When This Girl Found Out The Reason Why There Was A Video Of Hers Online, Things In Her Life Changed

When this girl found out the reason why there was a video of hers online, things in her life changed. There's a myth which people throw around casually that there are six other people in the entire world that look exactly like you. If you were living in America and saw some friend of yours told you that they saw a person who looked exactly like you in Japan, would you believe them? One gets to hear that they resemble so-and-so quite occasionally, but having a person look exactly feature-to-feature like them is rare, unless they're related. But what if they're not? Is it a case of identity theft, or is the myth true that there is more than one person who looks exactly like us out there? This woman found herself in a situation just like this. Anais Bourdieu was just a regular student studying fashion in London. She had her quiet circle of friends and enjoyed time with them. There was, however, a sharp turn of events in her quiet life, and in a matter of some months, this student, who was not the most famous person in college, made international headlines. Obviously, being a student and being brought up in the age of the internet meant that Anais was connected to people via social media. But it was only because of the internet that her life changed forever. It was supposed to be just another day in London in December 2012. Anais was on the bus going to buy some fabric when she got a notification from her friend Kelsang, tagging her in a YouTube video and sharing it on her wall. There was nothing unusual about it, both of them shared stuff on each other's wall regularly. Anais opened the video, and when she realized the reason why her friend had shared the video with her, she froze. But why? The video that the friend posted seemed to have been of Anais herself. When she talked about her experience later, she recalled that this was her reaction. I first thought, who just put up a video of me on YouTube without telling me, this is rude. For some time, she could not figure out what was happening. Why would someone photoshop her face on another person because she most certainly didn't remember being a part of any video shoot? Was it a prank? So, running through all the possibilities in her head on the bus ride, the destination of which she had quite forgotten now, all she could be certain of was that she had never made a YouTube video that involved her or anyone else for that matter. She thought that someone was playing a prank on her. If that was the case, how to get to the bottom of it all? She had a sleepless night. Anais Bourdieu reckoned that she was being a victim of identity theft. In typical identity theft cases, the culprit uses the name and personal information of another person to steal money. If this was the case here, why would someone steal Anais' identity and make it public via a YouTube video? It didn't make sense. She was just an aspiring fashion designer. Why would anyone do this to her? Internet and social media have made the lives of people easier, but it has its cons too. Online fraud cases on an all-time high, and people come up with the most malicious way to fraud the netizens. Online scamming is a very common practice now. Anais watched the video more than once. Anyone would if they thought someone was stealing their identity. When she took a closer look, she was shaken. Everything about the person in the video was identical to Anais. The hair, the eyes, even the freckles on the cheeks. But after several times watching the video, Anais Bourdieu realized that even though the person in the video looked exactly like her, it wasn't her. It was some other person, a crazy coincidence. There was no way to get in touch with them, though. No name or any other detail was available about the girl in the video. The video Anais Bourdieu's friend tagged her in was uploaded by an American sketch comedy production. The only thing that Anais was aware of was that her doppelganger had an American accent. But the video was obviously piquing her interest. If you found a person who looked exactly like you, won't you want to know more about them, who they were, where they were? Anais's curiosity wasn't really unusual. There was nothing more of substance that Anais could find about this woman lookalike. She tried to, though. She watched all the recommended videos that popped up along with the one in which her doppelganger appeared. She went through all the comments on the video in hopes of finding her name or any other information, but no luck. She even showed the video to her parents, pointing out the uncanny similarities. Hardly a month later, there was a development. Next year, barely a month later, the same friend who showed her the video came to her with a fresh piece of information. He found another video in which the same woman was featured. I've seen that girl again, read the text he sent along with a video link. This excited Bourdieu, and she hoped she would at last come close to finding this woman's true name. This was a link to a movie, and right after it finished, Anais took to the internet and searched IMDB for the name of the film, hoping to get the name of the actress. And she was in luck. She found out that the name of this doppelganger was Samantha Futterman, and she was an actress based in Los Angeles. There were other movies and TV shows mentioned which the actress had been a part of, but a piece of personal information about the actress made Anais pick up the phone and call her mother. Anais Bourdieu went through Samantha Futterman's bio, available online, and for a According to the information provided on the net, Samantha Futterman was born on November 19th, 1987, the exact day Anais was born on. What more? She was born in Busan, Korea. So was Anais. The first explanation, as crazy as it appeared to Anais, was that, could Samantha be her twin? But there were too many factors that didn't support her theory. Anais called her parents up and said this, Hey, do you remember that girl I showed you on the video? I said she was born on the same day as me and my mom automatically said, do you think she could be your twin sister? And of course I said yes, exactly. But the road to finding out the truth of Samantha wasn't really easy. The parents Anais called to talk about Samantha were not her birth parents. Anais Bourdieu had been adopted when she was just an infant and brought up in Paris and Brussels by loving parents. According to her adoption documental record, she was born to a single mother in South Korea and didn't have any siblings. She was an only child. The name or a picture of her mother wasn't even in the records. The developments recently though got her thinking, was it possible records were wrong? Was she really just the only child of her birth mother? Could it be possible she had a twin or a half-sister she didn't know about that no one knew she knows about? The coincidences were right there, so she wasn't crazy taking the line of thought she was taking. Who could have known that as a student in London, she could be solving mysteries of a girl who looked just like her? Anais Bourdieu's adoptive parents, Jack and Patricia, brought her home when she was They found her in a foster care center in Seoul. Lovingly, her parents always told her, you're the child we always wanted. Anais had made peace with the fact that her birth mother was never going to be found and she didn't have any siblings to find out about as she was told when she was an only child. Anais was brought up by her parents without any biases, and her upbringing was happy. However, she also remembers that kids around her usually asked why she didn't appear like her parents. Her adoption wasn't really a secret, but it still hurt her. How could she In the age of social media, it was hardly surprising that when Anais searched Samantha on Facebook, she found her. So close to some sort of discovery and closure now, Anais took a lot of time to calm her nerves and compose a message to Samantha that didn't make Anais look like a creep. Afraid that Samantha might not believe her, she also requested the actress to take a look at Anais's profile and check out her pictures to know she was telling the truth. This is what part of Anais's message read. So, I don't want to be too Lindsay Lohan, but well, how do I put it? I was wondering where you were born? She was, of course, referring to the movie The Parent Trap in her text. The ball was in Samantha's court now. Anais was afraid that this whole venture was going to be a failure, but she had to try and, well, she got a reply. In Los Angeles, after receiving the message on Facebook, Samantha Fuderman thought it to be a stalker who was trying to get in touch with her. This was her first response. When Anais's message first appeared, it was a mixture of emotions. I first thought, oh man, some weird person has got a hold of a photo of me. A further thought into it brought out some other observations. After going through her profile properly, Samantha realized that this was no stalker. This is what she thought. She looks so much like me, is this really happening? Furthermore, she remembered her feelings. I was strangely calm but really excited. I was more elated than excited. Then she read Anais's message and things started making sense. Samantha Fuderman was also born in South Korea, as we already know, on the same date as Anais. The former was also adopted, but she grew up in a place on the other side of the world, in New Jersey. She wasn't a lonely child with two brothers, Matt and Andrew, to grow up with. She completed her studies from New York and Boston and then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. When Samantha saw Anais's message in her pictures, she decided to approach her parents, Judd and Jackie Fuderman, and get their response on the whole situation. Initially, when Samantha confronted her parents, they were cautious. But then she backed her story with the proof of the images Anais had sent her, and things turned around. Cut to London, Anais was constantly checking her inbox in the hopes of receiving a reply from Samantha. And to her surprise, finally, Samantha replied. Anais was beyond herself. She opened the message box with anticipation to find that Samantha had sent her pictures of her adoption records. Those records revealed something unbelievable. According to Anais and Samantha's records, they were both born in South Korea at the same clinic. This was too similar a detail to be just a coincidence. They both developed a correspondence and started sharing information about each other's background, their current families, their pictures, and talked about their upbringing. Then they arranged a Skype call. When they both got on their first Skype call, they were all excited, and they couldn't help but marvel at how similar they were. There had been still no official confirmation that they were twins, but what else could justify such a coincidence? They talked every day on Skype for three months, when Samantha took things to the next step. It had been three months now that Samantha Vuderman and Anais Bourdieu had been talking on Skype. Samantha decided to fly all the way to London from Los Angeles. She took the entire family along, her parents and her two brothers. Samantha was finally going to meet her doppelganger face to face, and on the day of Anais' graduation from her fashion school. Now that Samantha and Anais had decided to meet, they also agreed on taking a DNA test. They had all the circumstantial evidence that they were probably twins, now they wanted to have a solid medical evidence that the two were actually related by blood. Both the women decided on submitting their DNA samples to Dr. Nancy Segal's lab. The results? Well, take a guess. Samantha Vuderman, along with her family, arrived in London on May 14th, 2013. The first meeting was, well, dizzying. How would you react when you see your lookalike walking towards you, not sure if you're related? Samantha said that their first meeting was awkward, like a first date, but they could feel a magnet between them that drew them together. For what seemed like forever, Samantha and Anais just stared at each other. Anais recalled, it was like she was my mirror. Just to confirm further, not that what happened till now wasn't confirmation enough, Anais poked Samantha gently and they both burst out laughing. For the next few days, they just hung out together. Anais showed Samantha and her family around London, then they got the much-awaited call from the clinic. Both the girls went to the clinic together and met Dr. Segal, who just said this to them, turn and hug your identical twin. They had been doubting this the entire time, but having it confirmed, it just knocked them over afresh. It was hard to figure out whether the girls were screaming with laughter or laughing while screaming. But this was not it for the twins, there was something else too. In an interview, Samantha said, it was weird, but I feel like there was a strange common comfort as well, and something I can't really explain. The more the twins sat down to know each other better, the more similarities popped up. They both found out that as kids, they were both sort of tomboys. What about their likes and dislikes? Their appearance wasn't the only identical thing about them. They both found out they shared their dislike of cooked carrots and had a similar sense of humor. They understood each other without words, and sometimes they'd plan to meet and come having painted their nails in the same color without planning it. The story sounds amazing, but it's not over just yet. In one of the interviews, Samantha recalled, I immediately thought she was cool because she made a Lindsay Lohan reference from The Parent Trap. I thought it was cool that we would be twins. Anais was beyond happy, I realized I'd never felt happier, she remarked. They were separated at birth and fate got them together after 25 years. What were their family's reactions? None of the adoptive parents, either of Samantha or of Anais, knew their child had a sibling, let alone a twin. So, both the families were naturally surprised having found these details out about their daughters. Both the families were overwhelmed and welcoming of the twins. Their reactions were teary. Anais' father couldn't control his tears when he met Samantha, and the former's mother said that there was no doubt they were twins. Futerman said that if they knew about the twins, they would have adopted both of them. The twins said, our adoptive families treat each other like family. Our families are super close. Now that they had the support of their families, the twins planned on something dramatic. After meeting each other, they both decided to go to South Korea to see if they could find something out about their birth mother. They had little information, a common contact on both their adoption papers, but they decided to give it a try. Samantha contacted the woman listed on the documents, but the response wasn't quite what the twins hoped. Samantha observed that the woman's response wasn't as warm as we'd hoped. She further said, we don't know if she needs time or it could be that she doesn't want to talk to us. We respect whatever her choice, her feelings, and her decisions are. The experience didn't deter them from loving each other and taking things to awesome levels. The twins couldn't know the reason for their separation at birth, but they wanted the world to know the story of their meeting, of the miracle where twins separated at birth found each other after 25 years. Luckily for them, they'd been keeping a record and documenting their story. The twins had kept a record of the images in their Skype conversations and their overwhelming first meeting in their hangouts and trips together. They decided to compile everything to turn it all into something magical. Well, the story of the twins separated at birth and reuniting after 25 years is obviously a headline maker. The girls were born in South Korea and lived in two separate continents. It means that the coverage their story got was huge. From Korea to Europe to US news stations and TV talk shows, they all lined up to get their interviews and increase their TRPs. The girls had a different plan. Samantha had a career in LA. She worked in the film industry and knew that hers and Anais' story was interesting. Their real-life story is what the fictional Hollywood movies were about, and she suggested they make a documentary on their journey. They used their images and videos to create a documentary called Twinsters. They could not in their dreams have imagined the impact of their documentary. The 90 Minutes documentary released in 2015 on Netflix. It was premiered at the Southwest Festival where not only did it receive a warm response, but also an award for editing. At the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival, the documentary was recognized as the best one at the event. After receiving such a positive response, the twins decided to share their story in other ways. Now that they had a documentary, they decided to record their experiences on paper, and both wrote a book titled Separated at Birth, A True Story of Twin Sisters Reunited. Their growing fame soon got Will Ferrell's attention. How did it happen? Twinsters had become such a hit that ABC Production House bought the rights to the comedy series named Funny or Die that Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and their team had based on the documentary. Though the sisters were psyched about all the attention, fame was not the first thing on their mind or their final destination. All the twins wanted to do was create more awareness for families and adoptees. Samantha co-founded an adoption advocacy group for the same purpose. She said, it feels good to know we're working for a greater purpose. Currently, Anais is a handbag designer in Paris, and Samantha's going strong in LA. Their different career paths keep them separate, but they stay in touch every day. Distance hasn't weakened their bond or their excitement of having each other. We're not worried about being separated again. We know we'll never let it happen, they said. Good things are waiting to happen to you. They're just taking their time. Just like these twins found each other against all odds, you might find something that you didn't even know existed.