“You have chance meetings all the time with people. You see someone in the elevator, you meet a bartender that you really like or something like that. It’s a thing where you meet cool people all the time, you cross paths once, and then you go your separate ways,” Eric Barefoot, the senior who created the group, said.
The page is a place where students who had a moment of chemistry with another person yet never got to speak can find the other person and make the connection happen, according to the Tar Heel Missed Connections Facebook page.
Barefoot created the group on Feb. 24 with friends Turker Bulut and Dave Dwight while in the basement of the Union waiting out the tornado warning. After less than a week, the group has 154 members and four posts about missed connections.
“I think it is a stage for people to explore whatever kind of interaction people have, fictional or nonfictional,” Barefoot said.
Senior Anurag Angara said the page allows you to connect with other people. He posted on the page about the loss he felt when the Hummus Cafe closed down.
“They say that it’s better to have loved and lost. So I felt that and realized how much I have lost, but I don’t think I will be full until I have loved again, so maybe someone will see the page and be inspired to open a new restaurant. It won’t be Hummus Cafe, but maybe it will satisfy my desires in some of the same ways,” Angara said.
Barefoot said so far, most of the posts have been satirical. He said he would love it to become a real phenomenon and have people actually post missed connections on it.
Michelle Gavel, a senior geology major, said she posted about her experience with the Pit Preacher to be funny, not because she wanted to have a connection with him.
