Two years ago, a video went viral of a little boy covered in paint appearing to be coerced in to singing ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, a popular song by a musician called Gotye by a crazed man in a pink wig. It was heavily implied at first that this boy was the missing 6-year-old Benjamin Rapoza from Hawaii but was later verified to be an incorrect theory by the Hawaii Police Department and missing child’s parents.
Still, it was believed that the boy in the video was a victim of kidnapping. Theories were even composed, claiming the man in the video to be John Podesta (unlikely) or Stephen Colbert (Similar looking).
After further investigation from independent researchers, journalists, and the like, a final conclusion had been made. The mystery is solved.
The original channel that uploaded the video was named FoxyOdriscoll, as other people on the internet noticed.
@FoxyODriscoll is also the name of a Twitter account, that, on March 14, was retweeted by someone named Jo Whiley. The retweet included the (now-defunct) link to the original video, along with the caption “”they’ve finally let me put it on after much persuasion!”.
An earlier tweet from the @FoxyOdriscoll account makes it apparent what this means. As part of a comment chain, they said (out of context) that “It’s my husband and son but they refused to go viral”. With that in mind, I think this was a video her family members recorded to cash in on a viral trend, which she uploaded to impress this Jo Whiley person.
The fact that it said “The Den’s version” in the description is in reference to her husband. I won’t link these peoples personal information but there is a Facebook under her real name and her husband is named Denis, which lines up with the tags.
Since I couldn’t find much using the Wayback Machine on the chart attack website, I decided to maybe give Twitter a go instead. Using the search query “gotye wig” and adding a from/until date of march 14th/15th 2012, I came across a single tweet (image attached) which had a YouTube link. As expected, the link does not work. However! The Wayback Machine has a snapshot of the site during the time the video was up, and on March 14th no less.
Here is the link: https://web.archive.org/web/20120314173538/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWcN_Mx4nIU
And, well, it seems that this video might just have been a father and his kid doing it for the laughs, judging by what the tweet says. The profile picture of the account shows a woman with a young boy who most likely is the boy in the video. Another tweet from a few days earlier also mentions the woman’s husband and son (mentioning u/jowhiley*) and also with the word viral, which I assume is a nod to the video.
There doesn’t seem to actually be a tweet from u/jowhiley on Twitter regarding this from the time u/foxyodriscoll tweeted on March 7th.
Given all of this info, I and others believe this was a Gotye parody that she uploaded and then took down once websites like Chart Attack started trolling her husband and calling him a pink-wigged maniac, etc. If the kid on her Facebook is the same one in the video, he’s still alive and in his early teens now. He probably just looks nervous in the video because of stage fright or something.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120314173538/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWcN_Mx4nIU
- https://www.reddit.com/r/NExpo/comments/o2dece/gotye_video_origin_found/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/NExpo/comments/o2co7p/i_think_i_cracked_the_gotye_mystery/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/NExpo/comments/o2ce73/i_found_the_channel_that_uploaded_the_gotye_video/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANo9C0mmYsg
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