I caught up with my friend Stu for lunch yesterday. He is a musician.

“Hey, so I just checked youtube yesterday and my video has had like 200,000 views,” he told me over a coffee. “Isn’t that weird? Last time I looked it was 4,000.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, thinking he probably meant to say 20,000 views. 200,000? That shit CRAY.

“Yes Stu,” I nodded, “200,000…” I didn’t believe him because clearly I’m a terrible friend.

I went back to work. He sent me the video.

204,000 motherfucking views!

By the end of the day – 206,000.

So. Stu aka “Cullen”, just so happens to be on the same record label as this chick you might have heard of called Kimbra. She sings on this really underground song by a guy with a hard-to-pronounce name called ‘Somebody That You Used to Know’.

His video comes up on the “recommended” side-bar when you watch any of her tracks. A quick look at Youtube stats (which you can easily find underneath any video) shows that pretty much all this traffic has come through in the period from December to now and most has been referred from Kimbra videos, predominantly the single ‘Settle Down’.

So, in 6 months, a video that has been online for two years has gained almost 200,000 extra views just because it’s attached to a video by Kimbra.

Also, his stage name is “Cullen”. Like Edward Cullen. From Twilight. Girls are commenting saying he looks like Robert Pattinson.

Cullen
Stuart Cullen aka "Cullen
Robert Pattinson aka "Edward Cullen"

 Make your own mind up about that one.

I don’t want this to take anything away from Stu. He’s an incredibly talented performer and it’s been frustrating me for a long time why he hasn’t gotten further. He’s also had triple j airplay and worked with some big producers and all that jazz.

The video has 1027 likes and only 53 dislikes – a very decent ratio which shows it’s getting into the hands of the right audience.

It also just says a lot about the strength of Kimbra’s reputation and how crazy this Gotye/Kimbra phenomenon has become.

Here are my favourite comments from Stu’s video.

“I love his face when he gets the balloon, like ‘OMFG, I EFFING LOVE BALLOONS'”

“clearly a coming out video. not impressed with females unless they have balloons!”

“too bad his first name isn’t Edward”

“Why are you all mentioning Edward Cullen.. When someone says Cullen, i think of this sexy beast of a man, not some vampire.”

“ill trade you my sandwhich for your balloon man, fuck yea”

“whats up with the Simply Red hairdo?”

“On Serbian language “Cullen” Means “sausage” on Serbian ( Kobasica ) 🙂 (:”

There have also been “fan” videos uploaded.

 

What is this “gloving” business? I’m so old.

I find it hilarious Stu has been going about his daily life in ignorant bliss for six months, while teenage girls are comparing him to Robert Pattinson and uploading dumb videos about his song on the internet.

Not to detract from Stu’s newfound online fame but during the course of a discussion with a common friend of ours last night she casually mentioned there was a video of her on Youtube that had even more views – 230,000.

“It’s not like you can see me though. You can just see my leg.”

It goes for 8 seconds and the main stars are her thigh and a monkey trying to steal a lighter out of her handbag in Ecuador.

I like the top comment the most:

“Forget the monkey…Give me some of that! super sexy leg!”

In summary, I love the internet.

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