It’s no secret that social media has an obsession with celebrities — log on to TikTok these days and you’re bound to come across an edit of an actor, musician or popular content creator. These edits can range in content, purpose and style, but generally speaking, they are short videos (less than 30 seconds) that mash together clips with music in a creative and entertaining fashion. Staff writer Rebecca Smith covered how these videos are used to reflect on and enjoy media franchises in fandom; however, there is a huge subsection within fandoms that is focused on celebrities themselves, rather than the characters they play.
In recent months, we can look to HBO’s “The Last of Us” star Pedro Pascal as a major example. There exist hundreds of edits of him across social media platforms, to the point that there an entire fan community surrounding him as a person has formed. Though these edits can be a way to appreciate his acting or humor, a large portion of them are focused on his looks and charisma. Clips of him in interviews or shows are matched with what could be called “sexy” music, and their reach is unmatched. One particular video, dubbed “the Pedro Pascal edit” by fans in the comment section, has a whopping 4.2 million likes on TikTok. The video in question features an introductory clip of Pascal’s character in “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” flirting with a woman, followed by clips of him looking dashing in a cowboy outfit. A peek into the comments shows off the drastic effect this video has had on the masses; one comment with more than 3,000 likes reads, “This is my lockscreen now. Byebye photos of my fiancé. This is it. That One Pedro Pascal Edit™ has taken over my life.” The “Pedro Pascal edit” phenomenon has become explosive since this video, even causing Saturday Night Live to acknowledge the trend in a sketch when Pascal hosted the show.
Though much of this obsession is in light-hearted fun (there is no shame in acknowledging the beauty of the Pedro Pascal edit), there are a growing amount of fans and commenters that speak explicitly about the actor (or explicitly about themselves in relation to him). Comments like “save a horse ride a cowboy” are rampant across edits of him, as well as a wide array of users calling him “daddy.”
There is what feels like a growing sentiment of “as long as it’s funny or relatable, it’s okay to say” regarding sexualizing comments about celebrities. It’s important to first note that TikTok frequently cycles through popularizing phrases or comments as “memes”; viral comments will be repurposed across the app as in-jokes. For example, the phrase “bro dropped the hardest (insert name) edit and thought we wouldn’t notice” is often used as a copypasta to compliment good edits. Comments of a more sexual nature have been victim to this treatment now, too; for example, on a less explicit level, even the phrase, “I need him” is a meme on its own and can be found commented across a whole manner of celebrity edits.
But as these memes have developed, the comments get less and less tame. Examples include “it’s meowing” (in reference to female genitalia), “I know it’s grippy” (also in reference to female genitalia but commented about women) and “I whipped it out so fast” (in reference to male genitalia). These may vary slightly, but all come with the same core message of explicit sexual desire. One can find comments like these across all kinds of posts, even outside of edits explicitly meant to be found as attractive. Even just a video of a woman talking can be flooded with comments about fantasizing about her body.
As previously mentioned, Pascal is not the only celebrity receiving this treatment; search any celebrity on platforms such as TikTok and you’re bound to find people making edits and vulgar comments about them. This trendy, memeified language is enabling viewers to overstep boundaries; they do not know these people, yet they feel empowered to look and speak at them sexually without their consent.
Online anonymity likely plays a huge role in this phenomenon — it can feel good to comment on something that goes viral, and speaking freely through a screen rather than in person can allow users to justify more extreme statements. Meme culture is self-replicating and spreads like wildfire, allowing these comments to be justified as long as they fall under the “meme.” These celebrity fanbases have, in many ways, created entire communities based on sexual attraction and thus feel justified in discussing said attraction with others. Yet it’s inhumane — these celebrities are real people, too, and you do not know them. Just because they are romantic in a role, or show a bit of skin in an outfit, does not warrant explicit comments.
The invasive nature of these comments can best be seen when brought out into the real public. Recently, in a red carpet interview, Pascal was asked by a reporter to read “thirst tweets” about himself. The reporter handed him a phone filled with dirty messages about himself from people he’s never met, expecting him to find the comments funny or flattering. After reading in silence for a moment, the reporter asks for his favorite, to which he politely replies, “No,” declining to read them aloud. Though he handled the situation with grace, it’s an extremely awkward position to put a person in, in essence forcing complacency in their own sexualization.
Though “thirst tweets” and adjacent concepts like this have existed for ages, such as real-person fanfiction, it is easily accessible now within TikTok comment sections. Not only is it easily accessible, but it’s trendy — Buzzfeed has an entire “celebrities reading thirst tweets” series similar to the example above. It’s unnerving, particularly on TikTok, as about one-third of users on the app are aged 10-19. Kids now could grow up desensitized to this type of language, accepting it as an unproblematic aspect of celebrity culture. They may further perpetuate this behavior at too young an age, as we can now commonly see young boys commenting things like “I know it’s bubblegum pink” on women’s videos. We have gotten far too comfortable allowing sexualized comments to run loose on social media — it’s not okay, and we need to think before we post. What we do online affects others, even if they, as a celebrity, feel distant from us.
Daily Arts Writer Katelyn Sliwinski can be reached at ksliwi@umich.edu.