A few weeks ago I decided to make a major change in my life. I was tired of being told “No” and I was tired of someone I loved telling me I couldn’t be who I was. It was that day that I spoke out against my oppressor. I’ve had a 128GB iPhone XR since late 2018, pushing it to the max for years thanks to an endless and relentless collection of screenshotted male celebrities.
The man who ended up pushing my poor phone over the edge was the internet’s latest queer white guy, Logan Lerman. Previous contenders for the title have included Dylan O’Brien, Noah Centineo, and basically any man between the ages of 19 and 32 who can be found on the landing page of your favorite streaming service. Lerman, however, is different. He’s an anomaly in a collective sea of milquetoast men with patchy facial hair.
He is currently starring in the second season of Amazon Hunters, plays a Nazi hunter (hot!). I hear he’s fantastic at it, and good for him. That’s another reason why he’s prime internet boyfriend material. Something about her, and especially her, gets her a spot on the camera roll.
I know what you might be thinking. “Oh, talented and precocious entertainment critic, how many photos could you possibly have on your phone?” How’s 33,626 for you? And I guarantee that in the time it takes me to finish tapping my fingers across this keyboard, when your eyeballs land on these words, that number will have reached its next hundred.
I don’t mean this the way you think either. Get your brains out of the gutter. I’m being completely honest when I say that I will often save photos of beautiful stars because I enjoy gliding through them on the train when I’m off duty. Or, I’ll flip through them like an old magazine on a rainy day, sending them to my friends to admire as if we were all reading them. Tiger Beat: while asleep. I kept a copy of Timothee Chalamet’s British book Vogue: cover on my coffee table for the past two months, just because it gives me the chance to watch episodes of high school-level butterflies. Americans to see her curls staring back at me.
Some people collect geodes or go bird watching. I also like beautiful things. What prevents me from enjoying nature’s gifts with my phone screen lighting? I have come to terms with my unbreakable obsession with famous men. All my boys stay on my phone, something my real boyfriend (not a figment of my imagination) has teased me about for five years every time I complain about having to delete 10 identical photos of Colin Farrell whenever I want. save a picture of my Italian family.
But now and again these findings need to be shared with the public. And when? video Logan Lerman dancing to Kelis’ “Milkshake” popped up on my Instagram feed, had to pay attention. It was too good to be in the camera. But first it had to be to bring to the camera roll. With that, I backed up my friend’s photos to the cloud and grabbed the 512GB iPhone 13 Pro that I’d been putting off installing for days. Like Ben Franklin and his little electric volt or Gwyneth Paltrow and her vaginal suppositories, this discovery was too good to keep to myself.
The video may only be eight seconds long, but it’s more than enough to earn Lerman respect as the most prolific internet fan of our time. Something about a guy with floppy hair who wears the regalia of a comfortable time – a sweatshirt, sweatpants and socks – while dancing with Kelis just seems critical. Not to mention Jon & Vinny’s bag sitting on the table behind him. I’ve never been to a favorite casual Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, but there’s a primal, appealing quality about a man who wants to patronize a place that sells banana bread with warm, salted butter for $6.25.
Others seemed to echo my own thoughts. Many People My notifications popped up with variations of “He’s such a friend” in response. Others appreciated that Lerman didn’t seem to care about posting a silly video of himself dancing. As one man, so briefly “He was waiting to slip Dylan O’Brien’s crown.”
Except there’s a difference between Lerman and O’Brien. O’Brien, an MTV hit alum Teenage wolfIn the past few years, it’s gotten even bigger, starring as the love interest in Taylor Swift’s short film Everything’s Fine and in last summer’s Hulu dark comedy Third Degree. Not good. For that film, O’Brien whitewashed his vibe to capture the smug, sleazy charms of TikTok scammers, sending shockwaves through the internet’s collective libido. Yes, sorry for how disgusting that sentence sounds. But I was there, and I saw cities turn into ruins in seconds.
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Summit Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection
Logan Lerman, however, is different. He is no everywhere, and that’s what makes him an ideal candidate for cultural courtship. Lerman has the mystique of a true movie star, combined with the charm reserved for the world’s philanderers and the beauty of an architect in a supermarket romance. This is a man who harkens back to 2012, when Tumblr made us believe that the coolest thing you could be was someone who dared to wear a peacock.
Lerman is the rare, actually mysterious famous white guy. He doesn’t walk around with the paparazzi in skin-tight sweatshirts or pose for photoshoots in leather pants. He is never shirtless. (You can’t swing an 8-foot iPhone charger without hitting a topless photo of Noah Centineo. That’s not how he finds his way onto our phones. When Lerman scored the lead role in the movie. Percy Jackson franchise in 2010, he was smart. She introduced the YA series and became an iconic role The Perks of Being a Wallflowerand the rest was history, preserved in gif form on the internet like fossils in amber.
Here’s the rare actor who isn’t so obviously seeking attention and stardom that it becomes exhausting for us all to witness. His roles are rare. Lerman acts when he wants to and posts on social media from time to time. So when she blessed us all with a video of her dancing to promote season two Huntersit felt like a gift.
It was proof that in addition to being endlessly charismatic, he’s also deeply self-aware. This man’s two-step to the Milkshake was certainly a sign that it’s okay to be a little thirsty. This is who we are. It’s good to have Logan Lerman, and all the others we bounce between month after month, dancing in our hearts. And, in our camera rolls.
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