- Type "white guy" into Google
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)