10 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020TikTokers with massive followings showing
a sexual side with each other,” he said.
Gay and bi-curious male followers are
welcome, too. “If watching my videos
makes you happy and stuff, that’s cool,” he
added.
As devotees of TikTok’s young male stars
know, Mr. Robinson’s hotel seduction video
is veering toward becoming a modern-day
cliché. The youth-oriented social media
platform is rife with videos showing osten-
sibly heterosexual young men spooning in
cuddle-puddle formation, cruising each
other on the street while walking with their
girlfriends, sharing a bed, going in for a kiss,
admiring each other’s chiseled physiques
and engaging in countless other homoerotic
situations served up for humor and, ulti-
mately, views.
Feigning gay as a form of clickbait is not
limited to small-fry TikTok creators trying
to grow their audience. Just look at the
hard-partying Sway Boys, who made na-
tional headlines this summer for throwing
raucous get-togethers at their 7,800-square-
foot Bel Air estate in violation of Los Ange-
les’s coronavirus guidelines.
Scrolling through the TikTok feeds of the
group’s physically buff members can feel as
if you’re witnessing what would happen if
the boys of Tiger Beat spent an uninhibited
summer in Fire Island Pines. There is a bar-
rage of sweaty half-naked workouts, penis
jokes, playful kisses and lollipop sharing.
Josh Richards, 18, one of the group’s
breakout stars, has posted videos of himself
dropping his towel in front of his “boy-
friends” Jaden Hossler and Bryce Hall; pre-
tending to lock lips with another buddy, An-
thony Reeves; and giving his roommate,
Griffin Johnson, a peck on the forehead for
the amusement of his 22 million followers.
It certainly hasn’t hurt his brand. In May,
Mr. Richards announced he was leaving the
Sway Boys and joining one of TikTok’s rival
apps, Triller, as its chief strategy officer. He
also hosts two new popular podcasts —
“The Rundown” with Noah Beck and
“BFFs” with Dave Portnoy, the founder of
Barstool Sports — and is the first recording
artist signed to TalentX Records, a label
formed by Warner Records and TalentX En-
tertainment, a social media agency.
“These boys feel like a sign of the times,”
said Mel Ottenberg, the creative director of
Interview magazine, which featured some
of the Sway Boys in their underwear for its
September issue. “There doesn’t seem to be
any fear about, ‘If I’m too close to my friend
in this picture, are people going to think I
am gay?’ They’re too hot and young to be
bothered with any of that.”
Pushing the Envelope
As recently as a decade ago, an intimate
touch between two young men might have
spelled social suicide. But for Gen Z, who
grew up in a time when same-sex marriage
was never illegal, being called “gay” is not
the insult it once was.
Young men on TikTok feel free to push the
envelope of homosocial behavior “because
they’ve emerged in an era of declining cul-
tural homophobia, even if they don’t recog-
nize it as such,” said Eric Anderson, a pro-
fessor of masculinity studies at the Univer-
sity of Winchester in England.
By embracing a “softer” side of manli-
ness, they are rebelling against what Mr.
Anderson called “the anti-gay, anti-femi-
nine model attributed to the youth cultures
of previous generations.”
Mark McCormack, a sociologist at the
University of Roehampton in London who
studies the sexual behavior of young men,
thinks that declining homophobia is only
one aspect. He believes that many of these
TikTok influencers are not having fun at the
expense of queer identity. Rather, they are
parodying the notion that “someone would
even be uncomfortable with them toying
with the idea of being gay at all.”
In other words, pretending to be gay is a
form of adolescent rebellion and nonconfor-
mity, a way for these young straight men to
broadcast how their generation is different
from their parents’, or even millennials be-
fore them.
Foster Van Lear, a 16-year-old high school
student from Atlanta with 500,000 follow-
ers, said videos showing him kissing a guy
on the cheek or confessing feelings for his
“bro” made him look cool and dialed-in.
“In the new generation everyone is fluid
and so men have become less hesitant
about physical stuff or showing emotions,”
he said. “It would seem ridiculous if you
were not OK with it.”
As a matter of fact, his father has called
his videos “really weird” and “gay.” His
mother was also taken aback by his public
displays of affection with male friends, but
now appreciates the pressure that high
school boys are under to stand out.
“If you are just straight-up straight now,
it’s not very interesting to these kids,” saidhis mother, Virginia Van Lear, 50, a general
contractor. “If you are straight, you want to
throw something out there that makes peo-
ple go, ‘But, he is, right?’ It’s more individ-
ual and captures your attention.”
Parents are not the only ones perplexed;
these videos confound some older gay men,
too.
Ms. Van Lear said that one of her gay
male friends came across a TikTok video in
which her son joked about a man crush. Her
friend told her: “You know, if Foster ever
wants to talk to me if he’s gay... ” She had a
good laugh. “People of my generation don’t
get these boys are straight,” she said. “It’s a
whole new world out there.”Feverish Comments
But there’s no confusion among the mostly
teenage fans who can’t seem to get enough
of these gay-for-views videos.
Whenever Mr. Robinson posts videos of
himself getting physical with another male
friend, he is deluged with feverish com-ments like “Am I the only one who thought
that was hot”; “I dropped my phone”;
“OMG, like I can’t stop watching.”
Ercan Boyraz, the head of influencer
management at Yoke Network, a social me-
dia marketing agency in London, said that
the vast majority of the commenters are fe-
male. And rather than feeling threatened or
confused by guys who are being playful
with other guys, they find it sexy.
“Straight guys have always been at-
tracted to girls being flirtatious with each
other,” said Mr. Boyraz, who has worked
with Mr. Robinson. “Girls are just taking the
same idea and switching it around.”
Call it equal opportunity objectification.
Meanwhile, straight male fans feel like
they are in on the joke. And while they may
not find these videos titillating, they want to
emulate the kind of carefree male bonding
that these TikTok videos portray.
“Showing emotions with another guy, es-
pecially when expressed as a joke, brings a
smile to someone’s face or makes them
laugh,” said Mr. Van Lear, who took his cue
from hugely popular TikTok creators, like
the guys at the Sway House. Plus, he added,
it “increases the chances of higher audience
engagement.”
There is even a term to describe straight
men who go beyond bromance and display
nonsexual signs of physical affection:
“homiesexual.” A search of “#homiesexual”
pulls up more than 40 million results on Tik-
Tok. There are also memes, YouTube compi-
lations, and sweatshirts with sayings like:
“It’s not gay. It’s homiesexual.”Queerbaiting or Clickbait?
Still, videos of straight men jumping into
one another’s laps or admiring each other’s
rear ends for the sake of TikTok views can
feel exploitative, especially to gay viewers.
Colton Haynes, 32, an openly gay actor
from “Teen Wolf,” took to TikTok in March to
call out the homiesexual trend. “To all the
straight guys out there who keep posting
those, ‘Is kissing the bros gay’ videos, and
laughing, and making a joke of it: being gay
isn’t a joke,” he said. “What is a joke is that
you think you would have any followers or
any likes without us.”
“So stop being homophobic,” he added
with a vulgarity.
But some gay fans see it as progress.
Steven Dam, 40, a social media forecaster
for Art and Commerce, a New York talent
agency, said he initially assumed that these
videos were homophobic. But the more his
TikTok feed was populated with young men
calling each other “beautiful,” he said, the
more he started to recognize that there was
“a new kind of definition of heterosexuality
for younger men.”
The popularity of these touchy-feely vid-
eos, he said, is “less about gayness” and
more of a “paradigm shift of some sort for
an evolving form of masculinity that is no
longer ashamed to show affection.”
Even so, some of them can’t stop watch-
ing, regardless of whether they deem these
videos homophobic or progressive.
For the past year, Nick Toteda, a 20-year-
old gay YouTube personality from Canada,
has been posting videos on his channel, It’s
Just Nick, reacting to what he called “bro-
mance TikToks,” usually with a mix of sar-
castic humor and bewilderment.
In one clip, two teenage boys are seated
next to each other in class, when one drops a
small stuffed animal on the floor. As they
both reach down to pick it up, they lock eyes
and move in for a kiss. Mr. Toteda likes what
he sees.
“When I was in high school four years
ago, maybe it was uncool to be gay, but may-
be now being cool is gay,” Mr. Toteda says in
the video. “Even straight boys are pretend-
ing to be gay to act cool. Just like when I was
pretending to be straight to act cool, they’re
doing the opposite now.”
“You know what,” he adds with a laugh,
“it helps that they are attractive.”Gay? No. On TikTok, They’re ‘Homiesexual.’
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Above from left, Josh Richards,
Blake Gray and Noah Beck
reviewing footage. Far left,
Connor Robinson, with Elijah
Elliot in an image from a TikTok
video. Far right, Foster Van
Lear with a friend in a video.‘People of my
generation don’t
get these boys
are straight.’
JAKE MICHAELS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESoh what incredible weather
what incredible weather is this
would you please like to talk about weather
no not thatweather, thanks, just this
the diners are sheathed now in sweaters
they’re thinking of booking some flights
the waiter is pulling her mask up
the cook started coughing last night
a breeze chills a girl on the playground
her first day of school halfway done
she can’t recognize half of her classmates
they never do Zoom one-on-one
your mother would please like to see you
her father’s been gone for six months
like you he’s now trapped between seasons
not ready to see what comes next
with embers of summer still burning
the year will soon come to a head
in an indirect national tally
of who wishes whom to be dead
then
you’ll converge for a holiday dinner
at a house that you found in between
you’ll FaceTime the rest of the family
you last saw in 2019
you’ll ask how each other is doing
they’ll tell you truth after all
the last time they felt truly happy
was betwixt two waves in the fall
wind whips the paint-stuck smudged window
through which autumn and A.C. shake hands
this year they’ll stop at the threshold
to touch fingers through double-paned glass
now
the sidewalks are full of masked people
collecting the light while they can
their bags overflowing with normal
what’s gathered outside will come in
John Herrman
A Spooky Poem
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY MATALON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.