We caught up with the Edinburgh Milk meme girl three years on

People still stop her in the street asking about the meme

3 years ago | UPDATED 3 years ago

Most memes have a short lifespan, some dying mere days after its creation, and it’s rare one that makes it more than a few months. But Lucia Gorman, University of Strathclyde student, has been seeing her face on the internet for three years now.

A photo taken of an oblivious Lucia at the Bourbon club in Edinburgh started making the rounds in 2018.

In the picture, Lucia stares ahead with a bored expression while a boy shouts something in her ear.

It was perfect meme material, and soon it was all over Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Reddit with captions such as: “Am no a weirdo ah actual play for Motherwell”.

A second club photo of her, this time eating Doritos and talking to a disinterested looking guy, was released in 2019 and had a brief surge as a follow-up meme.

We caught up with Lucia virtually to check in on how being a meme has impacted her over the last few years.

@lucia_gorman

How does it feel to still be all over the internet?

It’s still bizarre when I see it come up on my timelines. Half of the time it comes up now in football memes and I don’t understand any of them! But yeah, definitely odd seeing my face still when it was about three years ago now.

How did the second photo of you get out?

I believe it was just another club photo which I genuinely had no idea was taken! Think someone at the club must’ve got a hold of it because I think it was online before the photos were released and had been tweeted when I first saw it.

What was going on in that photo?

I used to work at the bar run by the club. That was my manager in the second photo. Pretty sure I was just drunk and being a pain, annoying them in their office, so they bribed me with some Doritos to leave them alone; then that’ll be me waffling on some nonsense about it.

How do your family and friends feel about it?

They probably think it’s just as weird as I do. Obviously was a wee while ago now, so think we’ve all just sort of got used to it – but it is still odd having it pop up now and again, and was definitely very weird for us all at the time to see my fat face over social media.

@lucia_gorman

Do you ever get stopped in the street because of that photo?

I actually have! Well, it happened more so when clubs were open as people were drunk. But I was in London recently and a group actually asked if it was me. Really bloody weird concept to me that that still happens as I don’t even think it looks like me.

Do you ever feel that this might impact you in the future?

I hope not! It’s definitely been used as a conversation starter from some people but wouldn’t say it’s my preferred topic of conversation.

What about applying for jobs?

I’ve always said the photo could be a lot worse, so really shouldn’t portray me in any bad light jobs-wise (fingers crossed) and it’s something I’ve been able to learn from in some respects anyways! Nothing that can be changed about it now and so far, jobs have all been fine – I assume it’ll be something to die out very soon anyways as it’s definitely outstayed it’s welcome online.