Why I'm obsessed with shakymoto

This is shakymoto on Instagram/TikTok. Although I don't really go on TikTok and I mainly view his reels on Instagram. Which I have twofold reason of doing now that TikTok has become a geographical and demographical tracker for a wide assortment of traits pertaining to minorities, and because simply the UI and algorithm of TikTok is so khia that I don't want to use it anymore. Seriously, I get like an ad, then live, then like two tiktoks with horrendous audios, then a TikTok shop creator selling weight loss pills, gray sweatpants, or exercise equipment. 

To me, shaky moto is a queer icon. Even though there is a questionable amount of underage girls who fawn over him, and though this is no different from any male icon qua Justin Bieber or Harry Styles suchlike, I find that me as a gay adult man fawning over the 24 year old is quite different somehow. Perhaps this is inappropriate to be putting out there online. 

How can I explain my obsession with shaky moto, known colloquially as just "shaky"? Is it the way he dances with his bulge openly swinging about everywhere (this isn't the best example, but to keep it PG, I have included this as the example)? Or is it the way he dances with a self-assured sexiness that makes it seem like he is aware of his own sexiness? Or is it the toxic masculinity with which he moves, or perhaps some would simply say "masculinity"? In a world full of effete men and acrylic wearing gays, I couldn't help but wonder, was there a reason why this helmet-mask donning ugly pants-wearing gloved handed skinny white man has so captivated my attention? 

shaky and I first became acquainted in this video where he did a dance to the then insatiable "nani-ga-suki" TikTok audio (nu-jazz version). It had the caption "my duet crush: I'm sad, send me something goofy / ME: ", with him doing a "silly" dance to it, presumably under the concept of the caption, sending it to someone who he feels romantically inclined to. I, like so many who watch short-form videos, felt that this particular short-form video was made just for me, and it was, in a way, it completely spoke to me. I think there was something about a man in a helmet and biker gloves standing in the rain that just screamed romance and a very specific fetish that made me scream internally. 

I think it was also the way he moved. It was the shirt lift at the beginning revealing a flat stomach (no abs), the implication being that he was too hot to need to have abs. It was the attitude and the movement, the motion of the ocean, not the lie of the body. And the thing that especially got me, even more than the shirt lift, was the little kick he did with his little white trainer at the beginning. There was something to the insouciance of that little movement which made me intuit that he had a sort of arrogant quality to him that was what I loved most about men. Not confidence, which is healthy, but arrogance, which is somewhat toxic. 

THIS LITTLE K I CK

I forget how I eventually found his actual username and page, but I think it showed up on my TikTok ForYou page. From then on, I was hooked. I would get his videos first thing every time I opened my Instagram feed, and I would share them with my friend Angela who told me she thought he seemed toxic. Which he did, but I think that was always part of the appeal, right?

It makes me wonder, what really is it about men that makes them get to me? It wasn't purely physical, and it wasn't purely mental. It was always a certain...swag. And I think this masked man encapsulated that. I think I also always sort of had a sort of fetish for this sort of uniform, it kind of gives this little black cat detective from the 80's who also wore little gloves who I was obsessed with for a brief moment as a child, Heimao Jingzhang, black cat detective. 

I think it was the little glooooves I was obsessed with the most. Kind of akin to the gloves that our motorcycle friend wears. They're just so cute and maybe they represent a form of power? Or anonymity? 

But that's beside the point. What makes shakymoto a queer icon, you might be wondering? I personally think it's his simple existence which makes him my queer icon, specifically an icon of the DL/trade side of the spectrum of the G part of LGBTQ+. (They should add DL and remove the plus: LGBTQDL...)

Even though he is getting married to his girlfriend soon, they are engaged, and he has never openly said anything of the sort, that is kind of the point. I still think he's DL. And not DL in the sense of actually engaging in sex acts with other men, but DL in the sense of nascent bisexualities. I think he could very well be in love with his girlfriend, but I think he has the ability to be in love with a man. My conjecture is based on this. 

In the way he moves in his dances, the aforementioned self-assured confidence, I get the sense that he understands what he is doing is sexy. Like, the way that he lifts up his shirt ever so slightly to show his abs, and the way he draws his arm across his chest, giving himself a chest rub, there is just something about these moments that screams self-awareness of male sexiness. And I think if a man is aware of what makes a man sexy......that makes them slightly gay? I mean, if it was purely for the female gaze alone, then there wouldn't be so much pleasure from the act of being sexy, there would be more of a sense of empty performativeness, an empty thrusting of the hips, an soulless ripple of the abs, a stripper-like lifting of the shirt. But there's something about the self-derived pleasure of such small, simple movements, which leads one (me) to believe that he would find a similar thing sexy in another man. And it's just that--that he finds himself so sexy, that makes watching him feel pleasurable. 

(This is somehow dissimilar from a girl putting on lipstick or a sexy outfit to appeal to men, the opposite direction. Or a girl getting a boob job and a BBL to appeal to men. I think these outward displays of "sexiness" too are also for DL (secretly gay/bisexual) men to consciously psychically think, "this is sexy", and react how they feel they are supposed to react based on this apperceived performance of sexiness. So, in a way, wearing a lipstick and a sexy outfit is also gay, to the man she is trying to appeal to.)

There are tons of other bikers on the internet who make content, for the same presumable thirst-trappy reasons. But none of them have the same oomph or jouissance of shakymoto. They don't carry the same pure sense of pleasure, of joy from these silly little dances that he's putting out into the aether. It's that celebration of the body, the playfulness of what the body can do and represent, which places him at the forefront of biker thirst-trap content. And I wish him well on his upcoming marriage. And I will be continuing to like, comment and follow him for more.