A crowd of excited San Diego State University students gathered at the Turtle Pond on campus to participate in a Jacob Elordi Lookalike Competition on Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. The event was initially promoted through several flyers posted around SDSU’s campus with a picture of the six foot five inch Australian actor and the promise of “[a] $35 Eureka gift card & 1,000 Aura Points” awarded to the winner.
At exactly 2 p.m., one of the organizers, Valentina Delgado, began playing “Murder on the Dance Floor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor on a speaker and announced the beginning of the competition. Over the next hour, several contestants walked into the center of the crowd to compete. Over multiple rounds, contestants were asked for their best Elvis Presley impression, their best Australian accent, to reenact a scene from a Jacob Elordi project, and to strike a “red carpet pose.” Those who got the audience to clap the loudest won, and those who received the quietest applause were eliminated.
The event was also organized by Edana Ryan and Maya Tomasik.
Delgado said she was inspired by the several celebrity lookalike contests that have sprung up across the country in the past few months.
The trend began with the Timothee Chalamet Lookalike Competition held in New York on Oct. 27. The contest went viral and attracted a crowd so large that the New York Police Department responded with a dispersal order and arrested four attendees. The event organizer was also fined $500 for an “unauthorized costume contest.” After the event moved over to a nearby park, Timothee Chalamet himself made an appearance, to the delight of the crowd.
Afterward, similar events sprung up across the country. Since late October, there have been lookalike competitions for Jeremy Allen White, Paul Mescal, Harry Styles, Dev Patel, Zayn Malik and Zendaya- all of which have achieved varying levels of virality online.
Delgado chose to center this contest around Elordi because she hadn’t seen it done yet.
However, an Elordi lookalike competition has already been held in his home country. A small contest took place in Melbourne with only 20 attendees and a handful of participants. The winner claims he doesn’t even really look like Elordi. In Sydney, another hunt for the perfect Elordi took place on Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.
According to Oakland University communications professor Erin Meyers, the lookalike competition trend appeals to people’s desire for “moments of fun and lightness” in the wake of a difficult political climate. Part of the appeal is also that it’s independent of any professional organization or promotional campaign – it’s just people coming together to have fun and celebrate each others’ hotness.
The winner of the competition was George Rule, a second-year psychology student who plans to pursue a career in business.
“This is huge. I’ve been thinking about it for maybe four hours. This has been a big deal for me,” Rule said.“I came today, did my hair nice, put on a nice polo shirt, and I came to win, not compete.”
The second-place winner, Rami Alarian, who is of Middle Eastern descent, said that he competed to bring diversity to the competition.
“I got a couple of browner Jacob Elordis on there, and that was really just my goal,” Alarian commented.
His friend, fourth-year English major Will Harris, stressed to The Daily Aztec that Alarian looked “just like Jacob Elordi” and that it was a “damn shame” he didn’t win.
