conclude the way TikTok had hoped, this story still had a good ending.

(featured image: Hasan Lütfü Örsdemir, Amar Preciado, Georgios Tsatas)

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