Man sent 'hotter' lookalike to high school reunion — and his crush's reaction is the ultimate plot twist

High school reunions are a chance to catch up with your friends and reminisce about the good old days. However, Stephen Fasteau didn’t have the best time in high school, so he didn’t have much to reminisce about. It’s been ten years since graduation, and he hasn’t seen any of his former classmates since. With his high school reunion approaching, Fasteau didn’t want to go back as he was—he wanted to rewrite how people remembered him. So, he turned to Vice's Oobah Butler, creator of the app Oobah, which sends lookalikes to stand in for people, to send a "hotter, more successful lookalike" to the reunion.

With Fasteau's blessing, Oobah took the plan several steps further. They picked a lookalike online, gave him a full makeover, and flew him to Columbia, Maryland, to attend the 10-year high school reunion pretending to be Fasteau. Fasteau had his reasons. As a teenager, he was quiet, awkward, and mostly focused on music. A standout moment he still cringes about involved performing for hundreds of people with a shirt that read "Chicks Dig Me" unknowingly with a visible wedgie. Now, he felt out of place in life compared to his classmates. Many were settled, successful, and thriving. He was still figuring things out and preparing to take over his dad’s dental practice. 

At first, the experiment seemed to work. The fake Fasteau greeted old classmates, dropped stories about being a musician in Los Angeles, even recited a line in Japanese from a made-up tour in Kyoto. A few classmates seemed to buy it. Some were impressed. One woman even flirted with him. But it didn’t last. When his unexpected high school crush, Katie, walked in, she immediately recognized that the guy in the room with them was not Stephen Fasteau. Soon, other people started to catch on.

A close friend from the jazz band years immediately said, "That’s not Stephen Fasteau." Another pointed out that the lookalike couldn’t even name Fasteau's instrument. The moment unraveled quickly, and soon, the room understood the truth. Then, the real Stephen walked in. What he found changed everything he believed about his high school experience. He had spent years assuming he had been invisible to his classmates, that no one cared, that he wouldn’t be remembered. But he got proven wrong. People lit up when they saw him. His crush, Katie, said, "I love Stephen." She said how he always had seventeen bags on his shoulders but still got where he needed to go.

A former classmate who had worked at his father’s dental office shared how deeply the experience had affected her. She explained how it made her consider staying on that career path. Fasteau admitted the whole experience left him overwhelmed. He said, "It’s like a mixed bag for me. I haven’t seen these people in ten years. I didn’t think I was still relevant in their thoughts." He continued, "It’s really nice to think that people still have those feelings toward me, or those thoughts about me, and they have these memories that are really fresh to them. I guess I undervalued those friendships that I made in high school, and that’s something not to really take for granted."