“Do what you love! Because you’ll get so good at it, they’ll pay you to do it!” That’s not exactly what your parents told you growing up, is it? Well maybe they should have, because for Shaun and Laurelle Mellet’s children, this capitalist mantra worked like a charm: Their now 20-year-old middle son is quickly turning into the epitome of the 21st century celebrity, a YouTube sensation turned pop star who expertly combines an undeniable talent for songwriting with a knack for social media. Throw some puppy-eyed good looks into the mix, and there you have him: Troye Sivan, your little sister’s new favorite singer.

Especially since his official coming out at the tender age of 18 via YouTube vlog (duh), his subscriptions have been skyrocketing, and currently his channel is sitting pretty at just above 3.6 million followers, having racked up more than 215 million views overall. Not bad for a self-taught video blogger from the coast of Western Australia, huh?

Okay, great, I hear you say, but what does all that have to do with me? You’re not some pre-teenage girl with too much time on her hands watching YouTube tutorials, you say? You’re a grown ass gay man visiting a porn site for gay men? That’s right, so let me give you the bullet points real quick: Troye Sivan is a) gay, so you clearly have something in common (see what I did there?); b) a surprisingly gifted musical artist, thus disproving that a given scenario ‘teenage YouTuber wants to extend his 15 minutes of fame to durable pop star status by churning out some generic trash pop songs in hopes that at least one of them might stick’ automatically spells disaster; c) is on the verge of breaking through internationally, and I’m talking big scale here; and oh, have I mentioned that d) he’s damn cute (his mom is actually a former model – imagine that)?

But what makes this Troye Sivan so exciting, you ask? (And why, I hear you say, does this guy keep asking me weird rhetorical questions? – just chill out, man, I’m trying to make a point here, gosh.)

So really though, what does set him apart from his peers, from other highly talented gay male artists in mainstream pop – say, Sam Smith? Good point: British singer Sam Smith, showered with praise and awards since the release of his debut LP In the Lonely Hour in May 2014, seems to have quickly become the new poster child for gays around the world, landing top-notch collaborations (Disclosure, Mary J. Blige, John Legend) and turning each of his singles into hits – the last in line being the new James Bond theme song, “Writing’s on the Wall”. But Smith, despite his tender young age of 23, appeals mostly to a mature audience with his tasteful brand of adult contemporary blue-eyed soul that is oh-so-dear to the Grammy Award committee. Yes: he is openly gay, but that fact alone doesn’t make him a suitable advocate for gay rights. Mind you, I’m not saying he’s not, but Sam Smith has become the mainstream’s new favorite gay pet first and foremost because – and I say this in the nicest and most respectful way possible – he’s very non-threatening. He doesn’t cry freedom, and unassuming and polite, Smith often comes off as a little shy in interviews and at public events such as award shows; his music, while emotional, is easy to listen to and his videos are classy with just the right amount of melancholy. Not exactly the cloth that cultural revolutions are cut from.

Next on my list is Olly Alexander. Not familiar? Well, you’re kinda taking the words right out of my mouth (or keyboard, or whatever): His electro-pop trio Years & Years, who released their debut album Communion in July, is clearly on the rise, having notched a massive hit with their single “King”, yet the group’s appeal still seems to lie mostly with a mainly gay pop avant-garde audience. As a member of exactly that, Troye Sivan, ever the proficient networker, has already declared his “love” for his British colleague: “He’s really nice,” Troye said in a very candid interview with Popjustice about Olly, who by the way has an impressive acting résumé under his belt and is currently dating Clean Bandit member Neil Milan Amin-Smith, and that he would “want to hang out with him. A lot.” (wink wink!) He also expressed interest in recording a romantic ballad for the Years & Years frontman’s hypothetical (and probably inevitable) solo album. A GAY LOVE DUET, you guys! Can someone please make that happen? Anyway, mainstream fame is not out of reach for Years & Years – because, as we all learned from Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones when she turned her newest toyboy Smith into a movie star: “First come the gays, then the girls, then the industry!” (or in this case, the general public) – but 25-year-old Olly Alexander’s time seems yet to come (and, having recently met him in person, I can assure you that it will).

Troye Sivan’s time is right now. He already has the teen girl market on lock (and we all know that’s where the money lies), with the gay audience prone to follow. Concert tickets to his current first headliner world tour were sold out in a matter of days, and if you check the Facebook event guest list for any given show, you will find that the vast majority is young and female. Teenage girls and gays: they’re the ones fighting brutal stan wars on social media and in online forums, and once you win their love, they ride and die for you. Troye is very aware of that and he caters to his core audience beautifully: “These songs are about boys,” he says often (as he did in a recent portrait on the LGBT outlet Advocate, musing that “the most important thing to me at this point in my career is being able to be honest in my songwriting”), and what teenager doesn’t like a pop star whom they can have a crush on and whose songs they can identify with on a basic level all at the same time?

Troye’s honesty is already paying off big time: after signing with Universal Music subsidiary EMI Australia on his 18th birthday, his major label debut EP TRXYE reached the number five spot on the U.S. album charts in 2014 on the heels of the singles “Happy Little Pill” and “The Fault in Our Stars (MMXIV)” (inspired by the novel-turned-blockbuster movie of the same name, whose author, John Green, publicly endorsed Troye’s song on Twitter), as did the follow-up EP WILD this September. While the first EP is cute, but rather forgettable aside from said singles, the latter showcases a stunning amount of artistic growth, musically as well as lyrically. Troye’s words are poetic, yet poignant – “The truth is, the stars are falling, babe / And I’d never ever thought that I would say / I’m afraid of the life that I’ve made” (from “Ease,” featuring the up-and-coming duo Broods from New Zealand) – and so mature in their bittersweetness that it’s sometimes hard to believe they were actually written by a teenager. His musical style has been likened to highly talented fellow pop artists such as Lorde or Frank Ocean, of whom Troye is a professed fan, and his full-length debut album Blue Neighbourhood – despite the digital native’s admitted dislike of the outdated format – is set for an early December release.

But Troye Sivan is more than a pretty multimedia wunderkind with a heaping side of musical talent (a dime a dozen? Yeah, not really, though). He has a vision and a social consciousness far beyond his years. The music video trilogy for the singles “Wild”, “Fools” and latest cut “Talk Me Down” depicts a young romance between two teenage boys; “puppy love situation,” Troye calls it in the Advocate piece, regretful he never experienced such a thing, “that relationship without any baggage.” Yet #GrowingUpGay comes with a lot of it – baggage, I mean – it’s never ‘normal’ nor easy and it can be especially tough for a young person to cope with the fact that their ‘lifestyle’ isn’t part of the so-called mainstream. That’s why Troye feels a responsibility not only to reach out to and actively interact with his followers via his various online platforms, but also to lead by example: “I know being able to see a gay artist who was living a happy, successful, and healthy life is something I would’ve appreciated seeing when I was 13 years old. The thought of being that for someone else is really awesome to me, and it motivates me to keep living my truth openly, honestly, and proudly,” he says.

According to Troye, his label leaves him a good deal of creative (and obviously personal) freedom, and his artistic decisions, like Taiwanese illustrator Hsiao-Ron Cheng’s dreamy artworks for both WILD and Blue Neighbourhood or working with young emerging producers and songwriters instead of big household names, attest to a reliable taste level. Troye’s fearlessness and firm belief in who he wants to be and what he wants to do has not only won him the hearts of millions of love-hungry teenagers all over the world (and, yes, I might as well just admit it, mine too), but also made him several high-profile admirers: Sam Smith (you know, whom we talked about earlier) tweeted some of Troye’s song lyrics and wrote on Instagram that “his voice does things to my body”, and none other than Taylor Swift heavily endorsed WILD across her social media channels, calling it “STUNNING AND AWESOME” as well as “#EPgoals”. Maybe not so coincidentally, the EP’s global streams on Spotify increased 20 percent overnight – and stop me if I’m wrong, but 25-year old Taylor might know a thing or two about finding pop star success without compromising artistic integrity, and the American sweetheart and her Australian counterpart are not so different after all: beautiful and gifted, they both worked hard to achieve their goals and build their brand from a very early age on, and they both crossed over in their own way; Taylor from country to pop, Troye from YouTube to the charts.

Just like Taylor Swift pretty much calls the shots in the female pop circus right now (whether you like it or not), Troye Sivan is very well on his way to becoming the leader of a new gay pop élite ready to take on the mainstream. So I have one last question for you before this class in everything Troye is dismissed – but don’t worry, it’s an easy one: Is the world ready for a gay male version of Taylor Swift? I know you know this one, so let’s all say it together: HELL YEAH!