The young man accused of boring a woman who went viral for her utterly unimpressed expression has spoken out seven years on.
A nightclub photo of Lucia Gorman looking extremely bored while Patrick Ritchie spoke into her ear first went viral back in 2018, when they were both 18-year-old students.
Since then the meme has become a symbol for women fed up of mansplainers everywhere – but now both Lucia and Patrick have shared what they remember of that fateful night.
What they remember being the key, of course, as the picture was taken seven years ago and they were both drunk at the time.
The friends were on a night out at the Milk club night at Bourbon in Edinburgh, Scotland, when they ran into each other – and clearly Patrick had something to say to Lucia.
Lucia insisted the picture hadn’t been staged – and Patrick said he didn’t even know the photo had been taken until he woke up to see the pictures the next day.
Now a graduate commercial surveyor, Patrick was about to start a degree at Aberdeen University when the picture was taken.
He told MailOnline: ‘I didn’t know that the photo was being taken. I first became aware of it the day after it was out there. I don’t think people really recognised me.’
Since then, he’s completed a Master’s in Real Estate at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh – and he still runs into Lucia, an old school friend, from time to time.
‘I bump into Lucia from time of time. I was at school with her. We laugh about it,’ Patrick said.
After so many years of speculation, you might think the friends would want to put it to bed and reveal what Patrick was saying that left Lucia so utterly unimpressed.
But sadly, neither of them can remember what they were talking about.
‘I don’t know what I was saying to Lucia at the time,’ Patrick said.
‘We were out in the bar. We were in a big group and I must have spoken to her five, 10, 15 times that night.
‘I can’t really remember what I said so it must have been a good night.
‘I had a laugh about and it is what it is. It’s not really come up in the future. It’s just a bit mad that it kind of blew up.’
Lucia was also unable to remember exactly what Patrick was talking about – but she did remember how she was feeling at the time.
Pictured with her coat in hand, she remembered wanting to get home after having her ‘ear chewed off’ throughout the night.
Then a business student at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Lucia has since gone on to become an assistant brand manager at Premier Foods.
Despite trying and failing to take ownership of the photo, after the photographer sold the rights to the image to Vice, Lucia says she’s comforted because the picture ‘could be worse’ and the internet ‘moves on’.
After the picture went viral, Lucia spotted people taking pictures of her during lectures, maybe hoping to catch her pulling the iconic bored face.
But she says she struggles to recreate it – and suggests meeting up with her school friend Patrick could be the key.
‘I find it quite hard to do the like moody, grumpy, uninterested expressions, but maybe I should just get Patrick back in my ear again and we can try to recreate it,’ she said.
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