Why is everyone obsessed with the lookalike contest trend?

It all started with a hundred flyers featuring a photo of Timothée Chalamet pasted on walls across New York City. And by the afternoon of October 27, more than two thousand people had gathered at Washington Square Park to visit the Timothée Chalamet lookalike competition, with many of them even flying in from other states. Many contestants, resembling characters like Willy Wonka and Paul Atreides (Dune), competed while onlookers supported their friends and decided the winner, who would take home a trophy and a cash prize of fifty dollars. But the star of the show was the Dune actor himself, who crashed his own lookalike contest and lost it to twenty-one-year-old Miles Mitchell.

This was not the first time New Yorkers had gathered in droves to witness a whimsical event like this contest. In fact, the 1.8 million subscribers that host, Anthony Po had amassed on his YouTube channel, came from pranks like these—once he was the famed “Cheeseball Man”, who had over a thousand people cheer him on as he ate a big jar full of Cheeseballs at the same Square.

But this time was different. After four arrests and thrice the number of views on his Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest video, this has been his most successful prank yet. Even before the show was held, memes about the competition flooded social media. A picture of the invitation is now a popular meme template, with fans editing their favourite stars to make faux invitations. If all it takes to meet their favourite actor—they joked—is a free-to-enter lookalike competition, why not try to recreate it and see what happens?

But the joke became real and Po, unknowingly, started a wave of lookalike competitions around the world. In San Francisco, a copycat contest for lookalikes of Dev Patel attracted hundreds of South Asian men, while in London, Harry Styles and Zayn Malik contests were announced one after the other. Paul Mescal impersonators in Dublin also joined the line, clad in the Gladiator actor’s short shorts. And now, people are speculating who the next lookalike competition will be. 

The Paul Mescal lookalike contest is sadly an indictment of every Irish lad I've met who claims that Paul Mescal looks like every lad in Ireland pic.twitter.com/9x11yM3XYQ

The lookalike competitions that followed the one in New York are fan-organised ventures that seemingly materialised out of thin air. With more actors stepping away from the ‘conventionally attractive’ mould for men, the virality of the trend has felt inevitable. These contests, looking for impersonators of an unconventionally handsome actor, emerged around six months after the internet was obsessed with the ‘rat boyfriend'—a term for an attractive man that looks like a rodent, as opposed to the conventionally attractive Henry Cavill or Brad Pitt. Chalamet himself was at the forefront of the murine comparisons, along with Challengers leads Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.
Meanwhile, in the beauty world, a recent trend has people trying to figure out who their celebrity lookalike is. The concept is simple: doing your make-up like your celebrity doppelgangers can help you find a style and technique that truly flatters you. Even Po admitted in a behind-the-scenes video that the idea behind the lookalike contest came from him being called a “less-hot Timothée Chalamet” all his life.

But beauty theories, memes, and unconventional looks aside, these contests eventually make for a wholesome fan event. And in an era of elaborately thought-out PR gimmicks and ridiculously expensive official fan conventions and meets-and-greets, these contests give fans a more genuine reason to come together and gush over their favourite stars.

As for YouTuber Anthony Po, he is busy organising another lookalike contest, for Kai Cenat this time.

Lead image credits: Getty Images

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