Imagine scrolling through social media and stumbling upon your own face—except it’s not you. That’s what happened to 16-year-old Nadya Elvira, and it wasn’t a weird case of catfishing or a glitch in the app. It was the surreal first step in unraveling a family secret that would change her life.In 2021, VICE sat down with Nadya and Nabila Az Zahra, two Indonesian teenagers who’d discovered via TikTok that they were actually long-lost twins. Even after they reunited, there was still another twist that nobody saw coming.
“I’m the youngest child in my family, so I used to feel really lonely,” said Elvira, a student at the time. “All my siblings are at least 20 years older than me. So I turned to social media to make friends my age.”Back then, she created vlogs on YouTube: her morning routine, pranks, footage from a Shawn Mendes tour. For the most part, she stayed off the then-growing TikTok. That is, until her friend tagged her in an eerie video.
“It was in slow motion, and the girl was wearing a school uniform,” Elvira said. “My friend says that she looks exactly like me. At first, I was annoyed to be compared to a TikToker because, at that point, I wasn’t on TikTok yet. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was about to discover my identical twin sister.”Nabila Az Zahra was “pretty famous” on TikTok. Like her twin—whom she was completely unaware of at the time—she posted videos to feel less alone.“I was bullied in school for years,” Zahra told VICE. “But thanks to TikTok, I could transform my frustrations into creating content. I felt safer being on social media than making friends in real life.”
“When I saw her, I was so shocked, I started crying.” –Nabila Az Zahra
When Elvira first reached out to her, she ignored it and didn’t think much of the situation.“A lot of people have used my photos and tried to impersonate me before,” Zahra said.However, once Elvira shared her story on Twitter, which went viral, Zahra considered the possibility more deeply. They did, in fact, look eerily similar.
The two finally hopped on a video call together.“When I saw her, I was so shocked, I started crying,” Zahra said. “Never in my life did I think I would have a twin.”Afterward, Elvira confronted her mom about her suspected twin. When she saw the panic on her mother’s face, the truth dawned on her. Elvira’s mom said she adopted her “straight out of the hospital incubator” after their biological parents gave them up. The twist? There weren’t just two of them—they were triplets.
“But because I already had so many children, I only took you,” her mom confessed to her.“She had no idea what happened to the other two babies,” Elvira said. While Elvira said that she was upset her mother kept this information from her, discovering the truth ultimately allowed her to get closer to her family—including her newfound sister. The two expressed that they shared a spiritual connection that helped them both feel less alone.“She understands all my struggles,” Elvira said of Zahra. “She is my support system.”
Elvira lived in Depok while Zahra lived in Makassar, about 1,000 miles away. Once they met in person, the girls experienced a boost in their social media following as well, with many fans requesting the two create content together. However, with the distance between them and the fact they were both still students, it wasn’t exactly easy for them to deliver consistent twin content. “We’re still figuring out our future,” Zahra said at the time of the VICE documentary. “It’s not that we don’t want to live together, but the challenge is that I can’t leave my adoptive parents who raised me.”“Even though we’re apart, we have learned to live in each other’s hearts,” Zahra added.Elvira voiced gratitude for social media, noting that if it weren’t for TikTok, she never would’ve connected with her sister. “I would’ve been living my old boring life, alone, with no friends my age,” she said. “It would have been very lonely.” They still haven’t found their third sister, but in the film they said they had faith it would happen in time.“It’s gonna be a blast when we’re all finally reunited,” they said.
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