and the first picture you'll see is this.

And that is me.

Hi, my name is Reed Kavner,

but you may recognize my face from TikTok videos

about white guys, TikTok profile pictures,

people's LinkedIn profiles, scam pages on the internet,

online dating profiles from dudes who are not me.

I accidentally became the face of the default white guy.

And this is that story.

It started in 2018.

I got a text from my friend, Lizzie Logan,

who is a humor writer,

and she writes for the website reductress.com.

And she asked me if I wanted to be

in a stock photo shoot for them.

Reductress is a satire news site kind of like The Onion,

but with a feminist perspective.

And so they write a lot of stories about men

or from the perspective of fictional men.

And they always use stock photos to accompany these stories

and kind of give a face to the characters

they're writing about.

And I was very excited to get this text.

And I immediately said, yes.

I have a lot of comedian friends in New York.

And a lot of them have had the chance

to be stock photos for Reductress.

And I was always a little jealous.

I wanted to do it too.

And I just got this text out of the blue from her.

And I went down to their office and did it.

They took pictures of me on the street,

pictures of me in an office,

pictures of me in a kitchen,

pictures of me with a group.

Then nothing happened for months.

And then one day I get a message on Instagram saying like,

"Hey, is this you?"

And they had finally used one of my photos in an article

where the headline was "Most Guys Just Want Sex,

But I Would Be Okay With Hand Stuff."

And then there was my picture

as the character of the guy saying that.

So a few of the articles that they have used my face for

are "White Guy Excited to Burn Down the System

and Also Control the Rebuilding Effort."

This guy's excited for COVID to end

so he can start touching women again.

I think that I want people to understand

that I'm playing a character.

These stock photo shots that I took were not me.

'Cause they're a satire site and I'm a comedian

and I thought that it would just be a fun thing

to be part of.

So, pretty recently I was working at home.

I was reaching the end of the day

and I decided to just like call it at 3:00 PM

and lay down and scroll TikTok with my dog.

And I opened TikTok and I had a notification

and one of my TikTok followers had just mentioned my name

in the comment section of a post.

So I went and I watched the post

and the video was this Asian guy.

And he was making a joke

about how he frequently finds himself hitting on Asian women

to only discover that they are dating white men.

And that's disappointing to him.

And I was the representation of the white man.

And it was very surprising.

Like I'm watching this video,

being like why of all of the photos

of all of the white guys, why me for this?

Like, was there something about my face

or what I was wearing that made me perfect for this?

And then something occurred to me,

was that like, oh, Reductress is a popular site.

Like, I'm sure they do pretty good with SEO.

I wonder if he just was typing like "white dude" into Google

and just picked a photo.

And so that's what I did.

I started searching

and I think maybe the first phrase that I searched

was "white guy" and right there on the first page,

like number eight or something was my photo.

Then it was kind of amusing, very surprising.

And so, I made my own TikTok reaction video.

I explained what was happening

and if I didn't want to be on the first page of Google

for white guy,

making a video about it was a real bad move

because the video that I made got two million views

within the first day

and my ranking on the Google image search for "white guy"

started climbing to number two after Chett Hanks,

son of Tom Hanks,

who is number one because he coined the term

and the idea of white boy summer.

So then I began seeing my picture in all sorts of places.

I saw people on TikTok using my photo

as their profile photo.

I did a reverse image search

and found that there are people on LinkedIn

who I think that they're scammers

and they're using my photo

just 'cause they needed a white guy

to represent the face of whatever scam they're running.

Or maybe I'm just better looking than they are.

And they thought it was an upgrade, I don't know.

I got a message on Hinge the other day

from a woman who said,

"Hey, there's another guy on Hinge using your photo."

I got one comment from a kid saying,

"Hey, I used your photo in a school project."

And it's like,

I don't know what that school project is about.

And I'm like, he's a kid, I'm sure it's fine.

But any time that somebody is doing a Google image search

for "white guy,"

like they aren't necessarily doing something positive

in the world.

And so I think that's my biggest fear

is if someone needs to just go grab an image of a white guy,

are they a white supremacist?

Are they someone who is like maybe seeking racial justice?

I don't know.

It could be any number of things,

but I'm just hoping that it's not like a white supremacist.

(laughs)

(upbeat music)