"It was almost 7 years ago now (not sure exactly) that I slowly started noticing this girl. I would see her every few weeks, when I was out and about, which is more often than usual to see a complete stranger. She wasn't my lunch waitress or my neighbor. I would see her at all sorts of places. Sometimes on my way to work. Sometimes at the shopping center. Sometimes at a party. And then once in the newspaper! "

"She wasn't somebody you would particularly notice either. No distinct facial features or unique characteristics. She was good looking, but she was also quite plain. Not particularly old or young. No particular nationality either. In fact, she seemed to be nationality-less. Part Asian, part Brazilian. I'm not sure. "

"But I would always recognize her, even though I'd never met. She wasn't famous or rich... because I once pointed her out to a few friends, and they had no idea. She seemed so familiar, yet so unknown. She didn't have family resemblance, or a famous doppelganger... but I saw her everywhere. "

"I couldn't shake it. Sometimes it was a few times a week. She was beautiful. She was always happy. And most importantly she was not exactly real. "

"Well. She was real. But she wasn't real like the people walking past her are real. It was just photos of her. I saw her in a magazine, then on a billboard, then on TV! She was in bus stop advertising. She was on Facebook feeds. She was on cereal packets! CEREAL PACKETS!"

"I asked people who she was, and they had no idea. Not a celebrity or a politician. Not a sports star or a super model. If I saw her while I was with friends, I would ask people, but they had never seen her before. The more I saw her, the more I noticed her. She was everywhere! Websites, product labels, newspapers, shop front windows, foreign adverts, it drove me crazy! "

"You know that feeling when you first learn a word you seem to notice it everywhere! Well, this is the part where you stop reading if you don't want to see this girl everywhere too. Because you will."

"She was a doctor, then a gymnast, then a lawyer, teacher, crash victim, jeweler, violinist!"

"She was an enigma. She was hiding in plain sight. Nobody could answer the question. Today she was Australian, tomorrow she would be French."

"I shouted at her bus-shelter advert "but who are you!?". Because it was 7 years ago I had no idea how I could find out who she was..."

"And believe it or not, after about a year of this I grew very familiar with her. I nodded at her when I saw her face on the cover of the latest GQ magazine. Perhaps I was the only one who saw her."

"I even saw her while overseas. I wondered that, if I see this girl everywhere, she must see herself everywhere too. Does she wonder if I notice her. And nobody else does?"

"Hope had sparked in me again, and I would give it one last ditch attempt. So I went to google and searched the first phrase that I imagine she would have typed into her supposed blog... "I am that Asian stock photo girl"... and finally, after about a million highway billboards, I met Ariane."

"She is a (Chinese/Canadian) model working in the stock photography industry for almost 10 years, and has hundreds of photos appearing in thousands of advertisements all around the world. But, here is the fascinating part... in a world where fame is highly prized, Ariane shuns it. She won’t divulge her last name or where she lives, and she has no plans to pursue conventional modeling gigs."

"She and her photographer partner produce new stock images monthly, adding to the hundreds of iterations of her likeness found online. It felt pretty great to wrap up that mystery, and know her by name when I saw her on the way to work. The most famous model you've never heard of."

So here's the story of an obsession and a road to finding he woman that drove this guy on a verge of madness.