Woman Tracked Down by Viral Campaign Deletes Social Media and Hides

In case any of you have been waiting with bated breath for the conclusion of New Zealander Reese McKee’s attempt to turn his life into a Tom Hanks movie, well, I’ve got some bad news for you. Life does not imitate You’ve Got Mail.

Earlier this month, McKee began a campaign imploring the internet to help him track down a mystery woman with whom he spent one magical night in Hong Kong. The post went viral, with many speculating that McKee was having difficulty finding the woman because the woman did not want to be found. If you really want to see somebody again, you don’t just tell them your first name (Katie) and the general metro area in which you live (DC) and then peace out. So McKee’s “romantic” tale set off polite-brush-off alarms in a lot of women.

And it looks like the skeptics may have been right! The thousands of readers who were charmed by McKee’s lovelorn plea managed to track “Katie” down…

…and her immediate response was to disappear again.

Via the Daily Mail:

He has now revealed that online sleuths did, indeed, find her. And they mobbed her with so many messages that she deleted every single one of her social media accounts within hours.

‘The Facebook thing was getting out of hand. They were starting to infringe on other people. They tracked down every Katie in the DC area, which is a bit much,’ Mr McKee, from Wellington, told the New Zealand Herald.

‘We found the girl. She is from DC, she’s not there at the moment, but she’s sorta taken all her public profiles offline for a little bit.’

Mr McKee says he hasn’t reached out to her yet – he’s waiting for the online furor to die down.

Now, it’s totally plausible that Katie shut down her social media presence because of the THOUSANDS OF WEIRDOS BOTHERING HER and not because she hates Reese McKee. But, that said, she doesn’t know Reese McKee, and this is a horribly traumatic ordeal to inflict on someone who was just trying to live a normal life in DC while being named Katie.

To McKee’s credit, he’s turned down major media requests (so it’s not as simple as some cynical attention-grab) and seems fairly sheepish about the whole shit-show:

However, he admitted he was “a little naive” after the campaign went viral and “Katie” was found by hordes of aspiring romantics, resulting in her pulling down all her social media profiles.

“It turned into a massive ‘let’s stalk every Katie in the DC area’. I was trying to get people to stop that, but with 2000 plus people messaging … it got a bit out of hand,” he said.

…”The thing bloody exploded, God, the article went everywhere” Mr McKee said.

Honestly, I feel kind of bad for the guy. But I feel way worse for Katie. Let this be a lesson to everyone everywhere: REAL LIFE IS NOT A ROM-COM.