Just because you win an Oscar doesn't mean you're a YouTube star. Just ask Matthew McConaughey.
The seemingly super-chill star had an "official" YouTube channel with only 240 subscribers, but that may change now that Reddit has discovered it. A Reddit poster linked to Mr. McConaughey's YouTube page on Thursday, and it's trending to the top of the site, driving traffic to the celeb's videos. As of this afternoon he was up to more than 8,000 subs.
"That's so [freaking] weird," said the top Reddit comment. "He's verified and everything. I'm genuinely shocked that an [Academy Award-winning] actor can put out a video and get under 1,000 views in a year."
Verified means YouTube confirmed it's an official account.
Mr. McConaughey has only posted six videos, four of them featuring himself talking straight into the camera. (In portrait mode for all those vertical-video haters out there.)
Fortunately for Wild Turkey bourbon, Mr. McConaughey's videos do much better when he's a pitchman. He narrated a short marketing film for the spirits maker and it has 275,000 views since posting in late July.
The A-list actor's own page qualifies as "deep into YouTube," a phrase popularized on Reddit, where there is a whole forum dedicated to obscure videos with less than 200,000 views.
Mr. McConaughey has one video with about 14,000 views, and that's only because of the interest driven from Reddit on Thursday. One video has less than 1,000.
The ones that feature Mr. McConaughey show him talking directly into the camera, and mostly he promotes charities like I Am Water.
The videos are quintessential Mr. McConaughey, even referring to himself in the third person: "McConaughey here."
The actor's YouTube channel also has promoted one of his latest movies, "The Secret Lives of Pets," with clips from the animated film.
Mr. McConaughey uses a service called WhoSay to help manage his social media. That's an app celebs use to post to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Mr. McConaughey might not be quitting his day job to go full YouTube star just yet, but he is a bit more plugged in at Twitter and Facebook, where he has 2.2 million and 5.1 million followers, respectively. Calls to his publicist were not returned.
On Facebook, he has posted the same videos and even racked up 2.5 million views on one of them.
