Ansel Elgort Is My Nemesis

It’s really hard to say when this all began.

Ansel Elgort, actor/DJ, has been making me want to die for a while now. My body, at some point, simply began erupting with incredibly strong physical feelings—negative feelings, to be clear—every time I caught a glimpse of his Germanic, hairless face on TMZ. Why? I am not entirely sure. It could be because he has, as mentioned above, a DJ alter-ego named Ansolo who exclusively plays EDM. In that same vein, it might be because his interests and behaviors make me deeply afraid for this generation of the human race. It could also have something to do with the fact that he reminds me of my 1st grade enemy, Fritz, who picked his nose and weirded me out.

But because I was not consulted in the matter, this sweaty 20-year-old appears to be transforming into a bona fide A-lister. The second installment of the Divergent series is out on March 20, and Elgort has been promoting the film heavily. Yesterday, for example, BuzzFeed made the questionable decision to hand their Twitter feed over to Elgort for #AnselFeed, in which he answered questions from fans and completely ignored me. I don’t think I’m overstating this when I say that it was 19 minutes of absolute anarchy.

Now, listen, before I go any further: I don’t expect for mine to be a popular opinion. Ansel Elgort’s star is (incredibly, somehow, against the laws of reason and nature) rising fast—his turn in The Fault in Our Stars managed to catch the eye of every teen in the world and also, apparently (I am still processing this) several of my very own coworkers. But if you’ll just humor me for a moment, let’s take a quick dive into Ansel Elgort’s favorite things:

OWNING AT BASKETBALL

Ansel Elgort loves basketball. There is nothing inherently wrong with this fact, and yet every time Mr. Elgort says or does something basketball-related, I want to duct tape myself into a giant nest of hornets that will sting me until I can’t feel anything anymore.

A recent cover story for Details found Ansel Elgort thirstily preparing—via “training, doing plyometrics, working on my legs”—for the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at Madison Square Garden (whose other players included Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and “America’s Got Talent” host Nick Cannon) “as if it’s the game of his life.” It’s also important to note that Elgort believes “it’s important to be good with both hands.”

“I want to dunk in the game,” he says, eagerly grasping the ball at chest level with both hands. “I want people to know I can do it.”

He couldn’t do it, obviously. Ansel Elgort lost the big game. In a video posted to Madison Square Garden’s Instagram account, he tried to be chillaxed about it:

“I think I’d rather watch, ’cause I’m not a basketball player and I was a little bit embarrassed, I missed a wide open lay-up, but it’s OK, I came back and hit a couple of free throws at the end and that sealed the deal for us so that made me feel good.”

“Aw,” you might be thinking. “He just wants to be good at basketball, why are you such a monster?”

I don’t know! But I’m just getting warmed up.

ROMANTICIZING ROMANCE

Ansel Elgort has been having sex since the age of 14 and he is Very Good At It By Now, Probably. But lest you think he’s playing the field, well, he’s NOT. Elgort recently got back together with his high school girlfriend Violetta Komyshan, and boy does he have a lot to say about it! From Details:

“I was doing okay,” he says of being single, “but I knew something was missing, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s love.'”

Ansel Elgort would also have it be known, via a hilarious interview with Mickey Rapkin for Elle, that he likes “romanticizing romance.” Literally, he just said: “I like romanticizing romance.” Here are two additional nuggets of amazing relationship advice from this piece:

“If you like someone and the sex is really good and you enjoy spending time together, why wouldn’t you make that person your girlfriend? Why go around dating random girls and having terrible sex when you can be with someone you really like?”

“But if you can find a girl who you can go to an EDM concert with, have a conversation with, who will sit on the couch and watch you play GTA for three hours—and then you go to bed and have amazing sex? That should be your girlfriend.”

You know what, I’m just going to pull out one more exchange from this interview:

Okay. Thank you for your time.

Don’t make me sound like a playboy, because I’m not.

You’re into monogamy! We’ve established that.

Yeah. Cause if someone I’m monogamous with reads this, I don’t want them to be upset if it sounds like I’m a playboy.

Everybody has their quirks, and I suppose mine is that I would rather be tossed into the Gowanus Canal and drown in an underwater cloud of herpes-enriched sewage than EVER BE MONOGAMOUS WITH SOMEONE WHO WANTS ME TO GO TO AN EDM CONCERT AND THEN SIT ON THE COUCH AND WATCH WHILE HE PLAYS GRAND THEFT AUTO FOR THREE HOURS.

Everybody’s different, I guess.

BASS DROPS

During his @BuzzFeed takeover, Ansel Elgort had a few things to say about music:

I mean, where do I even start? Is there a worse sentence in the English language than “Probs some EDM song you wouldn’t know”? Is it possible that Ansel Elgort really hasn’t heard of Barbra Streisand? Am I imagining this entire thing?

No. DJ Ansolo is not a joke, and he is not a mirage—he is all too real. He’s got an album coming, he thinks “the club scene is terrible,” and he’s playing at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival later this month. This, from the Details profile:

In a video he shows me of his recent performance at Echostage in Washington, D.C., he keeps jumping, like a human piston, perfectly oiled. He thrusts his hands up, up, up. Up, up, up. Up, up.

I am legitimately frightened by the amount of post-human energy this boy-bot displays. I am equally frightened by his thoughts on David Bowie:

Elgort reaches for the copy of Pin Ups, David Bowie’s 1973 album of covers, and sizes up the singer at 26: his glam mullet, his heavy makeup, his piercing gaze. “This guy’s eternal,” he says. “I wonder who from today will be eternal?”

I wonder who from today will be eternal. I wonder who from today will be eternal.