The Internet is going bonkers for Tom from ‘Jeopardy’

Monday night, things got a little crazy on Jeopardy. A bartender and aspiring director named Tom Flynn was one of the contestants, and he’s surely going down in the Jeopardy hall of fame as the Internet’s fave game show contestant of ALL TIME — at least if the reaction to Tom is any indication.

Apologies to Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings, who ruled back in 2005 and still holds the record for the show’s longest winning streak, but Tom’s antics Monday night have stolen the collective hearts of the Internet. You kind of had to see it to believe it, but in case you missed it, here’s what went down.

Tom pressed his buzzer and answered questions, but mostly he treated viewers to a variety of model-worthy facial expressions. And Twitter decided that he looked pretty attractive doing so, dubbing the Jeopardy #hottie before the show even ended. It looked a little something like this:

We’re not sure what was going on. Was he checking himself out in the monitors? Doing his best Zoolander impression? (Blue Steel! Our favorite.) Or was this all some elaborate joke meant to drive the Internet crazy? (If that’s what Tom was going for, he can mark this mission as a success.)

Twitter users had a lot of their own suggestions for what Tom might have been going for with his Jeopardy appearance, like auditioning for a job at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Tom made it all the way to Final Jeopardy (good for you, Tom!), but was admittedly stumped by the question. (The first music CD ever mass-produced in the U.S….answer: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.) No worries, though, he managed to make clueless look flippantly cool when instead of venturing a guess he simply wrote “what” across his monitor.

And the Internet laughed forever and forever. Tom doesn’t care, though. He’s the epitome of cool. TBH, we’re kind of loving it — as long as Tom is in on the awesomeness of the situation. If this is a case of Internet objectification or well-intentioned-jokes-that-actually-hurt-feelings, then not so much. But, we have to say, Tom seems like the kind of guy who is 100% in on the joke and a master of his own image.

[Images via Sony Pictures Television and Twitter.]