If you've been on the Internet at all in the past, oh, ten years, you'll have seen the ad for Classmates.com that features an improbable matrimonial matchup of a bookish young woman and a dreamy young man. "They Got Married??!!!" screams the headline above their images, and this is supposed to entice us to go register for the site. (Does Classmates.com still charge money in this post-Facebook era?)
Because of the campaign's ubiquity, I find it reassuring that people have gotten hungry for the backstory behind these two archetypical images. It turns out a lot of people are hungry for a happily-ever-after story, especially when these particular pictures have been seen over a billion times.
The truth? As it turns out, the two are not married. In fact, Bryce Lane and L.A. Smith weren't even high school contemporaries -- they just both did stints at Classmates.com as employees, and that's how their faces got into the ad.
That news story from last year should be particularly reassuring to Justin, who'd blogged about the phenomenon at length.
This does shock me but I have always wondered if they where real people.