Man Divides Internet by Collecting Girlfriend’s Hair and Taping It to Styrofoam Head
If you’ve spent any time on dating apps, you’ve surely seen people describing their so-called “love language.” Some people may value quality time with a partner above anything else, others may express affection through home-cooked meals, and then there are those who like to trade words of support and affirmation.
What you’re unlikely to find is a profile in which the user admits they want to collect and preserve their romantic partner’s hair. But it takes all kinds to make a world, and that may be the only way to explain the existence of “Styro Steve,” a social media project and/or performance art piece that has proved as hypnotic as it is polarizing.
“Day one of collecting my girlfriend’s hair and put it on Styro Steve,” reads the first post on X (formerly Twitter) from the @stevestyro account, shared on Dec. 15. An attached photo shows the kind of styrofoam mannequin head typically used as a wig stand. Except instead of a wig, this head sports a wispy curtain of just a few dozen hairs, held in place by double-sided tape. With nearly 150,000 likes, the post is one of the most confounding viral artifacts of 2024 — and led to the account gaining 40,000 followers practically overnight. A TikTok version that demonstrates the process of adding new hairs to the head, uploaded a couple of days later, has been viewed 2.7 million times.
Since his debut, Styrofoam Steve has spawned countless memes, gained the attention of adult film stars and Instagram models, and even inspired a cryptocurrency with a robust investor base. Along the way, his mysterious owner has added to the lore around this fetishistic object, revealing a love of “divorced dad rock” (such as Creed‘s “Higher,” which he listened to on repeat during a recent TikTok live that showed the styrofoam head positioned among liquor bottles) and popularized a number catchphrases (“The hair stays on” for when he’s reconfirming his commitment to his work, “Not great” for when he experiences a setback).
The creator of Styro Steve tells Rolling Stone via direct messages that the X profile he’s using was initially “just a burner account to follow some pages I liked,” with no real following. But his first post about the hair collection “exploded,” and “everyone either loved it or thought it was creepy.” Indeed, there is plenty of speculation as to whether this unlikely internet celebrity — who declined to share any identifying information, lest his girlfriend of only five weeks learn about Steve — is in fact a stalker of some kind. As one TikTok commenter put it: “Had a friend who did this. The police took it away as evidence.”
And, of course, as with any social media stunt, there is the question of where reality ends and the embellishment begins. But to hear the mastermind behind Styro Steve tell it, he’s a simple guy who knows what he likes and figured he’d share his passion with the world. “I really love collecting hair,” he says. “Been doing it since I was 13.” Previous batches of hair, he explains, were stored in Ziploc bags, and he still has 15 full bags. Asked whether the hair in each bag belongs to separate individuals or he has ever mixed hair, he explains, “I put the hairs in separate bags for each person. Mixing hairs I don’t like that at all. Not classy.”
“My girlfriend has no idea I’m doing this,” he says. “That’s not a bit. When I started dating her I didn’t realize how much hair she leaked. She has long black hair. And I have white couches. It’s an insane amount of hair. I thought it would be funny to put them on a styrofoam head.”
The head, he adds, he found on sale at a Goodwill store for $1. As for the name: “Styro Steve just sounded natural.”
Steve’s owner says he doesn’t know the person who’s behind a Styro Steve cryptocurrency, which trades as $SS, shortly after he started posting. “I have no idea who launched it,” he claims. “They sent me some of the supply and now I have 6.3 million coins.” An example of an often volatile asset referred to as “meme coins,” which trade on the strength of interest in the social media phenomena they’re based on, $SS had a remarkable market cap of $1.4 million on Monday afternoon. Nearly 2,000 fans have joined a Telegram channel where they post enthusiastically about their investment in the asset and ways they can drive the price up. “I was never expecting this,” says the man who gave us Styro Steve, noting that his content has even been shared by the official accounts of the major cryptocurrency Litecoin.
With this crypto windfall, Steve’s creator has already donated more than $12,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which advances treatments for childhood cancer and other pediatric diseases, per receipts he has shared. “If this leads to anything it should be for kids,” he tells Rolling Stone. To that end, he has also created a crypto charity wallet for others who want to donate their $SS to St. Jude — and it has received the equivalent of several thousand dollars so far.
Like Steve himself, the crypto has not been without controversy. A few days after it hit the market, DuPont Styrofoam, the arm of the multinational chemical conglomerate that actually owns the “Styrofoam” trademark (it sells foam insulation materials under this name), took to X to disavow it. “ATTENTION CUSTOMERS,” the company wrote in a post. “DuPont has been made aware of an online cryptocurrency called “Styrofoam Steve” with the symbol $SS. We are not affiliated with this security in any way and do not condone its sale.” After @SteveStyro replied “Shut up,” the corporate page was so deluged with mocking replies and memes about hair from Steve supporters that DuPont deleted the account altogether.
Meanwhile, it seems @SteveStyro may have run afoul of X’s arbitrary moderation policies: a search for an account with this handle turns up no results, leading to speculation that he has had his visibility limited via “shadowban.” At one point early on, he did tag site owner Elon Musk and pledge to donate $10,000 to St. Jude if Musk changed his profile picture to an unflattering AI-generated image of himself with sparse, stringy hair à la Styro Steve. It’s not immediately obvious whether his reduced search visibility can be attributed to this troll post or some of @SteveStyro’s images being erroneously flagged as “Adult Content.”
Another recent absurd exchange came about from one of @SteveStyro’s many requests for hair from public figures. In this case, he had messaged porn star Gianna Dior to compliment her hair, only to receive the reply “PLS [sobbing emojis] ur account is insane.” Undeterred, he asked for a photo of her hair. Dior wrote back “no,” with a frowning emoticon, prompting @SteveStyro to share a screenshot of the messages with his followers, commenting, “Not great.” Dior publicly answered “you can actually just google me,” but @SteveStyro explained, “Can’t do that. Girlfriend will find out (not great)” before requesting a picture of Dior’s hairbrush.
Yet with the success of Styro Steve comes heightened risk, as his keeper desperately fears being found out by his girlfriend. “Oh man, it gives me so much anxiety,” he says. “I collected my ex’s hair in a Ziploc bag, and she was so upset I did that. Our relationship fell apart.” When his current girlfriend is around, he says, he hides Steve in the closet of his spare bedroom, adding hairs only “when she’s sleeping” or after she leaves. He doesn’t plan to reveal Steve when the project is finished, either: “No way. She would literally flip out.”
That makes for a more difficult mission, to be sure. The upside is that his progress has been speedy as he scavenges heaps of hair from brushes and the shower drain. “Probably six months max,” he says, offering an estimated time to completion. “My girl loses hair like crazy. It’s insane man. I don’t know how she’s not bald.””
