I once fell in love with a man’s hand. Not his face. Not his personality. Just his hand in an Instagram reel, holding a coffee cup and wearing a stack of silver rings. There was also a woman who stopped me midscroll with her ‘fit check, twirling around like a modern Stevie Nicks. I’ll admit, I was feral. I was also in my ovulation phase (if that means anything to you at all).
Let’s call it being horny for the sake of horniness — and not even for a specific person, but for their aesthetic. In the golden age of TikTok thirst traps, it is my hot take that many of us are no longer crushing on people — we’re crushing on their online vibes. Emotions are confusing; vibes are simple. They say just enough to let you spiral on your own time.
There’s the guy who makes soup shirtless, the sad girl who makes tea silently, or the queer cottagecore DJ who also builds furniture. If you’ve seen someone comment “Oh, yes, a new person to fall in love with on this app” for the millionth time, you know I’m not alone. Nonsexual aesthetic attraction has always been a thing, but this is something different: a decidedly thirsty way to consume content.
I’m so desperately horny for her, but not in a crude sexual way.
For Noel* 35, his Internet horny vibe is for T*, a French Instagrammer who goes viral for perfectly undone looks and effortless chicness. “We all get Instagram accounts suggested to us nonstop, but this one made me stop,” he says. “I’m not in love, but I could be! I’m so desperately horny for her, but not in a crude sexual way, either. You know, sometimes, the vibe just makes you feel in.”
The crush isn’t about her as much as what she emits. Sure, she has magical eyes, but it’s not that, really. Even the way she smokes, which isn’t normally a turn-on for Noel, somehow captures him. “I don’t know much about her, and I don’t need to,” he says. “I know enough.”
Rachel* 23, is a lesbian who loves aesthetics, and her online vibe crushes always have a whimsical or magical feel to them, like TikTokers @hyacinthhoney or @Spellboundsoleil. “I’m a huge lover of dark academia and cozy whimsy-goth vibes,” she says. “Social media can be an art form, and I think that’s what I’m attracted to the most when I have an internet crush.”
Her vibe crushes transcend gender and sexual preferences, too. “As a sapphic woman, I even have a few male content creators in my rotation,” Rachel says. “Jack Edwards, a book YouTuber and TikToker, or Jake Shane, a podcast host and comedian… It’s a crush, but also just a vibe thing.”
Then there’s Lena*, a 27-year-old bisexual woman who found her sexuality during the 2020 lockdown in her Brooklyn apartment. She scrolled her FYP and not only discovered who she might be attracted to, but what — based on a sexy gay pottery vibe.
“One night, my roommates and I were scrolling TikTok together, and I found this girl who does pottery,” Lena says. “Something about it was just so hot. My friends sent me that gay joke, ‘Do I want to be with her, or do I want to be her?’ for weeks. After that, I convinced myself I had a crush. I woke up every day and watched her for over a year.”
She’s hot and creative — what more could I want?
But Lena’s “crush,” it turned out, was less about the androgynous girl behind the camera and more about what it made her feel, think, and see. “Obviously, pottery looks a little gay,” she says. “Y’know, the fingers. But watching her make her art made me realize I was actually very gay, which is so obvious now. I was dying for a connection to something, and that ended up being pottery girls. She’s hot and creative — what more could I want?”
Since the Internet came into my life, I’ve been coming back for more and more of the vibes. At my peak Tumblr era in 2014, I was into the indie girl aesthetic and the concept of a plan to have bangs. I followed a lot of folks who had the Jane from Breaking Bad vibe, or what we now know as the rat boi aesthetic. (This explains a lot about my type to this day.)
Now, though, my Internet taste is much more refined, and I’d like to think so is my horniness. My “love affairs” are the perfect queer-looking thrift girlie, the hot gardening aesthetic of Pamela Anderson, and the British guy who probably smells like sandalwood and reads poetry out loud.
Sure, maybe I could afford to be less online, but I also think getting horny for a vibe is a low-stakes way to explore what turns you on. For many queer folks, online crushes were the first places we could experience that kind of desire. Early on in my coming-out journey, I had a pretend flirtation with my YouTube crush Melanie Murphy, whose Irish accent, bisexual content, and Zooey Deschanel-coded persona really did it for me.
So, no, I’m not deleting my Internet crushes. I’m not truly in love with them, either.
“I don’t have the typical butterflies, heart-racing, breath-stopping feelings for some whimsy girl I follow on Instagram,” Rachel says. “But I do want to be like her. And she’s pretty hot, too.”
*Name has been changed.
