Following Christian Leave: The Strange Life of a Teen Social Media Celebrity
One frigid morning last November, Christian Akridge emerged from his hotel bathroom in Secaucus, New Jersey, with the promise of big news. “Don’t go in there,” he warned, flinging the bathroom door closed behind him. “There’s normal poop, and then there’s what I just did.”
Few topics animate Christian quite like excrement. He talks and tweets about it so often, in fact, that it seemed unlikely to be the news in question. Instead, he announced a special outfit for his appearance that day at a massive gathering of Internet stars and their fans. “I’m going to wear a dress!” he said, sounding delighted with himself.
Though only 14 at the time, Christian’s preferred aesthetic could best be described as suburban dad: khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirts and pulled-up white socks. He gets away with it because he’s considered good looking among teenage girls on the Internet, where he goes by the name Christian Leave. Only a month before, he’d planned to apply for a job at a taco shop in his hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas. But then David Graham — the founder of PressPlay, a touring group of young social media personalities — found Christian’s comedic videos on Vine, where the young teen had amassed nearly 100,000 followers in only a few months.
Now Christian was standing on a packed convention floor in New Jersey, a black dress slipped over his T-shirt and jeans. It was a strange look that only added to his growing reputation as someone who would do anything to make his fans laugh. Christian had also somehow procured a bag of marshmallows and was eagerly handing them out to the iPhone-wielding girls who stopped him every few feet to say hello. Or, really, to scream hello. (“OH MY GOD IT’S CHRISTIAN! HI CHRISTIAN!!!!”)
Fans — including one who’d flown in from Japan and another dressed in a cat onesie — kissed his cheek, bear-hugged him, or demanded piggyback rides. Some handed him gifts (love letters and portraits), while others begged him to follow them on Twitter. There was similar excitement online, where teens — some at the convention, others who wished they were — posted breathless tweets: “I have a video of Christian saying hi to me im done.” “Christian Leave is so hot like bend me over a table please.” “Who the fuck is Christian Leave and why is he suddenly everywhere?”