The Cult of Heimler

Harry Styles. Taylor Swift. BTS. In today’s world, many celebrities have managed to build cult followings: teenage girls willing to sell their souls (or a kidney or two) to get concert tickets, specialized high school principals willing to ignite Twitter wars on behalf of their “Korean Sunshines,” and Spectator writers with entire walls of their rooms covered in life-size portraits. But a new name has been circulating the darkest corners of 4chan—Steve Heimler, an unassuming YouTuber who posts AP History review videos. However, as boring as his subject matter is, the same cannot be said for his fan base. High schools everywhere are reporting cults operating under the (unconvincing) common guise of a “History Club.” Suspicions first arose when these “clubs” broke a three-person attendance.

An anonymous source confided that the problem was especially out of control at Stuyvesant High School, so The Spectator went undercover.

At first glance, the school seemed pretty normal: kids running on negative sleep, trying to finish their calculus homework on the walk to class. I was beginning to think our source was wrong when I bumped into junior Noam Pasman. As soon as he heard the word “Heimler,” his eyes lit up and he gushed, “I’d die for him. No literally, I’d rather die than prepare for AP U.S. History without him. Plus, his beard is really hot.”

It turned out that only the first floor maintained some semblance of normalcy. We went up the stairs, and suddenly everywhere we looked there were Heimler T-shirts, fan-made glowsticks, and six-foot-tall cardboard cutouts. Every conversation in the hallway revolved around him. We overheard someone describing the Unit Three AP Government Review video. Between lovesick sighs, she excitedly whispered, “His blue orbs stared into my soul. I can’t wait till he drops his reading of the Bill of Rights. The teaser was simply music to my ears.”

Even stranger, at exactly 12:00 p.m., everyone whipped out their phones and stared intently at the screens for the next seven minutes. When I asked what was going on, I was met with aggressive shushes and glares. Afterward, I learned that the best Y/N x Heimler fanfic releases new chapters at noon. It’s rumored that the author is actually Stuyvesant junior Calvin Zhang.

However, as with any good cult, there are still haters. An anonymous senior whispered “Heimler’s the worst” after furtively scanning from left to right. Before he could elaborate, a hoard of students poured out of the library, still holding their Ultimate Review Packets, and descended in a circle around him. When we saw him next, his eyes had glazed over and he was chanting under his breath, “Heimler is my history daddy.”