The Phenomenon Of Tumblr Sexymen

Somewhat ironic that the only character that wasn't "Stick thin" was the literal skeleton

As soon as you said “how bad can I be?” I felt a profound emptiness.

The fact that Alastor was practically designed to be simped over only for him to be canonnically acromantic and asexual was absolutely hilarious

Apparently the Invisible Man from Hotel Transylvania was a major thirst-magnet, and probably would have been classified as a Tumblr Sexyman, until he was revealed to be cartoonishly ugly in HT4. People were literally simping for a pair of glasses.

I was not prepared for Rodrick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid to be on the wiki

"Character designers work hard but teens on Tumblr who want to make every character bangable work harder" absolutely broke me. It should be on a shirt.

toby fox really has a knack for making tumblr sexypeople whether he wants to or not

Bro Sans IS the tumblr sexy man now, he broke the model yet he is the example.

It’s just so ironic how the first Sexyman™ to break the skinny archetype was a literal skeleton Sans really said “I’m not chubby, I’m just big boned” and wasn’t lying

I remember being so annoyed with the human Bill Ciphers because I was attracted to the triangle

Honestly this video is so much funnier after Bruno, Sun/Moon and especially Spamton all became Tumblr/TikTok sexymen, since the culture surrounding them is an odd mix of genuine attraction, irony, and self awareness. Great retrospective!

After Spamton, I'm convinced that Toby Fox has realized that he has the power to create sexymen at will.

god hearing sans undertale, the onceler, raymond animal crossing and jeff the killer being mentioned in one sentence dealt psychic damage i was not prepared for

Ok but Alex Hirsch drawing his own horrifying cannon version of Bill Cipher is the most Alex Hirsch thing I've seen

10:45 the fact sans broke every single trope, yet is still the reason so many thirsty teens (myself included) are so obsessive over fictional characters is crazy (just goes to show how much power this man has)

im so glad sans has continued to defend his sexyman title

“Why don’t you stop kinning Komaeda and start kinning your homework” I spat my drink out

The sexymen are basically the seasonal waifus of Tumblr.

As someone who was the target demographic for the classic tumblr sexymen, I’d like to offer some insight that I never see talked about; basically the whole core of why some characters gained a cult following was the idea that we weren’t supposed to be attracted to them. Like I remember the onceler taking off so hard because everyone was just in pure shock that he wasn’t just a pair of green hands like in the original. People were seeing images from the 2012 movie for the first time and going “omg THAT’S the onceler??” Like, he fit the aesthetics of the time just enough to gain teen girl interest without being an obvious choice for a giant fandom. So it felt sort of scandalous to take these characters that no one would conceive of being sexy conceptually and thirsting after them instead of a character that specifically pandered to teen girls (you know before people started to catch on to the fact that that’s what teen girls liked). And we thrived on that scandal.

On the one hand, Alastor as a design is actually a lot older and can be found on Vivienne’s ancient deviantart account. On the other hand, Alastor is canonically asexual, so it’s entirely possible he was conceived as a bait and switch.