Man Behind Timothe Chalamet Look-Alike Contest Is Happy It's Being Copied

LOADINGERROR LOADINGSince 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.

Advertisement 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.Advertisement “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...