How The 25-Year-Old Founder Of We’re Not Really Strangers Created A Global Movement From A Card Game And Instagram Feed

“How are you, really?”

It’s a question many of us are hearing (and asking) frequently these days. And it’s just one of the sentiments that drives Koreen Odiney, creator and CEO of We’re Not Really Strangers. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, but the truth is, it’s always mental health awareness day for Odiney and her team.

When Odiney launched the game We’re Not Really Strangers (also known as WNRS, pronounced ‘winners’) in November 2018, she was equipped with a laser-focused ‘why’: “To empower people to make meaningful connections.”

If you haven’t seen the card game, which is highly identifiable thanks to its signature red box and minimalist-yet-strategic design, then you’ve likely stumbled onto one of the Instagram account’s compelling posts. With a current reach of 1.7 million followers (and growing), the @werenotreallystrangers Instagram account’s images have long struck a chord with its followers, as evidenced by the amount of comments in each post. And with quotes like “One day at a time,” “Tell someone how much they mean to you, we all really need it right now” and “I’ve been better,” the account is resonating even more deeply during this climate of uncertainty.

While the Instagram posts tend to spark introspection, thoughts and all the feels (after all, its tagline is: “Warning: Feelings may arise”), the card game is proving to be a way for people to connect during this time of social distance. This is why Odiney released digital “Quarantine Edition” expansion packs featuring 20 brand new questions for the WNRS game in April, which is a free and downloadable PDF format to be used with the core game (or to be enjoyed on its own).

The game has even been played on Instagram Live during isolation by Hailey Bieber and Stassie, in addition to Penn Badgley (most recently of You) and Noah Centineo (of To All the Boys I've Loved Before), and received a shoutout from Dr. Phil. (Another notable high-profile moment for the game was a collaboration with Red Table Talk in 2019, which featured a release of its "Inner Circle" limited edition expansion pack).

Here is how the game works: the purpose driven card game features three carefully crafted levels of questions and wildcards, which allow players to deepen existing relationship and create new ones. (Level 1 is perception, Level 2 is connection, Level 3 is reflection.)

While coming together and cultivating connection while we’re socially distancing is a crucial need during our current new normal created by COVID-19, it’s also a need that Odiney felt was necessary in our hyper-connected world.

“It’s about reconnecting with ourselves and others — we can't necessarily go out and meet a bunch of new people right now, but we can strengthen those bonds more than ever right now, with the people in our lives.”

The prompts and mechanism of the WNRS game are all strategically designed for players to go deeper when it comes to asking questions and listening. While Odiney knew she had a greater purpose when it came to this concept and mission, it took some serendipitous encounters with strangers to lead to her breakthrough, as the creator of this viral movement.

While growing up in Los Angeles, Odiney was always passionate about photography, so much so that in high school she was placed on the yearbook committee. She also worked as a model on the side, and always brought her camera along to take pictures between gigs. With an innate eye for photojournalism, the camera became her gateway to approach strangers — which led to her first serendipitous encounter, sparking the idea for WNRS.

“I would go out and photograph my peers and strangers, and that was my sense of identity. I felt I could approach and talk to anyone, because I had a camera — I used to refer to it as my passport to people.” As it turns out, the lens through which Odiney saw human connection is what opened her eyes to her life’s purpose.

On one particular day while walking to her car from a modeling job, she spotted a man sitting, reading poetry — intrigued, Odiney felt compelled to approach him and photograph him. “I always asked people my three signature questions, at the time, when taking their photos — what is your name, your age, and what are you passionate about?”

The man replied to her three questions, and as she was walking away, he stopped her to say that she would write a book one day, and it would be called, We're Not Really Strangers.

“That's how the name originated. It was this random stranger I photographed who gave me this name. But it didn't happen quickly — from there it took me at least two more years of not knowing what this thing would be and not knowing what to do with it. And then there were a few more interactions with different strangers that helped me formulate the idea more.”

Odiney knew there was a spark there, so she latched onto it.

One thing was for sure: she knew she wanted to gamify the experience, in a way that hadn’t been done before.

“WNRS is not just a deck of questions — there are a lot of ‘question type’ card games out there. I wanted it to feel like a unique experience with levels and wild cards, a final card and a ‘dig deeper’ element,” Odiney explained. “I wanted to really make it an experience and a brand. Once the game came together and was finally ready to be released in 2018, I realized that I needed to have a platform to market it, and since I didn't have a big following, I had to get creative.”

That’s when Odiney got the idea for the Instagram account, now known for its surfaces that serve as backdrops for inspirational quotes, sayings and thoughts.

“I started creating this original artwork, writing the quotes, putting it out there, and the account grew.”

Grew is an understatement: In December of 2018, the WNRS Instagram account had around 20K followers, and today boasts a community of 1.7 million engaged people.

“I wanted to create an Instagram account to help me have a platform to showcase the game to a group of people that believe what I believe — a sense of community of people that would understand what the game is about intuitively, based on common beliefs,” Odiney shares.

Amazingly, the exponential growth of the WNRS Instagram account, which features a collection of quotes and text-based threads written by Odiney (as well as quotes she finds on Tumblr), is a testament to the collective sentiments of the brand. They are clearly resonating, as its viral growth is the result of shares, tags and other accounts reposting WNRS’s content, as opposed to a single influencer sharing the account.

“The growth happened more from people without giant followings sharing the posts with their friends and loved ones. And that's kind of what's inspiring about the Internet,” Odiney explains. “You don't necessarily need massive influencers to grow — you can truly do it if you have shareable content that people want to send to their friends.”

Although the We’re Not Really Strangers Instagram feed has found a place on social media for bringing people together and validating emotions, Odiney wants to make it clear that she never studied psychology and is not a mental health professional. She is, however, a student of human behavior, and is passionate about helping people feel less alone.

“I want you to come on the Instagram page and see something that's going to make you feel better afterwards. If you go on one of WNRS’s posts, know that it's going to be about something I'm currently going through. And hopefully you will feel less alone, because I'm being honest about it or it's a question that you can reflect on with yourself.”

After all, Odiney’s mantra is: “Find the lesson. Because I'm finding the lessons every day. And that's what I turn into art.”

While Odiney is still the one who writes all the games’ question decks and the social media captions (many of the threads are first tested out on the brand’s Twitter account), in addition to engaging with the WNRS community, she now has a team helping her — a long way from the days when her mom and friends would help her with shipping and other admin tasks. And with a recently launched introspective journal, and other branded merchandise and expansion packs on the horizon, Odiney remains grounded, grateful and humble.

“I say this a lot — take small beginnings seriously. Even for myself as I venture out into different lanes of what this could be, because it's still only the beginning, I'm trying to remind myself that it's okay if it starts small. The goal is to create value for someone and if they share your work with their friend, that's a huge honor. Those are the type of things that grow.”

The ripple effect that Odiney wants to create is that sense of connection, that reminder that the user is not alone.

“That's what gets me excited, when people are wanting to share it — that's the magic.”