Another day, another come-and-get-it James Franco selfie!
The 35-year-old actor continued his cumbersome trek through the world of social media on Sunday, Instagramming a bedroom-eyed selfie along with an apparent plea for followers (because 1.7 million is just not enough, OK?). But these shameless, sometimes shirtless, shots are a regular occurrence for the Freaks and Geeks alum as of late. It was, after all, just two weeks ago, however, that Mr. Franco purportedly experienced his most "awkward" digital snafu to date.
According to screengrabs and James' own admissions, he engaged in some flirty textual chatter with Lucy Clode, a Scottish teen on vacation who happened to catch the actor's Of Mice and Men performance on Broadway. James hinted about the alleged incident, tweeting, "I HOPE PARENTS KEEP THEIR TEENS AWAY FROM ME," but in a more serious manner, apologized for using "bad judgment" during an appearance on Live! With Kelly and Michael.
"I mean I guess, you know, I'm embarrassed, and I guess I'm just a model of, you know, how social media is tricky," he said. "It's a way people meet each other today. But what I've learned I guess just because I'm new to it is like, you don't know who's on the other end."
He's correct in that. Lucy's Instagram account has been deleted, and a decent Google search with all things Franco filtered out doesn't yield too many results. And despite James having "learned my lesson" about meeting new people online, he's continued to post cheeky photos on social media.
This includes—but is not limited to—Instagramming a picture of Shop Jeen's "O-Mighty Franco Panties" with the caption, "My sister was wearing these - WTF????" He also got in on the crying Dawson Leery meme, reassuring young James Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek character, he was "TRYING" to follow him back on Instagram.
James' over-the-top antics online may seem a bit peculiar for the Ivy league scholar, but you have to keep in mind he's no stranger to performance art. He played a fictionalized version of himself for 20 episodes of General Hospital in 2009, and in a New York Times op-ed written earlier this year, he pondered whether Shia LaBeouf's "erratic" actions were "intended as a piece of performance art, one in which a young man in a very public profession tries to reclaim his public persona."
Time will tell. Just don't be surprised if our reactions to James' digital drama aren't part of some doctoral dissertation down the line!