From celebrity lookalike competitions to biopic casting, we seem to be revealing a modern obsession with similarity

As Halloween approached, flyers began to appear on lamp-posts and trees in cities across the world. They were printed in black-and-white, with a little face in a square, and they advertised lookalike contests. The first was in New York, where hundreds of Timothée Chalamets congregated in Washington Square Park, with police arriving to disperse the crowd and eventually arrest one contestant just as the real Chalamet arrived. Half a head taller than the contestants and with a little moustache, it appeared he’d come as Charlie Chaplin (who famously once lost a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest). This was the beginning of the winter of our duplicate. But looking back, hasn’t the whole year been distracted by doubles?

Lookalike contests were held in Dublin (Paul Mescal), London (Harry Styles), San Francisco (Dev Patel), Chicago (Jeremy Allen White), Brooklyn (Zayn Malik), Oakland (a rare exception to the men – Zendaya) and Austin (where Glen Powell promised the winner a cameo for their parents in his next movie, and his mother was the judge). There was also a Challengers contest where one of the winners was just walking by when he was dragged in to compete.