Imagine if an average teenage boy was given an audience of millions, hanging on his every word. He'd probably talk about his friends, all the stuff he finds annoying about school, make fun of his parents. That's the average high school stuff you'll find on Matthew Espinosa's Vine. There's just one key difference between his Vine and your cousin's — Matthew has 1.6 million followers.
Most of Matthew's fans are girls, probably thanks to his resemblance to Justin Bieber and friendship with fellow Vine teen heartthrob Cameron Dallas. Beneath all of Matthew's Vines, some of which feature Cameron, are comments from girls about how cute he is, how true whatever he's saying is and hundreds of LOLs.
That popularity has also translated to his other social media accounts. On Instagram, where he posts photos with friends and video messages to fans, Matthew has 480,000 followers. His YouTube channel, featuring longer videos, has 225,000 subscribers. On Jan. 3, his fans started #GetMatthewto200K to get him more Twitter followers. It became a top trend and clearly achieved its goal, as just two weeks later Matthew has over 310,000 followers.
Still, he's just your average high school sophomore, if your average sophomore had this effect on people.
Last September, a meet and greet at a mall near his Virginia home brought so many fans and such a frenzy that the police had to be called. So what's bringing all of these fans? Matthew's brand of "that's so me" humor, like the kind in the Vine below.
That video has over 273,000 likes and 188,000 revines. Here's another one that was very popular with 256,000 likes and 192,000 revines about what it's like when your mom leaves you in line at the grocery store to get something else.
His other videos are in a similar vein, with many jokes about school and homework—things that his fans relate to. Take the one below that's even more popular, with almost 310,000 likes and 277,000 revines.
You get the idea. Matthew's YouTube videos are also very popular. Without Vine's six second limit, Matthew uses his channel to post longer videos, some are very similar to his Vines, while others contain messages to fans or show him and his friends goofing around. His most popular video, with 418,000 views, shows Matthew, Cameron and yet another teenage Vine star, Nash Grier, eating baby food while blindfolded.
They all seem to be having a genuinely good time and based on the comments, their fans love it. Matthew really is an average teenager, and that seems to be what brought him those thousands of fans. They worship and relate to him at the same time.
To outsiders, nothing separates Matthew from any other teenage boy they may know. To fans, that's what makes him so great—oh, and the whole Bieber lookalike thing. That can't hurt.
Image: themattespinosa/Twitter
