It’s interesting what people will say when they don’t know they’re talking to you.
Ever since the internet first offered the potential for easy anonymous conversation, it’s been utilized as a means for prolific folks to get an inner look into the public mindset. If someone famous were to walk right up to you and ask “what do you think of me,” you’d probably get tongue-tied and start mumbling out half-baked compliments and opinions. Nobody wants to be that guy who insulted a famous person to their face, after all. Through the veil of anonymity, though, people tend to be a little more forthcoming with their opinions on celebrities (debatably too forthcoming, but that’s neither here nor there). Even when celebrities put their own names on their social media accounts, many users maintain skepticism, choosing to address them as though they were simply trolling or role-playing. It is through this method that Lakeith Stanfield infiltrated the interwebs.
On the urging of GQ, actor Lakeith Stanfield created accounts for a handful of prominent social platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, even going as far as to name his accounts some variation of “Actually Lakeith.” After all, as he so eloquently put it, it’s actually him. He paid a visit to the YouTube comments of videos he’s appeared in, which is usually a terrible idea, but he’s much tougher than I am. On Twitter, he responded to users idly musing on him and his career, jokingly offering thanks to one user who said she’s attracted to him but couldn’t understand why. On Instagram, he attempted to answer the strange, almost conspiracy-like questions of users with an odd fascination with a wig he wore. He even paid a visit to his personal Wikipedia page to verify the truth of its claims.
Whether or not the users Lakeith conversed with actually believed it was him, nobody can truly say. Although, if they saw the video of him typing out his comments, then I can imagine a bit of a pit formed in their stomachs. “Oh crud, I sassed the actual Lakeith Stanfield!” Hey, to be fair, he did say it was actually him.