KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Over the holidays, when Harrison Bach was looking through some of his friends relationship photos online of them posing happily together in the woods, something clicked in him. He wanted to take similar photos, he said, with his ex-girlfriend Jackie whom he hadn’t seen in a year.
“When I told her about it, she was like totally on board instantly because her and I were always really quirky with our humor,” said Bach during an interview at Western Michigan University. “It was like ‘Oh hey this is just funny and a little ironic and people will get a laugh out of it.'”
And their friends did, he said. He posted the pictures on Facebook for only his friends to see. But then one of his friends put the photos on Twitter last Tuesday and they went viral. It was retweeted thousands of times within a few hours.
“Later that same day I’m getting calls from BuzzFeed and Cosmopolitan,” said the 22-year-old who’s studying Biology at Western. “I was like ‘this is getting weird’ but it was really funny at the same time.”
A few people on social media found it to be just as humorous as they did, he said. However others felt differently, many calling it weird.
“Online there’s like little battles going on with people,” said Bach. “People are trolling each other. I just don’t get it. And it’s like all I wanted to do was take kind of weird photos and it got totally out of line. You know not weird, just artsy photos.”
Since the photos have gone viral, it's forced he and Jackie — whom he dated for three years — to connect more. He said it’s hard not to when their photos are plastered everywhere.
“We recognized when we were taking the photos like ‘Oh my gosh, we’re actually ex-relationship partners,’” said Bach. “And like that moment hit us very briefly but it really has come back.”
Bach said the main reason they broke up was because of distance. Jackie, 20, moved out to Los Angeles and he decided to stay closer to home in Michigan. But they’re on good terms and have no regrets about taking the pictures.
“At the end of the day, this is the most ironic thing that could’ve happened is that they got this big,” said Bach. "People thought this is super serious. So that was hysterical, surprising and hysertical."
