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Why can't I escape a 2014 fancam edit of Josh Hutcherson?
Josh Hutcherson was at his most popular in the early 2010s, when he starred in the Hunger Games movies as love interest Peeta Mellark. So why can’t I escape him in 2023?
Hutcherson’s character doesn’t even appear in the Hunger Games prequel that premieres Nov. 17, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. But that hasn’t stopped fans from reminiscing on the extremely online fandom moment that the movie inspired. Though Hutcherson’s star might be on the rise again with new Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) content, TikTokers are repackaging old Hunger Games-era thirst into a new trend, creating a perfectly inescapable storm.
What is Josh Hutcherson up to these days?
The 31-year-old actor recently starred in another highly anticipated adaptation: the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. Though the October 2023 film is available to stream on Peacock, it’s still performing well at the box office, raking in $250 million so far. Hutcherson is not the focal point of the movie — that would be the homicidal animatronics — but he is technically the star. That’s part of the reason he’s back on the internet’s radar.
How did Josh Hutcherson become a meme?
An infamous 2014 fan edit of Hutcherson, set to Joel Merry’s acoustic cover of the song “Whistle” by Flo Rida, is popping up everywhere. A fan edit, also known as a fancam, is a slideshow of thirsty photos or videos of an idolized celebrity. The style was popularized by stans (or superfans) in the 2010s. Now, an old-school Hutcherson fan edit is being memed.
TikTokers are editing the footage — an extremely 2010s-esque photo slideshow of particularly seductive photos of Hutcherson — to show up in unexpected places. It’s like Rickrolling for people with a basic understanding of video editing.
TikToker @misowenfr seems to have been the first person to revive the forgotten edit, on Nov. 8, inspiring a deluge of reinterpretations of the footage.
Other places the Hutcherson video has been “found” include the inside of an egg, on a laptop inside a fridge, in the middle of a chocolate bar and on the back of an ice tray. The edit has invaded videos that seem to be about scary stories, cooking hacks and safety warnings.
“I literally can’t escape Josh Hutcherson. He’s in every single TikTok I watch,” wrote one TikToker in the comments of a video that featured the actor lurking behind an unsuspecting family.
Another wrote that it was the 30th video of him that they’d seen that day at only 8 a.m.
Why are people so obsessed with this 2014 video?
YouTuber MetroGirlzStation posted the original “Josh Hutcherson || Whistle” video in October 2014. Over the next nine years, it reached just over 100,000 views, according to Know Your Meme. Until November 2023, that is. Now, that number has more than doubled, though most people are probably just watching the versions they see on TikTok.
Recent commenters reminisced about how “innocent” this style of edit was, before video editing apps like CapCut were easily accessible to make more sophisticated edits. Back then, fans had access to iMovie, DVDs and Tumblr, and a dream.
“This is what you call an edit. Bring this style back!” one user commented.
Paired with an unsettlingly soft cover of a suggestive rap song, the edit evokes the magic of the early Hunger Games fandom, when Hutcherson’s sweet baker character was the foil to Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of the icy Katniss Everdeen, and the object of so much thirst. More than 8,400 works of fan fiction have been written about Hutcherson’s character on one site alone.
As popular social platforms and the ways we express our fandom continue to evolve, millennials and members of Gen Z will be able to look back on the era of iMovie edits and Tumblr posts with nostalgia. That’s both the great blessing and curse of having a lifelong digital footprint.
Just remember: Stay safe. You never know what dark puppy eyes and chiseled jawline could be waiting at the next swipe of your For You page. Or in your microwave.
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The post Why can’t I escape a 2014 fancam edit of Josh Hutcherson? appeared first on In The Know.
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