Social media has its downsides, but when it comes to fostering reunions between people who have lost touch, it can work absolute magic. Case in point: in 2006, a little girl names Brianna met a little girl named Heidi on a dinner cruise in Honolulu, and the two became best friends. Back then, it took a lot more than the touch of a button to stay connected, so they never saw one another again. But Brianna never forgot her.
"I don't think there were many kids our age on this particular dinner cruise, so I guess we just found each other and stuck together the whole time. The other night I was going through old scrapbooks and watching vacation videos and I saw her," she told BuzzFeed.
Over the weekend, she enlisted the help of Twitter to find her long-lost bestie. "I need y'all to help me find my best friend cause I miss her and I need to see how she's doing now," she wrote. "Please retweet this so we can be reunited."
The tweet went massively viral (as of now, it has over 118,000 retweets), and in less than 12 hours, Twitter delivered.
Needless to say, Brianna was pretty excited.
Brianna, 19, is a student at Hampton University in Virginia. Heidi, on the other hand, is studying in California. Given that they're on opposite sides of the country, Brianna said meeting in person right now isn't feasible, but they have been catching up.
They also plan to meet again once they get the funds to do so.
Speaking of which, Heidi cautioned people to not donate to any GoFundMe pages claiming to be raising money to help them meet up in real life. Some people are the worst.
However, the biggest takeaway that Brianna has gotten from this whole experience is that some people—a lot of them, actually—are the best.
"I honestly thought it would take at least a week to find her. The internet is so amazing and showed me that it really is a small world after all," she said.
And the whole story has inspired other people to try to reconnect with old friends in a similar way.
someone pleathe help me find a grilly. we were best friends on a carnival cruise in december 2006, her name was holly and she was from the netherlands and she came to play dolls with me on my bunkbed MKSJGNG all ive got is pics of me on that cruise pic.twitter.com/vHMFhuoDHw
— ♀️ (@tilltoniight) November 24, 2018
As for Brianna, well, she's just seeing how far she can push Twitter's genie-like powers.
And for more on the magic of social media, find out how it's been helping people reunite with their lost pets following the devastating wildfire in California.
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