PETALING JAYA, May 13 — What started out as a playful entry onto his newly created TikTok page, has turned Yus Zulkifli into an overnight sensation on social media.
That’s mainly because social media users were amused by his witty video of himself blow-drying United States president Donald Trump’s hair, as it swayed in the wind in one of his recent press conferences.
Yus’ video has since garnered over 2.5 million views, with over 75,000 shares on Facebook alone, as he told Malay Mail in an interview that he never expected the video to gain as much traction as it did.
“I’m really surprised because I think in less than a week it reached a million views and now it’s more than two million,” said Yus.
“When I posted it on Facebook, after an hour there were around a hundred shares already, then a little while later it was in the thousands, then ten thousands. It just kept going.”
The makeup artist slash content creator added that he was particularly amazed that his “Trump video” went viral, as he put a lot less effort into it as compared to his other video content.
“I did not expect anything from it. Whenever I create a video for my social media, I ensure that there is proper lighting, a proper camera, things like that,” said Yus.
“But this video, the lighting wasn’t proper. I just took my tripod and recorded it.”
The 37-year-old also said that he didn’t plan ahead to create the comical video, as it was more of a “spur of the moment”.
“I was blow-drying my hair and at that same time, I was watching a video of Trump giving a speech on YouTube,” said Yus.
“When I saw his hair waving around in the wind, I thought ‘Okay I’ll just do it’ since I wanted to update my TikTok page anyway.”
Being a skilled makeup artist, Yus also said that he felt inclined to create the clip, not just to poke fun, but also because of how “good” President Trump’s hair looks, despite his age.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to criticise his hair,” joked Yus.
“But what I can say is that, for a 73-year-old, he still has really good hair. There’s no bald spots or anything. You can even see how nice and flowy it is when the wind blows in the video.”
Yus added that the video has done wonders for his social media following of late, as many of his newfound fans have followed him on social media, inadvertently helping him promote his makeup and content creation skills.
“I am someone who always creates makeup videos on my social media. But now because of the conditional movement control order, I can’t do makeup on anyone due to social distancing restrictions,” he said.
“That’s why I started this TikTok account. Just to find things to do and to make people laugh. But I didn’t know that this video would get so many views and help me gain more followers.
“Locals and even people from overseas have shared the video and then became my followers.”
He added that he hopes no one takes the video too seriously as it was only created to lighten the mood during the pandemic.
And Yus definitely achieved that as thousands of people from all over the world have reacted to his video, with it gaining so much popularity that it was even featured on TV9’s Di Hatiku news segment.
Social media users were quick to praise Yus for his creativity as well, thanking him for giving them something to laugh about while cooped up at home.
“It’s amazing with what people come up with when quarantined,” wrote one user.
“You should’ve used a vacuum cleaner,” wrote another.
