Gavin

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Part of a series on Vine. [View Related Entries]

About

Gavin is the name of a child who rose to online fame through his appearances in videos uploaded by Vine star Nick Mastodon. Outside of Vine, various images of his facial expressions are generally used as reaction images to express disbelief, doubt, and confusion.

Origin

Gavin is the nephew of Vine star Nick Mastodon.^[8] He made his first appearance on Nick Mastodon's Vine^[1] on February 24th, 2013 (below).

Spread

Gavin remained a popular cameo on Nick Mastodon's Vine account for several years. On May 8th, 2014, Mastodon uploaded a compilation of Gavin vines onto YouTube (shown below). As of July 21st, 2016, the video has over 50,000 views.

On August 11th, 2014, The Daily Dot^[2] published an article featuring cute Gavin vines. In 2015, Gavin continued to make regular appearances in Mastodon's Vine and Instagram^[6] videos, though his popularity plateaued over the course of the year. Then on June 25th, 2016, Gavin's online fame skyrocketed after Twitter user "@wedecideit"^[3] tweeted a series of Vine videos starring Gavin, with each instance garnering tens of thousands of likes and retweets. The same day, a Twitter account was created under the handle "@GavMemes" that amassed over 41,000 followers in four weeks.^[7] On July 13th, Smosh published a list of the 19 cutest Gavin vines.^[4] On July 17th, Nick Mastodon tweeted a picture of Gavin in an upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly.^[5] On July 19th, Katy Perry retweeted a post that had a picture of Gavin with the caption "my favorite celebrity" (pictured below).

Gavin Speaks Chinese

On November 11th, 2018, CNN^[11] published a report entitled "How an eight-year-old American boy became a viral sensation in China." In the article, CNN tells of Gavin's fame in China where he is said to be "Gavin seems to be more popular in China than in the US." There he is known as "the fake smile boy," and his images, which include GIFs and photos, have been shared on messaging apps like WeChat.

On June 9th, 2019, the China HunanTV Official Channel YouTube channel posted a video featuring Gavin speaking Mandarin. The post received more than 1,400 views in three days (shown below).

That day, Twitter user @yuehuaent posted the video, receiving more than 4.2 million views in three days.^[9] The video was then shared by Twitter user @mrsryuk, causing the video to go viral, generating more than 269,000 likes and 60,000 retweets in three days (shown below).

Twitter user @mishawn_eugene tweeted,^[10] "Actually it’s turns out he’s a huge hit in China! A lot of people in China idolize him for his reactions enough there’s stickers exclusively of his reactions on Line or Weibo etc. Makes sense for him to learn the language since his fan base is so large." The tweet received more than 4,200 likes and 115 retweets in two days (shown below).