AreYouSuprised’s video of him coming out to his father in the wake of “don’t ask, don’t tell’s” official repeal, has gone viral with more than 2.5 million views and counting.
In the last 48 hours, AreYouSuprised’s video (and story, posted Tuesday) titled “Telling my dad that I am gay-LIVE” has gathered hundreds of media mentions from the Huffington Post, Time, Washington Post, and even a mention on CBS’s The Early Show.
“I never thought I’d be so comfortable with it,” the soldier, Randy Phillips, told ABC’s Good Morning America. “It’s very supportive. Everybody’s been so great.”
In Phillips’ first 16 videos he kept his name a secret and filmed only from his neck down. He revealed his face in the fateful 17th, when he showed himself coming out to his dad in a cellphone conversation. And then he revealed his name as well.
YouTubers have taken to posting encouraging or reflective video responses to AreYouSuprised’s confession to his father, which range from 45 seconds to almost 13 minutes long. At the time of publication there were about 50 such videos, some of which had many thousands of views
https://www.youtube.com/v/FmGxu99MjuQ
AreYouSuprised’s subscriber base has jumped to over 20,000. On Monday, he had just over 9,000.
Back in April, in one of Phillip’s first videos, he said the coming out process might take him a whole year. Clearly it took far less. Perhaps the support from the YouTube community facilitated that process?
