On February 5, 2018, Timothée Chalamet emerged from a two-month Twitter hiatus to announce, “big day :)”. He’d been less quiet on Instagram, where he wished Kid Cudi and his grandmother happy birthdays on either side of a photo of his own shoe. But on Twitter, Chalamet was celebrating a more significant achievement. Two weeks prior, he became the youngest Academy Award Best Actor nominee since 19-year-old Mickey Rooney received that same honor in 1939. The Oscars luncheon — the annual celebration for that year’s “class” of nominees — took place on February 5, and Chalamet can be seen in the group photo in a green suit flashing a closed-mouth smile next to The Square (and later Triangle of Sadness) nominee Ruben Östlund.
An Oscar nomination is life changing for anyone, but for Chalamet, it was especially so in terms of his social media strategy. To that point, he’d managed to toe a line between half-embarrassing hypebeast and half-earnest goober, a pre-pandemic online persona he’s seemingly abandoned but never deleted. He’s become one of if not the most famous actor in his age group — yet there is something obviously uncelebrity about his early social media existence, which remains, like a Jurassic-era mosquito in amber, partially preserved.
This Boy’s Life Online
In the years prior to and immediately following his swell of popularity in 2017 — the double whammy of Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name launching him into superstardom — Chalamet “vagueposted” in only the way a fake-deep guy from your college political science class can get away with. He shared a listicle about breakfast sandwiches, divulged Oscars insights, inexplicably posted the Joker, and seemingly appreciated a photo of Matthew McConaughey meditating. His vagueposts, when categorizable, tended to arrive in the following forms:
1. Behind-the-scenes photos from his films.
These are blurry or overlit, taken with so much enthusiasm as to eschew what makes a good photo. The unprofessional quality — especially in the context of his film geek peers — suggests that what Chalamet cares about is only what goes on the screen (big, not small). What are memories if not haphazard?
2. Gratitude posts.
He was happy to be anywhere: the Oscars, a film set, his parents’ kitchen table.
The Retreat
Chalamet has always been a vagueposter, but he never spammed. Timmy did not go on rants, and he rarely replied to people in the comments (and only positively when he did). While his posting was consistent, it was never overwhelming. Since his first Oscar nomination, however, his posts on both Twitter and Instagram have diminished in both size and frequency. Multiple-word vagueposts have become one-word Tweets. Instagram posts have disappeared.
Still, what’s left feels like him. From his SNL mirror selfie to the editorial fashion spreads to meeting Hideo Kojima, Chalamet’s posts — captioned or not — share a similar enthusiasm for life, only the life in question is that much more celebrity than it used to be. There’s less shitposting, more pose-posting.
He’s like the mysterious guy at your school or the coworker who doesn’t talk much; he wants you to feel happy and surprised he even noticed you were standing there. Chalamet has always allowed a lack of words to speak volumes, which is to say: A whole subsection of his fandom has created a Chalamet that’s hardly there.
Though maybe there is some subtext. A caption like “WONKA TOKYO” might read as contractually obligated, what with the lavender suit and model-level pout in frame. But then there’s that Luca Guadagnino avatar to the right, all arched eyebrows with a finger to the temple. Chalamet wants us to know he’s in on the joke, that he knows it’s crazy he’s this famous.
The Following
The fandom doing the most to perpetuate Chalamet’s hot-guy-in-third-period image is Club Chalamet, an account run by a woman named Simone, a self-described “GenX LA based super fan.” Club Chalamet (b. 2018) updates multiple times a day with new photos of the actor as well as the tamest possible speculative commentary. “I’m going to choose to believe that Timmy is wearing a man skort,” the account wrote on a photo of Chalamet with Luca Guadagnino this past summer. “This looks like the cover story of a 90s teen magazine telling you how to get Timmy Hair™️,” she observed of a shoot in 2021.
Beyond Club Chalamet, Timmy’s fans are typically adoring; they leave comments on two-and-a-half year old posts that read: “I been watching you and thinking about you since 2019 I love you Timothee Chalamet ❤️😘”. As his Wonka press tour has kicked into gear, comments have taken on a Dahlian bluntness: “WILLY WONKA WONKA WILLY WONKA CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE MAN WILLY WONKA CHOCOLATE.”
The Backlash
Just as the Chalamet fandom has elevated his celebrity, they have also babygirled him. Consider the fact that we can’t go four months without seeing old videos of Chalamet rapping in high school, a skill he’s doubled down on in both of his SNL appearances. Chalamet has also tried, of course, to move beyond the high school performances. He gets involved. He makes statements. But gestures quickly collapse into an ethos: He’s pro-voting, pro-BLM. So when he was spotted hooking up in a hot tub in 2020, it was seen as a flagrant breach of sociopolitical trust.
His fans have turned on him multiple times before and after, mostly when he is caught making out. “I had one thing going for me and it was Timmy boy was going to fall in love with me when my parents gave me up for adoption to him and now what?” wrote one account about his relationship with Lily-Rose Depp in 2019.
Earlier this year, Club Chalamet broke big over photos of Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the Renaissance tour. “If you’re feeling distressed by the video, it’s ok. But please take care of yourself. Step away from social media for a couple of days,” she wrote.
Boyhood, Not Interrupted
Chalamet has spoken at least once about the toxic nature of social media while promoting Bones and All in 2022: “To be young now, and to be young whenever — I can only speak for my generation — is to be intensely judged. I can’t imagine what it is to grow up with the onslaught of social media,” he added, before explaining what a relief it was to play a character in a movie who was “wrestling with an internal dilemma absent the ability to go on Reddit, or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok, and figure out where they fit in.”
He’d have to speak a little louder if he wanted fans to connect his post-Oscars retreat with his desire to wrestle with life unplugged. Or, like the mysterious hot guy at school, he could just keep it to himself. Either way, this once-and-future Oscar nominee’s old posts stay up, his youthful exuberance made artifact.
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