He looks at the spoon resting beside my coffee cup. He looks at me. For one terrifying, hilarious second, his brow furrows. The old magic flickers behind his eyes.
Are you angry now?
His name is Jhon Alejandro Rivas. To the 2.3 billion people who have watched the clip, he is simply "Baby Jhon." baby jhon
“He didn’t change,” Elena insists. “The world did.” Dr. Miriam Foss, a media psychologist at UCLA, wrote a paper on the “Baby Jhon Anomaly.” Unlike most viral child stars (the dancing twins, the dramatic reading toddlers), Baby Jhon did not elicit laughter through joy or cuteness. He elicited it through pure, uncut resistance. He looks at the spoon resting beside my coffee cup
By age three, Jhon was experiencing what Elena calls “The Stare.” Strangers would approach him in supermarkets, lean down, and make the growl noise at him. They would ask him to perform. They would hold up spoons. The old magic flickers behind his eyes
“I was just a frustrated mom,” she says, pouring coffee in their sunlit living room. “He hadn’t eaten in six hours. I thought, ‘If I film this, my mother will finally believe me that he is impossible.’”