Are Internet Boyfriends Proof That Soft Masculinity Is the New Sexy?

From Pedro Pascal fancams to Bad Bunny thirst tweets to Andrew Garfield glasses compilations, some men have such accessible appeal that it feels like the entire female half of the internet is collectively feral over them at the exact same time.

This is the internet boyfriend phenomenon: whole online ecosystems forming around men who seem wildly different on the surface, yet inspire the same level of mass devotion from women who can’t stop talking about them. 

That kind of shared obsession is highly revealing. It shows what women want, what women value, when they get to choose for themselves what male attractiveness looks like.

Inside the Female Gaze

The phrase “Internet Boyfriend Syndrome” describes a kind of communal infatuation where huge numbers of women silently co‑sign that a particular man is hot. He takes over social feeds and, for a brief stretch of time, he basically becomes the walking embodiment of female taste.​

But unlike old-school heartthrobs, who were assembled in studio boardrooms and sold to us via marketing campaigns, these men are chosen. So you can’t talk about this specific flavor of female desire without talking about the female gaze.

For decades, the “male gaze” dominated how we understood desire and attractiveness. Coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975, it describes how visual media is shot from a heterosexual male perspective, where women exist mainly as objects to be looked at and sexualized for male pleasure. Think of every movie where the camera lingers on a woman's body as she walks by, or where female characters exist solely to be rescued, desired or won by the male lead. That’s the male gaze.

The rise of social media has given women something they've never had before: the ability to publicly, collectively and very loudly declare what they find attractive, without a man in the room editing their answers.

So is the female gaze just sexual objectification of men, the male gaze flipped? Not even close.

In their foundational text “The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture,” Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment argue that the female gaze is relational rather than objectifying. In simple terms, it's about feeling an emotional connection with the inner lives of these characters in all their complexity. Connection, not conquest. Partnership, not possession.

The internet boyfriend phenomenon is the female gaze in action.

The Female Gaze and the Fantastic Four

Believe me, I could write a 10,000-word essay about the female gaze, but I'll do something way more fun here: dissect four internet boyfriends like the psychology nerd I am.

Specifically, I'm breaking down Pedro Pascal, Bad Bunny, Andrew Garfield and Keanu Reeves using the Myers-Briggs personality framework. Their types give us the mental and emotional pattern behind our collective crushes — how they move through the world, how they connect, and why they read as so intensely safe and attractive.

Important caveat: I’m inferring their types based on their public behavior — interviews, social media, how they're described by others, and so on. Sadly, I don’t know these men, and they’ll never be my IRL boyfriend, so what follows can only ever be a best guess.

Pedro Pascal: The Internet Daddy

Pedro Pascal has what the internet is calling “Daddy” energy. It comes from him showing up consistently and making people feel seen. This man has enjoyed 30 years in the industry without any scandal and possesses almost legendary professionalism. Most tellingly, the way female costars feel safe around him are the hallmarks of someone genuinely steady and secure.

Pascal’s relationship with his trans sister Lux reveals the depth of his caregiving nature. When she came out to him over FaceTime, his first question was “How do you feel?” That immediate support points to someone warm, curious and fiercely protective. I’m guessing he’s an ENFP, an intuitive, values-driven soul who’s outwardly playful, inwardly serious about his people.

He’s also a man of deep conviction. His “Protect The Dolls” T-shirt moment, and calling J.K. Rowling a “heinous loser” for her perceived anti-trans rhetoric, show a willingness to risk career backlash for what he believes in. You can agree or disagree with his opinions, but there’s no denying his instinct to defend the vulnerable, loudly. That’s classic ENFP energy — soft-hearted, big-mouthed, and impossible to separate from his principles.

Keanu Reeves: The Kindest Man Alive

Keanu Reeves’ appeal runs deeper than isolated acts of kindness — he’s given us 35 years of evidence that he's exactly as kind as he appears to be.

For The Matrix sequels, he gave up roughly $75 million of his earnings to the special effects and costume teams because, as he put it, they were the ones who made the movie. He gifted the stunt team custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He’s been seen giving up his seat on the New York subway and casually sharing breakfast with homeless individuals. The consistency of these small, mostly private acts — the ones we only hear about because bystanders happened to notice — reveals someone living according to deeply personal values rather than external expectations.

His introspective nature shows in how he engages with philosophy and meaning-making. When Stephen Colbert asked him, “What happens when we die?” Reeves paused and simply said, “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” That answer reveals someone who processes the world through emotional truth. Put the evidence together, and I think we’re looking at an INFP personality type — another idealistic, value-driven soul who’s guided by an internal moral compass, and quietly intense beneath the calm.

Reeves has experienced profound loss — his daughter's stillbirth, his partner's death, River Phoenix's overdose — and he’s processed it with dignity, never weaponizing his pain or making it other people's problem. Like Pascal, he comes across as protective, but his approach is quieter. Reeves seeks peace by creating it, for himself and others, without fanfare or expectation of recognition.

Andrew Garfield: The Girl's Guy

Andrew's 2025 glasses + unbuttoned shirt moment had the female side of the internet melting, but it was his explanation that really elevated him to internet boyfriend status. He simply said he couldn't see what was on the teleprompter, and only when he put his glasses on did he realize his shirt was unbuttoned. That kind of honest awkwardness is exactly what makes him so desirable.

When he first read The Amazing Spider-Man 2 script, which ended with Gwen Stacy's death, he started crying in a restaurant with the writers, moved both by the story and his love for the character. To prepare for that devastating scene, he purposely didn't see Emma Stone for a week, telling her, “When you come into that scene, you have to pretend like you are dead to me.” He cries without embarrassment or apology. This level of emotional openness and method acting dedication points, once again, to INFP — someone who processes the world through deep feeling and chases authentic emotional truth in everything.

For women told they're “too emotional,” Garfield feels like a breath of fresh air. He’s a collective internet boyfriend because he validates our feelings and adds layers of meaning to them. Yes, it sometimes reads as “theater kid energy,” which either hits like a drug or feels like a lot. But for the women it resonates with, it’s perfect: a man who feels everything and never makes you feel like you’re too much for caring.

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny): El Papi Chulo

Bad Bunny is attractive because he uses his power to honor women. Talking about his song “Yo Perreo Sola” (I Twerk Alone), he told Rolling Stone: “I wrote it from the perspective of a woman. I wanted a woman's voice to sing it — 'yo perreo sola' — because it doesn't mean the same thing when a man sings it.” That’s a man actively decentering himself in his own work.

His Super Bowl halftime show was both an entertainment spectacle and a values statement about peace, Puerto Rican identity and freedom of expression. When he won the Grammy, he used that massive platform to make a political statement in an industry that usually rewards staying neutral. He’s breaking down rigid gender barriers in a genre notorious for machismo and misogyny.

This refusal to accept limitations, passionate authenticity, willingness to challenge norms and drive to experience life fully — while helping others do the same — all point to an ENFP personality. ENFPs seek freedom and possibility and reject anything that limits their authentic expression. That’s exactly what Bad Bunny is doing with gender, culture and power.

For women tired of macho posturing, here’s a powerful Latino man proving you can be masculine and feminist, confident and kind, strong and gentle all at once. Someone who stands firmly in his values while refusing to be boxed in by traditional masculinity is unbelievably attractive — to me, and to millions of women around the world.

So What Qualities Do Women Find Attractive?

These internet crushes throw out green flags for women everywhere, but even I’m surprised by how clear the pattern is. All four internet boyfriends are XNFP types. The only variable is Extraversion versus Introversion.

If we describe NFPs as a string of adjectives, we get words like approachable, artistic, idealistic, soft, empathetic, passionate and open. XNFP men, and especially the Introverts, are often stereotyped as “weak” in the real world, but women are clearly obsessed with these value-driven internet boyfriends who care deeply about emotional truth and refuse to be constrained by arbitrary rules about how men “should” be. None of this matches the aggressive, domineering archetypes traditionally sold as “masculine.” 

Of course, I'm not going to pretend their objectively handsome faces hurt the cause. Pascal's salt-and-pepper situation, Reeves' bone structure, Garfield in those glasses and Bad Bunny's entire presence are all crimes against my productivity.

But beautiful faces are a dime a dozen. These men embody something far rarer: soft masculinity. Strength without domination, confidence without arrogance, masculinity without toxicity. Partners who do the emotional work, see women as equals and stand up for what's right even when it's uncomfortable.

And that’s hot.