2024 look-alike contests

In late 2024, multiple news outlets reported a large rise in the prevalence of look-alike competitions across the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, attributed to the initial popularity of a Timothée Chalamet look-alike competition in October that year. Celebrities at the center of these competitions included Paul Mescal, Jeremy Allen White, Zendaya and Jack Schlossberg. While look-alike competitions have existed since the early 1900s at the latest, the competitions, often advertised using flyers and held in town squares, and mostly held in the wake of the 2024 United States presidential election, sparked various responses and analysis as to their sudden rise in popularity.

Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest of 2024

Timothée Chalamet

The initial event, named the Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest of 2024, was held in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, New York by YouTuber Anthony Po on October 27, 2024, the same day as a Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden prior to the 2024 United States presidential election. Po, a 23-year-old YouTuber with over 1.8 million followers, had previously gained online attention for eating cheese balls as "Cheeseball Man" in Union Square.

To advertise the event, Po posted flyers around New York which featured QR codes that led to an anonymous invite on website Partiful, causing speculation on social media and over 2,000 RSVPs on this invite. On the campaigning platform Cajole, a page was created which offered to pay $5,000 to charity if Chalamet himself attended and competed in the competition; this reached its goal on October 23. On October 26, a day before the Chalamet contest, Po hosted a contest for look-alikes of the YouTuber Kai Cenat, which 20 to 50 people attended.

Several hundred people attended the event itself, an unexpectedly large number for its organizers. Several women attended the event with signs and t-shirts that declared that they were single or included their phone numbers. Prior to the contest itself beginning, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) gave a dispersal order due to a lack of an event permit. Po arrived riding a penny-farthing bicycle and dressed as Charlie Chaplin; he led part of the group to the nearby Mercer Playground, by New York University, to begin the event. Back at Washington Square Park, the real Timothée Chalamet made a brief appearance, posing for pictures with the various look-alikes for less than a minute before leaving. The NYPD detained four people, including one look-alike contestant for disorderly conduct; he was placed in handcuffs and put in a patrol car.

Contestants included a corgi in a wig nicknamed "Timothée Corglamet", as well as multiple look-alikes dressed as Chalamet's characters from Wonka and Dune, and one contestant as Chalamet's Bob Dylan from the upcoming A Complete Unknown. The contestants were reduced to four finalists, all of which were asked about their proficiency in French, plans to improve the world and romantic intentions with Kylie Jenner. 21-year-old Miles Mitchell won the $50 prize for dressing as Chalamet's Willy Wonka; another contestant claimed that Mitchell won because he was giving out chocolate, though Po credited Mitchell's "charisma". Mitchell was also given a 5-foot-tall comically large trophy worth $250.

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation fined Po $500 after the event. He has stated he does not have the intention to host any other look-alike contests as "people would know it was [him]." Chalamet's team offered to pay the fine, and relayed a message from the actor: "They basically [said] like, 'We thought it was awesome. Thanks so much, It was all good and fun' ". Po declined their offer, as the money was already covered by Partiful. Production costs for the event ascended to $4,000. The contest was later parodied on Saturday Night Live.

Following competitions

Numerous similar competitions took place the following November. Many of these competitions were similarly held in public squares and advertised with flyers. On November 21, Rolling Stone reported that "dozens more contests are scheduled between now and the end of the year."

The Dublin Paul Mescal contest was the first notable event to follow the initial Chalamet contest

• Two Paul Mescal contests took place; in Smithfield Square, Dublin on November 7, and in Hoxton, London on November 21.
  • The Dublin contest was initially advertised by a TikTok account under the name @paulmescallookalike. Of 7 competitors, the contest was won by 25-year-old Jack Wall O’Reilly. He was dubbed "Earbuds Paul" as he had copied Mescal's signature use of earphones, and was awarded a choice of "20 euro or three pints". Mescal congratulated O'Reilly after his win.
  • The London contest, held in the Howl at the Moon pub in Hoxton, which offered free mullet haircuts and tattoos. Competitors were asked to saying a line in an Irish accent, 'split the G' on a pint of Guinness and measure the length of their shorts. Prizes for the winner, Connor Ryan, were a £20 Lidl voucher and the opportunity to turn on the pub's Christmas lights.
• A Harry Styles contest was organized in London's Soho Square on November 9 by journalist Katrina Mirpuri. It featured 12 competitors and a £50 prize, and attracted around 500 spectators. 22-year-old musician Oscar Journeaux won and was given his prize by Eyal Booker.
• A Dev Patel contest was hosted on November 10 in San Francisco's Dolores Park. Its organizers recognized that the competitions thus far had only centered around white celebrities and sought to represent a South Asian celebrity. Competitors danced Patel's dance from Slumdog Millionaire. It was won by Jaipreet Hundal; he received $50 and a statue from Patel's film Monkey Man. Internet activity around this event was comparatively sparse.

The Jeremy Allen White contest in Chicago featured over 50 contestants

• Two Jeremy Allen White contests took place on November 17; one in Chicago and one in Washington Square Park in New York.
  • The Chicago contest featured over 50 competitors, many of which copied White's appearance in The Bear. Hundreds of spectators attended. 37-year-old mental health therapist Ben Shabad won, taking home $50 and a pack of cigarettes.
  • The New York contest, in front of the Washington Square Arch, gathered at least 7 competitors and a relatively light crowd. Its organizer failed to appear, so a crowd member improvised the votes and found a cigarette from the audience for the winner, 28-year-old Andrew Hadad.
• A Zayn Malik contest in Brooklyn on the same day was won by 29-year-old Shiv Patel; online commentators said the finalists did not look like Malik, though contestants received thousands of new followers on social media.
• A Zendaya contest at Wilma Chan Park in Oakland, California, on November 20, featured prizes of $40, shampoo and conditioner. It was the first of these viral competitions to feature a woman as its subject.
• A Jacob Elordi contest on November 23 on the lawn of the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia was attended by around 24 spectators and initially no contestants, leaving organizers to search the park for possible contestants. A man named Maxie, who had been found on a bench, won the $50 prize.
• A Tommy Shelby contest also took place outside the Bull Ring in Birmingham city centre on November 23. Shelby is a fictional character played by Cillian Murphy in the TV show Peaky Blinders. 66-year-old Derek Brennan was named the winner through applause and judges' opinions.
• A Jungkook contest was held on 24 November in Ping Tom Park in Chicago. Jungkook is a member of South Korean boy band BTS. YouTuber Andrew Alexander won and received a bottle of soju and $20.
• A Glen Powell contest took place on November 24 at Auditorium Shores park in Powell's hometown of Austin, Texas. Powell appeared in a video message for the event and announced that a family member of the winner would receive a cameo appearance in his next movie.
• A Shrek contest was held on the weekend of November 23 in Los Angeles' Echo Park by content creator Ka5sh, who had previously established the travelling Shrek Rave event. Contestants painted themselves with green face paint and wore tunics and ogre ears.
• A Heath Ledger contest on the same weekend was held in Camperdown Park in Sydney, which attracted a relatively large crowd compared to the Melbourne event. Contestants were judged on their impersonations of Ledger's lines, as well as their singing abilities, and they were additionally judged in "look moody holding film camera", "joker beatboxing", and "whose beer is the coldest" rounds. An unusual $51 prize was given, instead of the usual $50, to winner Jude Bailey.

The Jack Schlossberg contest in Washington, D.C. was unusual as a contest held for a political figure

• A Jack Schlossberg contest gathered at Meridian Hill Park in Washington D.C. on the afternoon of November 24; Schlossberg is the only grandson of former president John F. Kennedy. A total of 1,200 individuals had indicated their intention to attend the event, resulting in approximately 200 spectators. The initial 14 contestants were whittled down to 7 and then to 4 by acclamation, with the competitors who received the most applause moving to the next round, largely answering trivia questions about Schlossberg. 25-year-old Daniel Bonomo won the contest, receiving $50 in cash, a $100 one-year membership to Zipcar, and a $100 gift card for Salazar Restaurant. Co-organizer Ruchika Sharma said she hoped the event brought "a little levity in D.C. right now," following the election of Donald Trump.
• A Tom Holland contest was held on Boston Common on November 25. While Holland had been seen in Boston in the previous few days, he did not appear. 26-year-old Nick Anderson won, receiving $50 and a bag of British candy.

Responses and analysis

Anthony Po responded to the contests following his own, stating to Rolling Stone that "The election is behind us now, but everything really sucked, so to have something slightly interesting and fun, wholesome, and full of whimsy, was comforting. Every in-person thing costs money or it's too serious. Community is also something that you can find online but it's so different. People just want to be together in person and do something dumb. And this is a very low-barrier-to-entry way to do that."

British sociologist and cultural critic Ellis Cashmore commented to CNN that the rise in this type of contest "capture[d] something that we believe in the 21st century... That biology isn't destiny,” and that "humanity isn't fixed.” He also noted that the contests were a way to build community and "provide[d] us with an opportunity to relate and form new relationships with people we might hitherto not know and would never cross paths with". On social media, users came to a consensus that the contests were positive due to their ability to bring people out of their houses and into "third spaces" to form community. This was echoed by New York University digital culture expert Zari Taylor, who stated that "we really don't have a lot of third spaces left," that people craved "a shared purpose", also noting that there was a "balance between it being an in-person event and also knowing you'll see it online later." Alice Leppert, assistant professor of media and communications at Ursinus College, described the contests as "low-stakes environments where you can just go and you can observe, if you want to just observe, or you can be more involved." She additionally pointed out the "grassroots origins" of the contests which contrasts with the traditional organization of this type of event by publicity agents, magazines or film studios.

The events also received some commentary in relation to the presidential election on 6 November, which occurred after the Chalamet contest but before the other contests. Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Atlantic wrote that reason for the contests could be that they were "small reassurance that cities, many of which shifted dramatically rightward in the recent presidential election, are still the places that we want to believe they are—the closest approximation of America's utopian experiment, where people of all different origins and experiences live together in relative peace and harmony and, importantly, good fun." Playwright Jeremy O. Harris wrote on Twitter that the contests were "Great Depression era coded", and historian and folklorist Matthew Algeo concurred that they were a result of people "looking for new and interesting forms of entertainment," as a result of "a psychological event" for which he says there is "a hunger for diversion." Raven Smith of Vogue included the contests, as well as recent films Dune, Mescal's Gladiator II, and Wicked, in his assessment that "culturally, everything is a remake", and that "in some way, we all want the world to look like the world we already know."

Other commentators wrote of the contests' role in publicity, social media and dating culture, with Amanda Hess of The New York Times writng that "When photographic evidence of the events is posted online, the game transforms into an Erotic Photo Hunt, with onlookers zooming in on their favorite contestants and racing to identify them on social media."

Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor specializing in the creator economy and digital culture at Cornell University, noted the relevance of look-alike apps and TikTok filters that find celebrity matches to these events. She also described the events' focus on men rather than women in relation to "the histories of surveillance and scrutiny of women, celebrities and their bodies and physique", stating that the events were "upending that cultural norm in a really interesting way".

See also

• International Imitation Hemingway Competition