“I think with white culture in movies and TV shows being shoved down our throats since the start of TVs, it has made us just normally think the famous star is an attractive white guy when growing up,” Madison tells Teen Vogue. “Twitter has become obsessed with the tall, skinny, pale, curly-haired white guy recently and Timothée fit the stereotype perfectly, so I think he started it but then it just grew and expanded. I’m not sure how it got so obsessive but I guess that’s just the power of stan Twitter and the media.”
It’s unclear exactly when the term was technically created, but there’s evidence to show that it’s been used over the past couple of years, also called “stan Twitter’s white boy of the month” before the more generalized one. It didn’t pop up on Urban Dictionary until December 2018, and Know Your Meme, another reliable source for indexing all things internet, doesn’t even have an entry at this point in time. Twitter’s white boy of the month appears to have caught more momentum during early 2018; Madison noted she first heard about it sometime during summer 2018. Google search data also shows that just the term “white boy of the month” had high search interest in January 2019 and bubbles up every month.
But the lineage of Twitter’s white boy of the month has history even before the likes of Timothée Chalamet. As Twitter user @KayHaunani points out, “Due to their privilege and social capital, white men have had mostly unfettered access to entertainment.” White men in Hollywood have been thirsted after since the days of Marlon Brando and James Dean, and even before that. However, Twitter’s white boy of the month also has the essential internet component to it; they are selected in part because of the interest that snowballs on a social network like Twitter.
Twitter’s white boy of the month has deep roots in Twilight actor Robert Pattinson, who was the pinnacle of romance and attraction during the heyday of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire fantasy series. This also fulfills the digital aspect of the role on a rudimental level — the first Twilight film came out in 2008, just as social networks such as Facebook and Twitter began to become popular digital destinations where people could share everything from their innermost thoughts to innocuous ramblings about guys they thought were cute.
A number of other white boys also walked so the white boys of today could run on Twitter. There’s Josh Hutcherson, who portrayed dough-baking and great-drama-for-television-creating Peeta Mellark alongside Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games trilogy. Similarly, Logan Lerman takes a place in pop culture history for playing the titular Percy Jackson and bringing Charlie to life in the YA book-turned-film Perks of Being a Wallflower.
That eventually brings us to today’s era of Timothées, Pete Davidsons, Ross Lynchs, and more white men who find themselves in the spotlight, fawned over by drones of fans. However, as the trend has continued, the confines of the honor have also expanded to go beyond race and gender. Earlier this year, Diana Silvers, a relative newcomer to the world of acting, was dubbed a white boy of the month by fans for her approachable-cool girl role in Booksmart.
“I’m the white boy of the month on Twitter, which, honestly is such an honor. I still don’t really know what that means, but I’m living for it if I’m up there with Timothée Chalamet I will take it,” she said during an interview at BUILD. “I want to put that on my tombstone, this one month was Twitter’s white boy of the month, May 2019, May-June, I guess.”
Then there’s Michael B. Jordan, who was dubbed as the February 2018 Twitter white boy of the month by Madison’s chart. While challenged by many other people on the internet, the pick was also supported. Already an actor that had a number of numerous high-profile credits, he was propelled to new levels of fame thanks to Black Panther. As Erik Killmonger, he was arguably Marvel’s finest villain. The thirst for him was so real that a teen even snapped her retainer in half. But Michael is an exception to the typical white dude rule.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/twitter-white-boy-of-the-month-meme
2019-08-26 13:51:51Z
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