Spot Fake Celebrities On The ‘Not Really Famous’ Subreddit

My wife and I have a game we play on the streets of New York. I spot a celebrity, and she tells me that’s absolutely not them. If it weren’t for her, I’d end up on r/notreallyfamous, the subreddit for mistaken celebrity sightings.

These posts are cute because of people’s enthusiasm — they think, or they do a good job pretending, that they really met a celeb, despite all evidence against it. (A good r/notreallyfamous post isn’t just “Hey, this regular person resembles this celebrity!” For that, go to the more popular subreddit Walmart Celebrities.)

We collected our favourites here. We can’t copy the pictures because they aren’t ours, but if you open thirty new tabs you will be rewarded.

There are a few types of fake celebrity sighting. Sometimes, people fall for an impersonator:

• “Friend claims to have met Johnny Depp, refuses to admit he’s wrong when another friend proves it’s an impersonator and morning radio show prank”

• “That moment when you take your kid to meet Guy Fieri”

• “It makes sense Zach Galifianakis would wear a shirt from his own movie, right?”

• “Dwight Howard”

• “Spielberg is a big sushi fan”

• “During the filming of Anchorman 2 in Atlanta this bar got overrun due to a rumoured ‘Will Ferrell’ sighting.”

Sometimes they happen upon an unassuming stranger:

• “Some dude just came up to my dad and asked if he was George Lucas.”

• “Peter Dinklage bought us drinks!!”

• “My dad tagged me and my sister on Facebook in this, his friend sent him this from Hawaii. He’d thought he met Kristen Stewart.”

• “My boyfriend gets stopped all the time because people think he’s Spike Lee…”

• “Johnny Derp”

• “Marilyn Manson”

• “My friend met Chuck Norris in Switzerland!”

• “Just chatting it up with Rod Stewart himself!”

• “/u/sorentius meets ‘Jake Gyllenhaal’”

• “/u/jj_rooterteet meets ‘Chris Pratt’”

• “That’s not Iron Man mate…”

• “Me and Criss Angel. He keep sayin his name was Dave But I know it was you Criss.”

Sometimes the mistaken identity is very official:

• “/u/Bushmaster805 gets mistaken for Zach Galifianakis by Lakers Magazine.”

Sometimes it comes in threes:

• “Met the cast of Twilight at a party.”

Sometimes I’m convinced that it really was the celebrity:

• “(George Clooney) perfect similarity”

Sometimes it really really is a celebrity:

• “OMG Matt Damon”

• “Tyler, the creator”

Some make no fucking sense:

• “My friends thought they met Bill Murray.”

• “Yikes, Bill Murray isn’t looking too good”

• “Can’t believe he met Reese Witherspoon!”

• “President Obama!”

• “Buddy was stoked to meet Vin Diesel” 

Yeah, some of these fake sightings were probably a joke in the first place. But don’t tell me. I can’t bear two letdowns in a row.

For more lookalikes without the “actually mistaken for a celebrity” requirement, see r/WalmartCelebrities.

For people who look like the signs they’re standing next to, see r/PSUSTRT. For knockoff merchandise, try r/crappyoffbrands. For the post that inspired r/notreallyfamous in 2014, see this Fake Gyllenhaal sighting.

What I really want is a celebrity pretending to be a normal person pretending to be a celebrity — like when Bryan Cranston wore a mask of himself around Comic-Con, or when Julia Roberts played a Julia Roberts lookalike posing as Julia Roberts.