The 'hot rodent men' trend is everywhere right now. I was on it 3 years ago

Feeling like I missed the bus at going viral, tbh.

Picture this: It’s shortly after 9 p.m. on a Monday in June 2021 and you’re sitting with me in my junior year Mizzou apartment that had only one, barely functioning window AC unit.

It’s grossly hot. We’re all probably a little wine drunk. That kind of overheated and giddy delirium is vibrating in the room.

Sometime over the past two hours while watching Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelor, I’ve gone all-in on the idea that one of her lead contenders, my favorite of the season, Greg Grippo, looks like the main rat from Flushed Away.

It’s devolved into the construction of a 27-slide Power Point of side-by-side pictures of said rat and different men, presented through giggles.

“Welcome, to whoever bears this horrible travesty that’s about to happen,” I say, standing in front of my TV screen which reads “Men Who Look Like the Flushed Away Rat.”

A screenshot of Slide 2 from my 2021 Power Point “Men Who Look Like the Flushed Away Rat.” I’d show more, but literally every slide is this setup. It was not a very visually interesting presentation.

This is not a perfect retelling of how I became obsessed with the now-viral “hot rodent men” stereotype on June 14, 2021, but it’s pretty close. I have a 6-minute video hogging storage on my phone of me giving the aforementioned presentation to help set the scene.

Yes, that was three years ago. I was talking about men who are somehow hot in spite of – or because of – bearing a striking resemblance to Flushed Away’s Roddy St. James, THREE YEARS AGO.

Did I miss my moment to go viral?

It kind of feels like it, as in the past week, the idea of “hot rodent men” has exploded in mainstream media: Vogue, Elle, The New York Times, CNN and more have written about them.

Entertainment Weekly even wrote a piece about actual, animal rodents who qualify as “RILFs.” (St. James does not make an appearance, which seems like a massive oversight, but maybe it’s because he is designed to look more like a man than a true rat.)

I won’t say that I (and my lovely friends who witnessed this madness IRL that night) coined the idea of “hot rodent men.” I’m not naive enough to think no one else was watching Grippo and not seeing the resemblance because it was so striking. It was probably (I’m actually almost positive, but don’t want to look it up) all over Twitter.

But we were certainly in the first car of the train, early boarders on the ride that is “hot rodent men,” now running at full speed and about to go off the rails.

What makes me feel more confident in making a sort of claim-to-fame, “it should have been me” argument here is that in the aforementioned presentation I made in what could’ve been no more than 30 minutes that June night, I had most of the names that are now being tossed around in this conversation.

Josh O’Connor, who I’d not yet fallen in love with but was aware of because of his time on The Crown, was second after Grippo. Then it went to “Lip Gallagher,” aka Jeremy Allen White, now known just as much by his full name as his Shameless alias.

There are some picks I no longer agree with in there, like Tom Holland and Hugh Jackman (though he actually voices St. James).

Strong noses, being British and messy/curly brown hair dominated the entries into the conversation. If I were making it now, the latter two would not have such a stronghold, though, in fairness, for the St. James comparison, they were fitting.

(Aside: There was a side joke/debate started this evening about whether long-haired Harry Styles was hotter than St. James. He’s not – sorry, it’s true – and there was some outrage when I included the then-hottest version of Harry Styles (Dunkirk-era Harry) in the presentation. I probably wouldn’t now, but it was worth it then for the laughs!)

One fairly notable person I did not include in the presentation who I absolutely would now, and who I would say probably most has the personality of a rat among those mentioned in this broader conversation, is The 1975’s Matty Healy. Blegh.

While I considered just disclosing the whole Power Point, there are personal references within it, and I did not feel like altering what I’m now considering a Sacred Text in favor of sharing it in full.

Here, though, is a transcribed moment of dialogue from my presentation, which was given live to three friends and streamed on a Finsta for many:

Friend 1: “You spent too long on this.”

Friend 2: “I actually think longer deliberation could’ve resulted in realizing that this might not be the best use of our time.”

Jokes on Friend 2, as a CNN staffer called me a “trailblazer” this week after a different friend shared my early fandom of “hot rodent men” in a staff discussion.

Most posts about this stereotype claim the sudden interest has evolved from conversations about Challengers’ Mike Faist looking like a little mouse, or, if we want to compare to another fictional rodent, Stuart Little.

Mike Faist (left) and Stuart Little (right). I’d understand if you got them confused.

That surely played into it. I think, too, it all is just another iteration of the idea of an “ugly hot” guy that’s been topping the charts of what type of men are most attractive to women nowadays.

Being a “hot rodent man” is not an insult, though I would understand why men would bristle at being compared to a creature that makes people scream when it scurries anywhere in their vicinity.

“Rodent handsome men are usually more svelte than muscular, with more pinched, angular features. They’re often not conventionally handsome, but this only makes them more hot,” wrote Serena Smith in a piece for Dazed about the trend.

I’d stand by that definition.

There’s also the matter that classifying men as different types of animals has been a thing for at least the past few years. Golden retriever boyfriends, anyone?

TL;DR (you better have read, though): I couldn’t be happier that the idea of “hot rodent men” is coming around now, gaining followers and causing confusion among folks who are certainly more normal, less online and, if we’re being real, having more sex than those forming borderline parasocial relationships with these men over their rat-ness.

I do just need you all to know that I was trying to preach this gospel before it became cool to do so, and that next time I hastily craft a Power Point I think could go viral, I am not going to spare time sharing it.