The surreal TikTok persona that made everyone question reality.

During one of my casual nights of scrolling on TikTok, a familiar face appeared on my home page. The comments under this video were raving about Mr. Fantasy, as if he were no regular man. At first, I did not really see anything out of the ordinary because I knew this face very well. Or at least, I knew him from Riverdale, a show I have watched A LOT (iykyk). 

In Riverdale, however, KJ Apa played a more sombre character, in contrast to the rakish energy his made-up Mr. Fantasy character displays on TikTok. It was not shocking to me that he would be doing something dramatic and quirky on social media, as he has done this before. This was not out of character, it was just him showcasing his typical oddball tendencies. Usually it was as himself, instead of going to a certain length to dress up. Although I was amused, I was not necessarily surprised and scrolled on after a good chuckle.

However, my algorithm kept sending him back to me. Each video became more unhinged than the last, in the best possible way. Something about this theatrical chaos was making people happy in a different way, and that felt oddly rare on an app that usually does not feed on wholesome joy. What really amused me about it was seeing how happy it was making my cousin. She was sending different videos of his goofy antics to all her friends and was giddy over the silliness of the comments under these posts. 

She really likes that even though he is an actor, he is using it to have harmless fun and interact with his fans. She said she thinks it is his way of keeping his privacy by having this persona, while giving fans what they want. That is the strange brilliance of this whole thing; he somehow has figured out how to be present and untouchable at the same time. He is giving people something to obsess over while also keeping his real self tucked safely behind the curtain. 

Then came the twist. Suddenly, I was seeing videos of people questioning reality itself. They were debating  whether Mr. Fantasy was KJ Apa at all. That was when it surprised me. This was not just fandom anymore, but a collective delusion. People started documenting their confusion like amateur detectives, splicing side-by-side comparisons of his TikToks and old interviews, freeze-framing jawlines, mapping his tattoos like they were charting tectonic plates. I could not even mock them, since a part of me was spiraling too because of how many people were confused about whether they were the same person. 

By fully embodying this “Mr. Fantasy” persona, KJ Apa has done something startlingly clever from a marketing standpoint. Normally, when an actor known for a specific role releases music, people approach it with skepticism. By creating a whole alter ego, he has quietly dodged that bias. The audience is not listening to “KJ Apa’s song,” they’re listening to Mr. Fantasy’s song. 

That subtle shift lowers expectations in the best way, by disarming people and freeing them from the weight of comparison. It is clear it is working, because suddenly people who might have rolled their eyes at “a Riverdale guy making music” are instead gleefully streaming a track from a sparkly chaos gremlin they came across on TikTok. He is selling the song by not selling it, which is kind of brilliant.

The whole thing started to feel like a live-action Hannah Montana situation. Remember how in the show, everyone was like, “Of course people would recognize her, she is just wearing a wig,” and yet they never did? The audience always smugly assumed they would see through it instantly, because how could you not? Yet here we were, failing that exact test.

It made me wonder if part of the collective obsession was not about Mr. Fantasy himself at all, but about what he represented: that a person could refuse to be just one thing and use their free will. Here was this man chaotically exploding every boundary and getting applauded for it; a declaration that perhaps authenticity is not about being consistent at all.

For us university students, especially those who are constantly pressured to define themselves in a certain way, there is something intoxicating about what he is doing. It feels like a glitch in the system, like someone slipped out of the conveyor belt we are all quietly riding and decided to dance on top of it instead. 

We spend so much of our time trying to align our career goals with our personalities, as if we can only be taken seriously if every version of us fits neatly together like a bow. However, watching him unravel that logic is liberating. Being a little absurd might be the sanest thing you can do in a world that wants you to be understandable all the time. Deep down, we are all a little desperate to believe we could shapeshift too.

When I first saw him, I thought the joke was that he was being ridiculous. However, now I think the joke might be on the rest of us. While we were busy trying to categorize him, he was busy reminding everyone how fun it is to be uncategorizable. Maybe that is why people keep watching: not because they need to know if it is really him, but because they want to borrow a little of that audacity for themselves. To stop being one thing and stop worrying about being recognizable.

Maybe that is the secret buried under all the chaos he has created, the whole point being that he is not trying to make sense. He is just reminding us how to be delightfully human again, even in a bewildering way. It is a strange sort of permission slip, tucked inside his TikTok videos, telling us that maybe the truest thing we can do for ourselves is to be unserious.