Celebrity Number Six has been identified, ending another major internet mystery

Redditors have been hunting for an unidentified celebrity from a fabric sample for five years now

By Emma Keates  |  September 9, 2024 | 2:28pm
Image: Alfred Gescheidt/Getty Images
Aux News Great Job Internet!
Celebrity Number Six has been identified, ending another major internet mystery

The internet is generally getting worse, but long-time netizens do have one thing to celebrate this year. For some reason, 2024 has seen the conclusions of multiple years-long “lost media” quests. In April, two very brave Reddit users revealed that they had finally found the song “Ulterior Motives”—which people had been searching for ever since a random user posted a clip of the catchy ’80s track in 2021—in a hardcore porn video. It was the perfect end to an extremely fun treasure hunt. This victory was followed by the groundbreaking discovery of the original “Backrooms” image in May, which users traced to a blog post following the renovation of a HobbyTown store in Wisconsin. Now, the 41,000 members of the r/CelebrityNumberSix subreddit can rest easy knowing their chosen mystery has finally been added to the solved pile.

So, who is Celebrity Number Six? If you haven’t been following along for the past five years, Celebrity Number Six was the moniker given to an unidentified star whose illustrated visage was found on a piece of fabric including other actors, models, and, randomly, both Josh Holloway and Ian Somerhalder from Lost. Five years ago, Reddit user TontsaH posted a photo of the fabric to 15 different subreddits, asking for help identifying the illustrated celebs. The internet quickly identified celebrities one through five, matching the illustrations to the exact photos from which they’d been traced. Still, number six eluded everyone, spawning a massive search and its own dedicated subreddit. 

The subreddit tried the following over the years, according to a mega post about the hunt (via 404 Media): 

  • Contacted the sellers/designers
  • Reverse images searched both free and paid sites.
  • Asked AI.
  • Remade The image by hand and digitally and “cleaned up” the image.
  • Remade the image with AI and reverse-searched with those images.
  • Asked around popular forums, message boards, sites and communities if they know who Six is.
  • WayBackMachine searched all the sellers of the fabric for new info.
  • Made a Pinterest filled with similar images of Six to try brute force similar suggestions.
  • Searched all photos taken by the other photographers on Getty Images between 1900-2008.
  • Asked various content creators to produce videos and get more eyes on the mystery.

But yesterday, it all came to an end as many good internet mysteries do: with a clever new lead, and a dude who had no idea so many people were tearing their hair out trying to find a thing he created. On Sunday, Reddit user IndigoRoom posted the impossible: “Celebrity Number Six Has Been Found.” In a series of follow-up posts, IndigoRoom explained that Celebrity Number Six was Spanish model Leticia Sardá. They had found her because another Reddit user, StefanMorse, had discovered that she looked similar to Number Six using a facial recognition search engine called PimEyes. The resemblance led the internet sleuths to a cover shoot for Spanish magazine Tendencias Mujer (Women’s Fashion) issue #162. IndigoRoom found the shoot’s photographer, Leandre Escorsell, and emailed him asking if he had any insight. Turns out he did, and it was mostly frustration that his image had been used “without authorization” on the original fabric. But he also sent the original print, which was an exact match for Number Six.

While most of the searchers rejoiced upon hearing the news, a few did dabble in some unsurprising AI speculation. Sardá herself put that to bed today, however, when she posted a photo of herself holding the original print (below).

So that’s it; after four long years, the case of Celebrity Number Six is finally closed. As the world moves further away from not just physical media but reality itself, we’ll probably see fewer of these types of mysteries continuing to crop up; for now, though, they’re one of the last great bastions of the early days of the internet. May we never stop searching.

 
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