As an impressionable young teen, I did not frequent Tumblr. I made an account twice, did not know how to work it, and gave up. I stuck with Tumblr Lite—Instagram. Because of this, I was not aware of just how prevalent the Tumblr sexyman phenomenon was. I learned this phrase either by someone mentioning The Onceler or through someone telling me that googling “Internet Sex Symbol” showed Reigen Arataka from Mob Psycho 100 as the first result. This phrase, though I had never heard it before, made SO much sense. I saw the basics of who Tumblr has been obsessed with over the years, and it has filled me with such indescribable emotions—mostly bad. So, I thought I’d share the history and my thoughts on certain Tumblr sexymen and, in the process, making other people suffer along with me.
I did some bare bones, minimal research for this since I felt I knew a good deal of sexymen. All I really wanted to know was, where did this start? Upon learning from the Fanlore Wiki site’s post on Tumblr Sexymen and googling for myself who this pioneer sexyman was, my hand launched to cover my gaping mouth and I had to mentally check out for a moment. I have seen very minimal Portal 2 playthrough, but from what I know, you should not want to have sex with Wheatley, a spherical robot with no body. There’s nothing human about him except his voice. Wheatley would not reach the same fame as the sexymen that would come later, but he was still given the original sexyman treatment. He was given a universally accepted humanized form so that Tumblr users could feel okay about wanting to fuck a robot—a skinny white man with blonde hair and glasses. My thoughts on Wheatley himself? None, he seems cool, I guess. My thoughts on him being a sexyman? I hate it. I hate that this trend started with a spherical robot with a British accent. The rage I feel is so palpable. I cannot believe someone played Portal 2, looked at and listened to this robot, and went “Ah yes. I’d do unspeakable things to him”. I don’t want to write this damn article anymore.
A similar treatment was given to Bill Cipher, the main antagonist of Gravity Falls. Bill Cipher is a triangle with arms, legs, a singular eye, and a little black top hat matching his little black bowtie. By similar treatment to Wheatley, I mean that Bill Cipher’s voice and personality made him a suitable target for desperate teens everywhere. Bill Cipher was also given a socially accepted human form—one that suited his bastard personality pretty well, but did not make him weird enough, in my opinion. Another weird skinny man to represent a nonhuman character generated by the horny masses. Bill Cipher as a character is great. I really loved him as an antagonist and I really enjoyed Alex Hirsch’s voice acting. Just a fun yet threatening villain. Not many complaints there. People simping over Bill Cipher enrages me like nothing else. He. Is. A. Triangle. Having an intriguing personality does not make someone attractive. Having an arrogant yet funny personality does not make someone attractive. Sure, perhaps these factors can make someone more attractive. That does not work if said person is not a person, but a triangle. Sometimes, I’ll get videos on my Tik Tok for you page of people making lists of questionable people they find attractive. Sometimes, Bill Cipher will be on those lists. Whenever this happens, I have to stop myself from going genuinely apeshit.
The most iconic Tumblr sexymen of all Tumblr sexymen: The Onceler. Oh my god did the Onceler take Tumblr by its neck and wring it until it died horribly. I have never seen such a trend. YouTuber Sarah Z made a genuinely fascinating video on the history of the Onceler fandom, which truly opened my eyes to how vast and strange this trend was. To shorten it for the sake of this article, Onceler ask blogs became popular and numerous. At some point in this horrible Onceler timeline, people in the fanbase began shipping certain Onceler ask blogs together. Thus began Onecest. Fans of OncelerxOnceler began showing up all across Tumblr, making bystanders to the whole phenomenon never want to even look at The Lorax ever again. The Onceler himself is pretty swag and cool, I suppose. I don’t have many strong feelings on The Lorax as a movie. It kinda just exists. If anything, I’m glad that Tumblr chose someone humanoid. That is about where it ends for me. Onecest was a plague, to put it lightly. For Tumblr to take some average looking weird man from a children’s movie and sexualize him more than any being brought into this world has ever been sexualized is almost impressive. The Onceler ruined a generation of internet users, both former fans and those who were subjected to seeing the creations of said former fans.
Another opinion of mine that I thought was shared by the general public was that skeletons aren’t attractive. I thought wrong. Sans from the popular video game Undertale is a short pixelated skeleton who wears a blue hoodie and black sweatpants. He has a very witty and goofy personality, a very likable character from what very little I’ve seen of the game. Tumblr did not even make a human version of him to sexualize him, they decided to bone the bones. You’d think a skeleton couldn’t have genitals. Turns out if that’s how you think, you aren’t quite horny enough. Like I said before, I don’t know enough about Undertale to give a full opinion on Sans. I’ve watched my roommate attempt a genocide run very briefly and back in mid 2010’s I watched Dan and Phil play it a little bit. As a sexyman? God I feel as though this is another thing that has only made my life worse since I heard about it. I refuse to believe a huge group of people collectively agreed that they wanted to jump his bones. I am furious over this. The guy has no sex appeal and if you think he does I will personally come to your house and shit on your doorstep.
In my minimal research, I found a Sexyman Masterlist, a compiled list of Tumblr sexymen and the archetypes that they fall into by Tumblr user @sicklywhitedudes, including characters I did not mention in this article such as Reigen Arataka, Venom, Robbie Rotton, and Jeff the Killer. There are characters who are not quite sexymen according to this masterdoc, but I personally think should be on there just knowing how incredibly horrifying their treatment from Tumblr was, like Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan, the Eleventh Doctor from Doctor Who, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Loki from the MCU. There was the infamous “You. Come. Now.” incident, in which a man in a blue shirt made a kinky gif that got all the young teens to fall in love with a headless torso. Just a whole gaggle of horny fuckery that makes my head spin.
There are most likely more Tumblr sexymen plaguing the masses as we speak. One can hope to a higher power that that sexyman is humanoid in the very least. As for me, I would not like to know. I’ve done my duty by sharing this information with those who did not want to know it. I fear that if I am told of any more sexymen, I will perish and leave this earthly realm.
