Robert Pattinson, the “people’s princess,” is infamous for his unhinged internet presence. From lying in interviews to his intrinsic parasocial connection with his fans, Pattinson is truly an icon to watch both in movies and online. His “I don’t care” attitude continually appears in interviews, making people — myself included — feel drawn not only to watching his films, but also to his laughable and crazed behaviour.
Fans of Pattinson come to watch his movies, such as Twilight, The Batman and Die My Love, but ultimately stay for his manic behaviour that people cannot help but adore.
As a longtime Pattinson fan, I can honestly say that, unlike every other preteen girl, I jumped on the Twilight fandom bandwagon and chose Edward Cullen as my ride-or-die. Pattinson was chosen not only as my adolescent celebrity crush, but also as the character I would make obsessive edits over in middle school.
Pattinson is known for his crazy antics and gremlin-like behaviour, going as far as lying about seeing a clown car explode as a child or claiming he never washes his hair. Pattinson’s lies have spanned well over a decade. Pattinson once claimed, “There’s a little gremlin inside of me that thinks, ‘Just say something shocking. You’re only here for a few minutes, say something terrible.’ There’s a kind of perverse glee I get from that.”
This large online fan base of Pattinson comes from his online persona of, well, just being strange, while feeding into chaos that fans cannot help but admire, me included.
Pattinson’s notoriety continues as he feeds into deranged parasocial relationships with fans by lying about recounting a dinner he had with a stalker fan in Spain who had waited outside of his apartment for days. “I was so chronically bored that one day, she’d been out there for about three weeks, and I said, ‘Hey, do you just want to go to dinner or something? I mean, no one else wants to hang out with me,’” Pattinson explained.
He noted she took him to her parents’ restaurant, where he “complained about everything in life” before she passed him the bill.
Pattinson not only crafts a persona of chaos, but one of relatability. This keeps fans hooked on what unhinged thing he might cook up next.
While on the topic of cooking things up, have you ever heard of piccolini cuscino, or “little pillow?” Well, I have. It is a piece of culinary mayhem that only the mind of Robert Pattinson could conjure up. For those who do not know what piccolini cuscino is, Pattinson described it as “pasta you can hold in your hand.”
Describing how to make this concoction, Pattinson told GQ, “Make a bowl out of aluminum foil, crushing breadcrumbs or cornflakes that will form the ‘sugar crust’ […] Layer up to nine packs of presliced cheese on top of the sugar crust, pour on the sauce and throw on the pasta. Sprinkle on more sugar. Top it with a hollowed-out burger bun. Wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil and put it in the oven for 10 minutes.”
My goal in life is to be as free as Robert Pattinson. There is something so intrinsically comforting about how little he cares about how others perceive him. His gremlin-like qualities concoct some of the funniest things I have ever seen on the internet. I think we should all live a little bit more like Pattinson. He may be crazy, but he is also free.
