Tyler Oakley
WITH NO ROLE MODELS OF HIS OWN TO FOLLOW, TYLER OAKLEY IS REACHING OUT TO HELP AND SUPPORT MILLIONS OF YOUNG LGBT+ PEOPLE
WORDS: GUS PETERSON
‘THE NEW GENERATION’
YOUNG HERO AWARD
SUPPORTEDBY virgin HOLIDAYS
With 559 million views and more than eight million subscribers on YouTube, five million followers on Twitter, six million on Instagram and nearly three million likes on Facebook, it’s fair to say that Tyler Oakley has some reach. Since making the first of his 399 YouTube videos (which now has more than 420,000 views, by the way), Oakley has gone on to become — yes, I’m going to say it — a cultural phenomenon. For young LGBT+ people living outside major cities, visible role models are hard to come by, something Oakley himself experienced.