Galvin The Monkey

About

Galvin The Monkey is a name applied to various monkeys appearing in videos, commonly pocket monkies owned by YouTuber ewsell,^[1] for comedic effect. Galvin is often depicted as a monkey wearing expensive-looking hypebeast clothing. Captions attached to Galvin videos commonly show admiration for his "drip," or style. In 2020, videos of Galvin became significantly popular on TikTok.

Origin

YouTuber ewsell is the main source of Galvin the Monkey videos. She owns multiple pocket monkeys and frequently uploads videos of them in various outfits, playing, bathing, eating, and more. On March 26th, 2018, she uploaded her first video, featuring a pocket monkey (named Princess) wearing Peppa Pig branded clothes (shown below). One of the most popular monkeys on the channel is Huhua, the subject of many Galvin videos, although all of ewsell's monkeys are used interchangeably in the memes, as well as random monkey videos from across the web.

On May 3rd, 2020, ewsell uploaded a video of a pocket monkey wearing a blue Adidas hoodie, garnering over 684 thousand views in 5 months (shown below, left). This video is used in one of the most popular Galvin memes on TikTok. TikTok videos featuring Galvin are commonly set to the song "funee monkee gif" by i9bonsai (shown below, right).

On March 8th, 2020, Twitter user bonzailamar^[2] uploaded a video of their "Top 4 monkeys," featuring various low-quality videos of monkeys with human names like "Ethan" and "Josh." Bonzailamar uploaded three more of these videos throughout the month, posting the full series on his YouTube channel on May 27th, 2020 (shown below, left). The video became popular through reposts on meme pages, and was reacted to by CallMeCarson in May of 2020.^[3] It's likely this video inspired Galvin the Monkey memes, as well as the trend of applying a human name and characteristics to footage of monkeys for comedic effect. This video inspired more YouTubers to post "top monkey" videos, some of which do include ewsell's monkeys under different names (example shown below, right).

Spread

In early September of 2020, TikTok users started sharing videos of "Galvin the Monkey" under the hashtag #galvinthemonkey. Many of these videos come from dedicated Galvin fan accounts, which share almost exclusively Galvin and monkey-related content. One of the earliest Galvin memes comes from TikToker betahuman^[4] on September 8th, 2020. The video shows a person petting a small monkey set to the song "funee monkee gif," with the on-screen caption, "YOOOOO!! It's Galvin say hello to Galvin" (shown below, left). The video garnered over 551 thousand views in a month. The next day, they posted another Galvin video, this time using ewsell's video of Huhua in the Adidas hoodie (shown below, right). The video garnered over 2 million views and 408 thousand likes in a month.

On September 10th, TikToker mxnkiboe^[5] uploaded a Monkey Haircut video captioned, "Galvin getting fresh cut?!?! He do be fresh doe," gaining over 9,400 views in just under a month (shown below, left). On September 12th, a TikTok page named ewsell^[6] opened up, although it's unlikely this is owned by the YouTuber of the same name. On September 13th, they posted the same video of Huhua in the Adidas, with the on-screen caption, "YO GALVIN KINDA DRIPPY. RATE THE FIT 1-10" (shown below, right). The video gained over 1.3 million likes and 192 thousand likes in just under a month, and the page continues to upload Galvin videos using ewsell's YouTube videos.

On September 15th, TikTok page galvin.gang,^[7] dedicated exclusively to Galvin content, posted their first video (shown below, left) garnering over 917 thousand views in 22 days. The page grew quickly, hitting over 53 thousand followers in the same span of time. Their most popular upload (as of October 7th) came on September 18th, garnering over 1.1 million views and 185 thousand likes (shown below, right).

As of October 7th, videos under the hashtags #galvinthemonkey and #galvin have over 20.2 and 20.3 million views on TikTok respectively. The sound, "funee monkee gif" has been used in over 55 thousand videos.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References