My algorithm was airtight before I was served a video of Greyson Hoelzel. It was a consistent churn of lesbian and bisexual memes, cat propaganda, comedians doing bits about their gynecologists or their own mothers. Then suddenly, a face appeared, the heavens opened, the angels sang. There was Hoelzel, monologuing at his phone about tax returns and getting drunk alone. In truth, he could have been talking about almost anything and I would have stuck around. He just has this charisma. Or maybe it's those glossy lips and that can't-be-tamed hair. That L-shaped jaw? I can't say. All I know is that I — in the parlance of my people — was sat.
And that brings me to the comments section. Perhaps even more bewitching than Hoelzel himself are the comments he gets on his videos, people debasing themselves left and right to drop the flirtiest, occasionally filthiest, one-liners. Commenters seem to flock from all over the web for a chance to objectify this young man, to gas him up, to ask for his hand in marriage. As one commenter put it, "This comment section is the equivalent of panties being thrown on the stage at a Prince concert!"
Initially — as a woman who, like many of us, has endured unwelcome catcalling on the street since before I even got my first period — I felt there was something almost righteous about the way these (mostly women) commenters had seized on an opportunity to serve it back.
Still, I couldn't shake the uncomfortable knowledge that there was a human on the receiving end, and I wanted to know how it all made him feel. I wasn't sure how willing he would be to talk to a reporter about his status as a budding internet sex symbol, but as I would soon find out, Hoelzel, 25, is a very good sport about a lot of things, especially fielding the hypersexual comments that pour into his notifications.
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