Davey Wavey Launched His Video Career After Catching A Neighbor Masturbating

This is Queerty writer and photographer Matt Baume’s second in a series of interviews with social media stars, which launched with Chris Crocker. Stay tuned for part II and III of his exclusive interview with Davey Wavey.

“I have no fucking idea what I do,” laughs Davey Wavey when asked to describe his occupation. “I wear a lot of hats.” (But not many shirts.)

For years, Davey’s been placing himself — and his shirtless torso — front and center on YouTube, with inevitably strong reactions. (“Why would anyone listen to such a sissy Mary queen loser?” writes one Queerty commenter. “Love davey and I think he is great,” writes another.)

Queerty popped by Davey’s cool new pad in West Hollywood a few weeks ago to say hello to one of our most popular subjects, to learn more about what makes him tick, and, well, to photograph his meticulously toned body in as little clothing as possible.

Of course, he’s popular beyond his infamous shirtlessness. As his style has evolved, his videos have gotten more creative, such as of his videos such as “Straight Guys React to Gay Porn,” which the world has watched over 2 million times. But hidden behind those naughty videos is a noble goal: helping gay men feel better about themselves, and showing young straight people that gay guys are great.

As he now enters his thirties, Davey’s created quite a media empire for himself: his 677,819 YouTube subscribers have given him over 169 million views since he started making videos in 2006. He has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter, and close to 200,000 on Facebook. It’s a long way from his humble small-town Rhode Island upbringing.

But what is Davey Wavey? Well, he makes some seriously effective fitness videos, so he’s kind of the Internet’s personal trainer. He’s developing a line of merchandise. He manages upcoming YouTube talent. And of course he creates two videos every week for his own blog.

In other words, he’s a super-busy bee.

“People have this perception that you just turn on the webcam and you talk and you upload it,” he says. “The reality is that there’s a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes.”

That behind-the-scenes stuff is unsexy, but the videos wouldn’t be possible without it. Contracts, emails, research — it all goes in to making a crowd-pleasing couple of minutes of footage.

But it wasn’t always such an intense occupation. Davey got his start in 2007 when he saw his neighbor masturbating, and switched on his webcam to giggle about it. It was only his eighth youTube video at the time.

“It turns out ‘masturbating neighbor’ is something people search for on the internet,” he says. “I never had any intention of people watching watching my stuff. … And at first I was really put off by it. I was using Youtube as be as almost like a journal to look back on in like ten or twenty years. And that people were commenting on my life was scary and off putting to me. So initially I disabled all of my comments.”

Yup, as hard as it is to imagine, the first Davey Wavey videos were a one-way street. He’d talk to the Internet, but the Internet couldn’t talk back.

Maybe that’s why he’s been able to grow a thick skin against criticism — of which there’s plenty. In the beginning, he wasn’t making videos to please anyone. They were just for himself.

But as time went by, Davey warmed to the idea that thousands of people wanted to poke their noses into his life. And so he started speaking to a larger audience, and thinking about how to appeal to more people.

“Not that my videos are the secret to life,” he admits. “They’re mostly penis jokes.”

This was never the plan. In fact Davey was once on a career track that included a scholarship to a conservative Catholic school, majoring in business and then working for an LGBT nonprofit.

Coming in part two: the life Davey thought he would have, how he got that name and who watches his videos most. (Hint: it’s not gay men.)