Riyadh Khalaf is standing on St Stephen’s Green when he is approached by two young women. “Are you Riyadh K?” asks one, referring to his YouTube handle. The two young women are Norwegian, on holidays in Dublin. After gamely chatting to them for a few moments, Khalaf volunteers to take a photo with one of the women. She whips out a collapsible selfie stick and records a brief video for her vlog. While the interaction might seem improbable, it’s par for the course for 28-year-old Khalaf. His YouTube channel has almost 372,000 subscribers, where his videos have racked up more than 45 million views. Some of his most popular videos touch on his experience of being a young gay man growing up in Ireland, and have won him a legion of young fans from the LGBT+ community. As a result, he often gets stopped on the street and receives messages from fans across the world, from Alaska to Pakistan.