Since the Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest at the end of October, in which an estimated 2,000 people showed up at a Manhattan park, including the namesake himself, several iterations of the contest have popped up all over the world.
Anthony Po, a YouTuber with 1.8 million subscribers on the platform, is the man behind the Chalamet contest. Po, who went viral earlier this year for eating a giant jar of Cheese Balls in front of a New York City crowd, anonymously put up flyers around the city advertising the Chalamet contest and didn’t reveal himself as the mastermind until the day of the event.
Since that look-alike contest, there have been others, not hosted by Po, for celebrities including Jeremy Allen White, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Paul Mescal. Soon there will be look-alike competitions for Zendaya twins and the two leads from “Challengers.”
“I think it’s great,” Po told HuffPost on Tuesday about the look-alike look-alike contests. “Ultimately, at the heart of what I’m trying to do is just make the internet fun again. I think the internet is absolutely horrible right now, and it has been for probably about three years, ever since right at the tail end of COVID.”
He equates the internet being “super negative” to people spending less time online after they were forced to spend hours there each day during pandemic lockdowns. He said creators started posting negative content to compete for more views.
He said he’s trying to contribute “positively” to the internet. Even though the look-alike contest happened offline, he said it spread online.
“We know [the events are] funny and interesting enough, and people want community events and fun things to talk about, so they’ll spread through the internet and then we’ll get a big crowd, and people are starting to figure that out,” he said. “Unfortunately, brands are starting to figure that out, so that’s a little bit less fun.”
Po said he couldn’t remember which look-alike contest was hosted by a brand. The Mescal look-alike contest featured a check with a Lidl logo on it, but according to The Guardian, the grocery store was not behind the event.
Stefan Jeremiah/Associated Press
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The Chalamet look-alike contest was an overall positive experience, except for the arrests of four people for being at an “unscheduled demonstration,” according to The New York Times. But Po said he’s paying all of the fees they might owe. Matt Mannix, a look-alike who was detained at the event, told Teen Vogue that he received four summons: two for failure to comply with directions from park staff, police officers or park signs; one for disorderly conduct; and one for trespassing. In Po’s YouTube video documenting the event, police told Po he had to leave Washington Square Park, so he led the “Timothée Chalamet Pilgrimage” to a “contingency plan skate park” nearby.
Even though the events have been mainly positive, people on social media are already bracing for some negativity at Wednesday’s Zendaya look-alike contest in Oakland, California, her hometown. Online and offline spectators have been relatively polite toward the men who have entered the contests, but women typically face crueler judgment online. Po, however, thinks people are “looking for something to be negative about.”
“I think if it happens, it’s a conversation to be had, but I think fearmongering about it beforehand is a prime example of people just take things too seriously,” he told HuffPost, and can’t just enjoy things. “I like to give the benefit of the doubt to people.”
“Despite [the Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest] being chaotic,” he added, “it was just good. I think people in real life aren’t going to do something horrible. I think maybe on the internet, people might pick it apart, but I don’t think that’s the case in real life.”