How I Became A Celebrity In China By Losing My Cellphone

this is a story about how I followed my stolen iPhone across the world became a celebrity in China and found a friend for life okay so this story begins long long ago in 2014 in the East Village a lot of time when we finish work we get drinks and so we get to that bar and we're having drinks we're getting a little drunk and I put my phone down go on talking to my friends look back and my phone's gone so I do what anyone else does in that situation I freak the out make everyone get up empty their pockets look in their coats my phone it had to be somewhere I have my friend call my phone and it goes straight to voicemail that phone was gone forever so then the next day I go out buy a new cell phone and think okay that's it the phone is done let's move on now but then things got really strange and kind of creepy so I'm sitting on my couch a few months later and I see all of these pictures that I didn't take and then there were like 30 selfies of this man posing very seriously with an orange tree right away the first thought is my phone got hacked most normal people in this position would probably do something about their phone but for some reason I didn't but then one day I was talking to this one friend and she said has your phone been stolen lately and I said yeah a couple months ago and she goes you know most stolen iPhones end up in China and so I was like my phone must have been in China so what happened was I never killed that iPhone and my iCloud was still logged into that phone so basically it was sending me all of the pictures that were being taken on that phone to my new phone the Apple guy is like okay well do you want to kill that phone and I'm like I guess it's been kind of fun of having these pictures coming all the time but it's also kind of creepy knowing that my phone is in China and it's like logged into this guy's account and I'm getting all of his pictures so I kill it and I ended up writing a story for BuzzFeed called who is this man and wires picture showing up on my phone I go to bed that night thinking okay now the story is definitely over that's when totally hits the fan I wake up the next morning and I go on my computer and the first thing I'm going to tweet and I look at my mentions and it's from a bunch of little eggs if you use Twitter you know that it means that someone who's just signed up for an account and it's hundreds of tweets of people telling me hey Matt we're trying to help you find an orange guy you guys are long-lost brothers you guys need to meet and then they start sending me screenshots I was going viral on Weibo which is basically Chinese Twitter it's like the top 10 trending topics and it's all in Chinese like 2 through 10 and then number 1 is my name Mets to puro so I go into work and I end up joining Weibo and instantly I get hundreds of thousands of followers and they're telling me okay we're gonna find this guy you guys are meant to be this is the greatest love story that we've ever heard of all time and I'm like and sure enough they find this guy who at this time they had given the nickname brother or brother once joins Chinese Twitter we start talking on Chinese Twitter it's like a public social media romance or sending each other pictures and videos every day and then he invites me to go to China two more days so I'm telling my boss is like you guys don't even understand what's happening there's this whole other world out there Chinese social media and I'm getting thousands of comments on pictures of me holding oranges that I'm posting on the social media and I'm telling my bosses you don't understand I need to go to China this is like a very big meme there and it this I have to go so that night I get a message and it says okay Matt to China is the subject line and it's like okay this is happening I'm actually gonna go to China and I'm gonna meet this guy brother one if you've ever misplaced your cell phone you know how it often turns up in the last place you look little over a year ago senior editor and BuzzFeed named Matt Stara left his iPhone at a bar in New York City that last place turned out to be 79 hundred miles away in China I'm a ducati through Ahmad fathanah this man so I'm on my way to China it takes me 20 hours to get there I'm on my connecting flight to Majo and I'm sitting in my seat and this teenager comes up to me and she starts freaking out and she's like oh my god I can't believe it are you mad this is so crazy I can't believe the fate I meant to meet you on this plane and I'm like this is never happened to me before I can't believe that this girl recognises Who I am and it was like my first touch with fame until I got off the plane [Music] and so we go down the escalator and that's when I see a huge crowd of people I feel like Britney Spears there paparazzi everywhere and they were there for me so I get my bag and I go through and then there he is brother orange and all of these cameras just swarm us and brother orange has this huge bouquet of flowers and the first thing he goes he goes why China yeah thank you thank you so and then the news people started screaming at me I don't speak Chinese I know one thing so I go Nihao Nihao me how just over and over because I don't know what to do this is never happening before and I should have learned some Chinese but I didn't have time it all happened so quickly brother orange pulls out my cell phone the one that got stolen and he hands it to me and so I go what happened to this phone how did you get it and so obviously he didn't come to the US and steal it he got it from his cousin who owns a used cell phone shop a few hours away from him still recognize it right it is so weird to see it was such a long time ago we leave the airport and we're being hounded by the paparazzi they're yelling at us they're chasing us and we go up to this SUV that's so crazy that is so nice and that this is your Chinese name you know they go so deep wait thank O'Neal or something see my pictures on but he deleted them later so we're driving an hour to brother Wanda's hometown and I don't know if you've ever been photographed or taken video by 30 people while you're eating but that's what happened to me next first of all I'm not very good at using chopsticks so it's broadcast in to all of China and just how awful I am at this is the most embarrassing thing we check in the hotel I go up to my room and I'm just like what is going on today is literally the first day of all of this we're going for a ceremony but I don't really know what this ceremony means lassen he was having that firecrackers and banging drums which I'm like all right it sounds cool [Music] so the paparazzi is all there and we eat and we plant an orange tree to signify our Chinese and American friendship so this begins this week of absolute insanity of us being followed by the paparazzi constantly we're taking mud baths together and let me tell you there's nothing more awkward than a bunch of people you're wearing a little hair net and you're with some guy that you've never met before and he's pouring it all over you while everyone's taking pictures it's the most awkward thing that I've ever done we have our own press conference people are like I want to sing for you will you dance for me we're going out to eat people are putting liquor bottles in front of me taking pictures of it as if I'm endorsing it people were coming up to me handing me their babies asking me to take pictures with their babies let me just remind you that this is all because I lost my cell phone that any of this is happening everywhere we go there's just people asking they take our pictures are people asking us for autographs and we're one of these T fields were writing bicycles together we're eating and eating and eating I've never eaten so much in my life the day is just completely packed full of just craziness until the last day the last day is when kind of everything changed brother orange had had enough of the media circus and he really just wanted to show me his restaurant his home his parents home and just the things that he really cares about in majo and so that day he made everyone go away and so we went to his childhood home we climbed his childhood tree and we held a ceremony for his ancestors one of the things that I learned along this way is that the Chinese have this like very strong belief in fate and destiny my phone could have ended up with a billion people in China but without it being him and without me having this platform of buzzfeed nothing would have ever happened and my phone would have just been another oh that sucks your phone got stolen story everyone says to me well how can you be friends with someone if you don't speak the same language and the first thing I say to them is what is friendship friendship is just a series of shared experiences and me and brother orange had the craziest experience ever you can't even make it up it's like Cinderella on speed except the glass slipper is an iPhone and it's a fairytale it's literally a love story and then the trip is over so we go to the airport and it's just like in the movies and he walks me right up to the gate and we have our arms around each other and we say goodbye and he's just standing there as I go through security waving bye bye bye bye bye he turned the corner he's still there just waving goodbye hmm that's crazy I've lived in this world for the past week and uh I don't want I don't want to leave this world it's such a I don't I I want this world to go on and so then I think the story is over from there but as I've learned throughout this whole experience nothing is ever over woman since I see I lose you so then brother orange comes to the u.s. please welcome Matt's Tepera all the way from China brother orange Mian bro go on Ellen we take a road trip to Las Vegas we meet Britney Spears he flies to New York I basically do all the things that he did for me in China but to him so he meets my family he meets everyone I work with we throw a big party here at work so then it's time for bro to leave but this time unlike the other times before I know not to assume that this is the end of the story because this is a story that just won't ever die and it hasn't died my life has not been the same ever since I talked to bro almost every day I legitimately have a whole other family in China if you if you said at the beginning of this that I would be crying at the end Oh at the end of this I would think that you were insane [Music] it's so surreal this whole thing has been it's really if it sounds almost cliche and for like I'm forcing this but I really feel like I understand how how the Chinese believe in fate and destiny after this I really feel like how could this not be fate [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: BuzzFeedVideo

Views: 3,923,522

Keywords: Zuh7, accidentally famous, brother orange, buzzfeed, buzzfeed article, buzzfeed video, celebrity, china, crazy story, famous, famous in another country, famous in china, funny, iphone, lost cellphone, matt stopera, stolen iphone, story time, the ellen show, this is that story, unbelievable, wild story, writer

Id: PcgAU5hmzOQ

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 27 2018