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Analysis
This week, when Twitter was actually working, it was populated with a couple of different memes about the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
The 48-year-old Oscar-winner is best known for films like Titanic and The Wolf of Wall Street, but on the internet, he’s known for commentary around his dating patterns. Namely the fact that he tends to date women who are 25 years old or younger.
Since he’s apparently single right now, gossip publications are paying close attention to who he will date next. When he was spotted sitting next to a 19-year-old model at an event, the memes restarted.
It turned out that he was reportedly not dating the model. But that didn’t stop a copypasta meme from taking off that showed characters in pop culture who also had about a 30-year age gap. There was also another meme that formed: one that called “twink death” a “terrifying thing,” alongside a photo of DiCaprio in the ‘90s and one of him in 2021’s Don’t Look Up. The original tweet has more than 121,000 likes and 15,000 quote tweets—and it spawned a meme that showed side-by-side photos of other actors. But, as lots of people pointed out, many of the memes just depicted this phenomenon called aging.
“i’m only into this ‘twink death’ thing because it gives men the same irrational fears of aging that women have on a daily basis,” tweeted user @dunwaIl. Out published a story on the meme called, “Just a Reminder: Twinks Have to Be Gay,” which called out the Twitter users who were just sharing photos of straight men.
The meme has now taken on a life on its own, but it is interesting how the internet went from criticizing DiCaprio for possibly dating a teen in 2023 to criticizing him for not looking like he did in his early 20s—all in the span of a few days.
Now, the conversation has seemingly turned around as yet another meme format appeared: “i know leonardo dicaprio is a creep for dating a 19 year old but if you ever catch me dating…” is a way for people to share what older actors they would like to date. Yes, people are now sharing age-gap dating fantasies on the timeline.
Why it matters
Leonardo DiCaprio has social media profiles, but he doesn’t use them to engage with fans. (Probably for the best.) And due to his status in Hollywood, he’s an easy target for Stan Twitter.
What this means is, as long as he keeps socializing with women young in public, we’ll probably see many more DiCaprio memes in the future.
