To say the Pedro Pascal Phenomenon is reaching a fever pitch is an observation that even the chronically offline cannot dodge. I think it reached its height (or nadir?) when he got a little glamour shot at the Oscars, pointing directly into all of our souls with eyes knowingly narrowed. He sees us. The man has been called the Internet’s Daddy, and as your resident Sub About Town, my time has come to weigh in.
I feel like I’ve spent the last year wading neck-deep through Pascal thirst edits on TikTok. They range from your standard hot guy montage, to blatantly making a BDSM connection, to so horned up that they feel illegal. They’ve entered my consciousness at its most porous, right before bed and shortly after I wake up, so I’m left with the impression that reality, for everyone, has had a certain Pedro Pascal flavor for some time. And looking around online, I’m not far off. The slow creep of his media saturation has gained momentum into a tsunami, as only an appearance on Hot Ones can set off.
Just this morning, I was served up a TikTok that compiled some particularly unhinged comments on Pascal edits. Some of my favorites:
I need to be put down honestly
im fertile
THE FINGER BITE MAKES ME WANT TO STAND IN ONCOMING TRAFFIC. HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!!!!!
i have many holes
SOMEBODY SEDATE ME PLSS IM GONNA C
IM SO FERAL FOR BOTH OF THESE MEN IM LITERALLY RUNNING IN CIRCLES AROUND MY ROOM YELLING AND CLAWING AT MY WALLS (assuming this is in response to a video of him and Oscar Isaac, which are common)
I could take both of them at the same time (not in a fight)
me want peepaw
Based on these primary sources, I think we can agree we’ve reached Peak Pedro.
But let’s go back to the early rumblings before the high tide. The Daddification of Pedro Pascal can be traced to April 2022 when he took his lie detector test for Vanity Fair. After peppering Pascal with a litany of leading questions about his status as a heartthrob, the interviewer finally goes in for the kill:
“Who’s a bigger Daddy, you or Oscar Isaac?”
Pascal replies, “I’m a bigger Daddy than him! I’m older than him. Although he’s a real daddy. He’s got kids and I don’t. But Daddy is a state of mind, you know what I’m saying? I’m your Daddy.”
I, along with all the internet subs, felt personally victimized by this statement (and not only because I sold t-shirts bearing the phrase “Daddy Is A State Of Mind” back in 2019). For those of us on the BDSM-informed thirst margins, we’re constantly trying to parse exactly what celebrities know. Are they using the word Daddy because it’s common internet slang, or do the men in the limelight know a thing or two about a nice, wholesome OTK spanking?
Weirdly, if they know too much about BDSM, or are trying to leverage it for personal gain, that kinda gives me the ick. For me, Pedro’s hotness decreases the more aware he becomes of the internet’s longing for him, and the mentions of the word “Daddy” that accompany it.
At his sexiest, Pedro seems like the older guy you meet somewhere irl, to whom you get to explain the ins and outs of the word “Daddy” as part of some heavy flirting over mezcal Negronis. This Mary Sue fan fiction version of Pedro Pascal dwells outside the inner sanctum of internet thirst hysteria, is hopelessly technologically illiterate, and has some benevolent, eye-rolling assistant to help him log into his social media accounts. He has not seen the TikToks, he has not seen the memes, he would be genuinely concerned if someone asked him to run them over with a truck. But when the Real Pascal begins to break the fourth wall of our horniness, for me the cold sweat dissipates. It begins to feel manufactured. It feels like PR.
Taking a photo in landscape slightly assuages my fears that he is Too Online, but not enough.
I would argue that part of what makes a Daddy in this day and age is not only being an older man, but an older man who projects just enough of a sense of being “offline” that we can imagine spending long hours kneeling at his feet as he reads to us from a leather bound book. A Daddy isn’t confined to 140 characters. A Daddy doesn’t doomscroll. A Daddy is blissfully ignorant of The Discourse.
Further, something spoils when we imagine the archetypal Daddy lurking in the comments of the thirst TikToks, or sending unsolicited DMs. A Daddy is supposed to be aloof, disconnected, hard to track down. Like the last remaining tiger in a nature preserve, ready to claim my virgin forest as his territory. Sorry what we we talking about?
Let’s put it this way, Daddy energy is different than Mommy energy when it comes to celebs. Sarah Paulson, for me, epitomizes Mommy vibes. Whereas Daddy needs to be caught up on the goings on of the weird little world inside your phone, Mommy has your password and has already read all your most delusional Twitter drafts. She’s waiting for you when you get home with a dirty martini, her stiletto up on the table, your phone in her hand. “Read them to me,” she says, red lips pursed around the olive she’s sucking on. Mommy has your number. Mommy knows what’s going on. (Mommies deserve their own post, but until then please enjoy this TikTok of King Princess staring agape as Holland Taylor leads Sarah Paulson around as if on a leash).
Serving “screen time is over” realness. Footnote: Pedro Pascal has referred to himself as Sarah Paulson and Oscar Isaac’s “bitch.”
I have a lot to say about the metaphor-rife dimensions of age play (it is hotly debated within the kink community whether the terms Mommy and Daddy actually involve age play), but I think part of what’s hot about it is the implied technology differential between ourselves and someone older. Don’t even get me started on a man who has to read his phone screen at arm’s length. Throw some readers into the mix and we’re cookin’ with gas. Using a flashlight to see the menu in a restaurant?? Forget about it.
The point is Daddy Thirst is a place apart from our algorithm-based suffering. It’s a place where we lose ourselves, our two factor authentication, our security questions. Who among us hasn’t dreamt of finding an offline lover? Of them tying us up without access to our phones? The masochism we inflict on ourselves on the daily as we scroll has none of the pleasure of whatever happens after fan fic Pedro signs the check for those mezcal Negronis.
So does a Daddy stop being a Daddy the moment he logs on and becomes self aware?
In a certain sense, my ideal sex symbol is and will always remain a J.D. Salinger-esque recluse who chops his own firewood and quizzes you mercilessly about topics like, I don’t know, Jungian psychology and Roman history. But if the people who have been born with an incurable attraction to men are going to survive, we have to build a Daddy Archetype that is more durable, that won’t deteriorate in the face of self-knowledge. Or naming the Daddy State Of Mind.
But until then, in an era where internet horniness is escaping the laboratory, how can we keep our Daddies from getting infected and going extinct?
The rules are simple. Stop telling them.
Late Night Hosts and Red Carpet Correspondents, I’m putting you on notice. Stop sharing the tweets with our rare and endangered Daddies. Do not make them self-aware. Keep them pure. (And definitely, definitely stop non-consensually calling them “Daddy” to their faces).
And maybe let’s give them all flip phones.
If the internet subs are going to find solace in fantasies of Pedro cradling us like so many animatronic baby yodas as we stare up at his excellent elevens (Botox lingo for the vertical lines between your eyebrows), we have to know that he isn’t too high on the Daddy supply. We have to know that he is singularly focused on carrying our tiny, spent, green little bodies to a planet where he can swashbuckle his way into getting us a warm blanket and a bottle of blue milk. And maybe a little kiss, I don't know!! Is that so much to ask??
But until then, I say we employ a tactical team to round up the Daddies, luring them into humane cages with vintage punk merch and Japanese whiskey, then release them into a Daddy preserve where they can read books (no Infinite Jest allowed), learn how to grow a vegetable garden, and, I don’t know, play Top Gun style beach volleyball together on a public livestream like sea otters at the zoo. Then, when they’re let out to do Red Carpets and prestige TV shows, if you want them to hear how fertile you are or how you want to drown in their spit, you’ll have to go old school and write them a letter about it. Because these endangered creatures must be protected at all costs.
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Flip phones and offline discourse—see Chris Pine.
i didn’t realise how big of a fan i was of pedro pascal until i went through all the pedro content related links you posted thank you for this