Matthew Silver

Submission 36,654

About

Matthew Silver is a performance artist in New York City who plays a "village idiot" character, acting as a "clown" and "trickster" in order to parody social norms.^[1] He has been in several viral videos in which he performs his antics.

History

Before his performance art appeared online, Silver appeared in an experimental short film called "The Shadow Monster" (shown below, left). The earliest recorded instances of his performance art online came on November 30th, 2011, in a video in which he wore a white dress and sang the Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline" (shown below, right).

Silver's work began appearing more online in the coming year as he began to gain notoriety for his bizarre performances. He was profiled by Paper Magazine^[4] during this time. On December 10th, 2012, documentary channel The Back of the Busk posted a documentary about him in which Silver explained the impetus behind his work, gaining over 104,000 views (shown below).

He appeared in several other documentaries and his performances continued to be posted online in the coming years. However, it wasn't until the summer of 2014 when he went viral. On June 12th, 2014, YouTube user Rony Portillo published a video in which they stopped to interview Silver and were struck by his inspirational words that came along with his character's eccentricities (shown below). The video gained over 2.7 million views and brought Silver some of his most widespread attention to date. He was covered by Ozy^[2] magazine two months later. A user on /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] asked about him shortly after the video's spread as well.

Silver went viral again in May of 2017 thanks to two videos of his performances. One in which Silver preaches a message of love was covered by Time Out New York on the 13th (shown below, left).^[5] Another found him interacting with a fidget spinner published by NYC artist New York Nico, also published on the 13th. (shown below, right). On YouTube, the video gained over 118,000 views. It also gained 2.2 million views on Facebook on the Viral Thread^[6] page.