We’ve exhausted all the new genres of hot men to fawn over. First it was ugly-hot, then hot-ugly, then the himbo, then it was the freaky art man with troublingly low body fat (the artthrob). Last summer belonged to the hot rodent— if Remy from Ratatouille was a dude who fucked. And now we’ve gone back in time, to a hot boy era so early that internet culture couldn’t name it. So I’ll name it. It’s 2015.
The last days of cultural optimism. Facebook was becoming uncool so we flocked to Instagram. Katy Perry was making good music. Trump’s name meant nothing in the world of global politics. Our moviegoing habits were gloriously saccharine, dominated by YA adaptations. The success of Perks of Being a Wallflower had paved the way for The Fault in Our Stars. Twilight gave us the intersection of sexy and scary, The Hunger Games was the biggest franchise, and Teen Wolf sold us on terrestrial television. Men came and went without being defined properly, beyond being remembered as the high school crushes of a generation of teenagers.
Well, it’s 2025 and he’s back: that’s right, the Logan Lermans and Josh Hutchersons are the pookies of the season again. We might want to call him the nostalgia hunk: He’s comforting, lovely, handsome, talented, uncomplicated, and reminds you of your past. Intelligent without being pretentious. ‘Take home to your mom’ material.
“There’s something both attractive and un-sexy about the nostalgia hunk. Sort of apples in papa’s orchard adjacent”
The baggage of being a teen heartthrob makes it difficult to course correct once you’ve grown up. Some actors falter, and never find the right place for themselves, retiring from public life. Others spend years in limbo, starring in more lowkey work, or disappear for a bit, while they wait for the wind to change. Lerman spent years shaking his Percy Jackson image and has felt absent from our screens for those who haven’t got a Prime Video subscription, where he led the drama Hunters for two seasons. But that’s set to change with Oh, Hi!, a Sundance-premiering romcom with Molly Gordon that hits theaters later this summer. Hutcherson’s comeback is two-fold: leading the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise (sequel coming this December), as well as a key part in Rachel Sennott’s spicy HBO series. Talk of his familial relationships aside, Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien had a big resurgence after his movie Twinless, due out in September, won the Audience Award at Sundance. John Boyega, in his Attack the Block-slash-Star Wars peak was seen by everyone, but eventually found his footing in more daring, grown-up fare, like They Cloned Tyrone and a forthcoming Otis Redding biopic. (Ansel Elgort, girl, you would have been here in an alternate, unproblematic timeline.)
If they’re not directly pulled from the past, they still look like it. On TikTok, a brown-mopped, Miley Cyrus-blue-eyed-meme American guy called Carson, looks like a drawn-from-memory nostalgia hunk. Tommy Noble, a completely innocent sketch comedian, has the same pookie-ish energy. I posted a video of him doing a bit on my story recently, and a straight male friend replied: “Is this hot?” Great question.
There’s something both attractive and un-sexy about the nostalgia hunk. Sort of apples in papa’s orchard adjacent. Too sweet to project weird fantasies upon but not entirely void of sexual chemistry. He is remarkably, beautifully plain. Sauceless but in a way that suggests he’s trustworthy.
And why are we back here? Well, in times of turmoil, we turn to reliability. The nostalgia hunk seems, comparatively, unaffected. He will turn up to comfort you and do the right thing. Is there anything more telling about the current cultural chaos than our choice to seek out the opposite?
