The story behind and after the photo

February 15, 2022 8:31 AM

"The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s ‘high five’ photos", by Annie Rauwerda for Input. The ending is cute!
posted by brainwane (24 comments total)

A++++ pun under the photo depicting the story's happy ending.
posted by straight at 8:48 AM on February 15, 2022 [12 favorites]

This is post is in violation of community standards due to excessive cuteness
posted by bq at 8:52 AM on February 15, 2022 [8 favorites]

This is delightful and I am delighted by it.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:55 AM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

A++++ pun under the photo depicting the story's happy ending.

If you're talking about the line under the wedding photo, I came in to say the same thing... that's some quality wordplay. But if that photo's what you're calling the happy ending, there's a whole lot more cute happy ever after to follow when you scroll down...
posted by Mchelly at 8:56 AM on February 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

If you're into these deep dives into Wikipedia stuff I can highly recommend following Annie Rauwerda on Twitter. Or on Instagram. Or on Tiktok. She's really good at this!
posted by dominik at 9:13 AM on February 15, 2022

I try my best to maintain the facade with my spouse that I am working (rather than aimlessly reading Metafilter) while I am at work. But then stuff like this gets posted and I have to send it to them. What a cute story.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:19 AM on February 15, 2022

Aw, that was really sweet! I appreciate that she had a call with them and they were into it. I was worrying at first that she was going to drag some random people (and their real names) into an internet spotlight without their permission. But then they were enthusiastic about talking to her, and seem super happy and sweet.
posted by aka burlap at 9:21 AM on February 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

“Victim misses” had become “victim Mrs.”!

#chefskiss
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:28 AM on February 15, 2022 [12 favorites]

I think it's at long last his turn to be too slow.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:34 AM on February 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

I not only love this story, I love that the approach and the telling of it is so sweet. I hope they have many years of mostly "too highs" in front of them.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:10 AM on February 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

"Not surprisingly, searching Google for middle-aged men in California who like national parks and Sufjan Stevens didn’t yield anything of worth."
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 10:57 AM on February 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

thank you for this pick-me up of a story. something very poignant & sweet about the recreated photos too.
posted by nightcoast at 12:02 PM on February 15, 2022

That was so wholesome, thank you for posting it!
posted by sukeban at 12:16 PM on February 15, 2022

This made my day, thank you!
posted by number9dream at 12:35 PM on February 15, 2022

When my daughter was in preschool I made the mistake of doing "too slow" to one of her classmates, who thought it was delightful. Then every time I picked her up her whole class would hold up their hand and then yell "too slow" and run off before I could try to give them a high five.

My other mistake at that time was lifting my daughter over my head. Sure enough, I had to lift every freaking kid in her class over my head, which was quite a workout. I basically lifted 200+ pounds of toddler. And some of those kids were pretty solid.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:03 PM on February 15, 2022 [11 favorites]

What a great piece of fluffy reportage.
posted by merriment at 1:18 PM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

When my daughter was in preschool I made the mistake of doing "too slow" to one of her classmates, who thought it was delightful. Then every time I picked her up her whole class would hold up their hand and then yell "too slow" and run off before I could try to give them a high five.

My 14yo just informed me the other day that he is still in touch with a bunch of his kindergarten classmates, and they all remember the day that I was there volunteering, and as they were lining up for lunch, one of the kids said to me, "Hey, [name of kid]'s mom, what's under there?"

And, even though I knew this ancient joke had been done to death in that classroom over the previous few days, I was distracted, and I said, "Under where?" And they all cracked up, and then after that they tried to get me every time they saw me, but I was too clever for them.

Ten years later, this is what those kids remember of me.
posted by Well I never at 2:45 PM on February 15, 2022 [12 favorites]

Simply adorkable. Thank you for sharing.
posted by jessamyn at 3:00 PM on February 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

That was a nice finish to my day.
posted by ShakeyJake at 3:04 PM on February 15, 2022

When doing the "too slow" gag at school, I recommend referring to "finger guns" as "thumb's up atchya!"
posted by straight at 4:03 PM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wish the Internet was exclusively stuff like this. Thanks for posting!
posted by invokeuse at 5:49 PM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Not only a cute story, but a really remarkable account of reporting/sleuthing to get all the way from those photos through several layers and to the correct answer.
posted by hippybear at 5:58 PM on February 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have a story that's not quite as wholesome but does involve a bizarre Wikipedia deep dive.

Around 2007ish, I was bored at work and decided to go on Wikipedia to see how the Magnificant Seven gymnastic team members were doing. When I got to Kerri Strug's page, it said in her personal section that she was dating Zack Vank, the minor league baseball player. Huh? Random. I went to Zack Vank's Wikipedia page, and it had random pop culture nuggets including that he was a direct descendent of Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, and that he actually had quite a following in the gay community, with adherents going to his minor league games holding up signs that said, "We Wank for Vank." I went into the edit history of the article and noticed that a lot of other random, unsubstantiated information about Zack had already been removed. You could also see though that the creators of the page were starting to smarten up and created some external links to turn the heat down, including a paywalled Sports Illustrated article. One of the links was for Zack's alleged high school in California. I shot a message over to the email address provided for Zack, and it turned out to be the brainchild of two precocious college guys with just as much free time as I apparently had. We still follow each other on social media.

I actually documented these investigations on my old, defunct blog:

Ye Olde Blog

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
posted by Gumshoe Grimshaw at 2:33 AM on February 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ten years later, this is what those kids remember of me.

I'd bet more people know me as [daughter's name]'s dad than know me by name, and I wear it with pride.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:56 PM on March 4, 2022