YouTube celebrity Connor Franta came
out gay in a new video posted Monday.
In the video, simply titled Coming
Out, Franta, 22, told his nearly 3.7 million subscribers that the
thought that he might be gay at 12 “terrified” him.
Being gay was “not a normal thing”
in the Midwest, he said.
“I felt so isolated, because I had
this secret that I couldn't even talk to myself about, let alone
other people. And it wasn't until my sophomore year in college that
I really thought about it,” he added.
But those fears proved unfounded as he
found support among family and friends.
“This whole thing that I had built up
inside me to be this huge deal for 22 years wasn't,” he said.
Franta added that he was publicly
coming out because he was sick of “censoring” himself.
“You are who you are and you should
love that person,” Franta said. (The video is embedded on this
page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
The video has already become one of the
comedian's most popular, racking up nearly 3 million views in 24
hours and more than 500,000 responses, a large majority of which were
supportive.