“There’s a weird thing where the internet, the meme culture, has to kind of approve and bring people in … You can’t force yourself into the culture. Fauci didn’t try,” said 19-year-old Kai Watson, who recently analyzed Fauci’s omnipresence in a YouTube video. “That’s why people love him.”

Using social-media platforms, influencers, and memes to spread issue awareness or political messages isn’t new. The 2020 election has already been branded “the year of the influencer,” after Democratic presidential hopefuls tried (and mostly failed) to leverage support from online stars to boost their popularity among young voters. Podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Ben Shapiro Show, and Pod Save America are must-stops for some political figures.

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What’s different about Fauci is his willingness to speak to young and diverse communities on the platforms they use most—and his ability to do it really well, says Mike Varshavski, a family-medicine physician and YouTuber who has partnered with Fauci.

“There’s no filter there,” Varshavski, who goes by Doctor Mike online, told me. “You end up realizing that this is a human sitting in front of you, not a political candidate. And the more we can humanize politicians, health-care experts, the more people are going to believe them and trust them—because they know how they think.”

Fauci’s approach stands in sharp contrast to, say, Michael Bloomberg’s: To get the former New York mayor’s name and message across, his presidential campaign tried to pay influencers to post about him. The effort fizzled shortly after it began. The strategy came across as cold, calculated, and disconnected from how young people use social media, Watson told me.

Watson and his high-school best friend, Chase Steele, both from Redmond, Washington, run a small YouTube channel where they recently discussed Fauci’s internet presence after seeing him pop up on the site’s homepage as a featured guest on the four popular shows. In each tight, 15-minute segment, Fauci fielded a range of questions about the coronavirus and COVID-19’s infectivity, the government’s response, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social-distancing recommendations. (Fauci’s office did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

The YouTube channels Fauci joined (hosted by Varshavski; the comedian Lilly Singh; the news commentator Philip DeFranco; and Trevor Noah, whose Daily Show maintains a lively presence on the platform) have a combined audience of 33 million people. Many of them are young, diverse Americans who don’t usually tune in to cable or network news, but who need to be informed about the virus. Each Fauci video has racked up more than 4 million views; Varshavski’s has garnered more than 5.3 million since March 29.