Matt Cullen is Living Our Queer Life

Matt Cullen is a Los Angeles-based content creator who is using his platform to share the diversity that is the LGBTQ community. From a young age, he wanted to be in entertainment and knew he would end up in Hollywood or New York City. After moving to Los Angeles after studying acting in New York, his focus shifted. COVID gave him the silence to reflect on what was bringing him happiness. During that time, he decided to embark on his most ambitious, ongoing project. His series Our Queer Life has been diving into the queer community for a few years now, garnering hundreds of thousands of views and putting the realities of our community – the funny, the heartbreaking, the misunderstood – in the spotlight. In his series, he has interviewed everyone from celebrities, age gap couples, and gay cowboys, to the elderly, and, in an effort to fight the stigma regarding the queer sex community, has interviewed porn stars, escorts, and former streetwalkers. At the foundation of every one of his videos is his sincerity. Matt is not a flashy influencer, he listens, crafts his episodes with skill, and puts a lot of heart into his work.

One of his first videos that went viral featured Mousie, a trans woman and former street hustler. Gaining her trust in his special way, she opened up her life to Matt, sharing her history of jail time, drug use, and sex work. The episode quickly got 300,000 views as this heartbreaking and heartwarming story started to circle. Mousie would be the subject of four episodes of Our Queer Life. Sadly, in the final episode, Matt shared that Mousie had passed. Matt says these episodes have affected him the most. Being so close to Mousie and having an intimate chat with all of his subjects, is Matt ever afraid of getting too close to his guests, especially in some questionable environments?

I never have felt in danger ever on my show. But I also really have trusted my gut with how I feel. I’ve also just learned that people operate from a place of respect. And if you go into a situation and you respect the person and you treat them with respect and listen to them and support them emotionally and mentally, they’re going to do that back to you. I felt the safest in some of these episodes and some of these people that maybe are the street hustlers or people that maybe some would think I would be scared around, but I actually have found that I feel the safest around those people because they are just honest and they say what they mean, and they mean what they say. If you treat them with respect, then they’re going to cheat you with respect. That has also really opened my eyes and taught me a lot about the world and our community as well.

As his series has grown over the years, so have his clicks. He is one of the leading influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He does everything himself, the editing, the booking, the hosting, the posting, he’s a one-man show. With views going into the hundreds of thousands per episode, does he feel the pressure to one-up himself and have all eyes on him?

It does. Every time that a video gets a lot of views, and it makes me nervous, I also remind myself that that is great. Maybe it’s stirring up conversation in the comments or a little bit of controversy. But I think that that’s what art good art does, it pushes the boundaries, and it causes conversation and it causes people to look at something in a new way. So I just try to remind myself when an episode really gets big or a TikTok goes really big or something, that this is what I want. I want my content to reach new eyes, and I want my content to reach eyes that maybe wouldn’t have clicked this before. Maybe some aren’t interested in watching content about our community, but they’re learning. They click the video and then they learn so much. Sometimes when a video gets big and I start reaching that new demographic and I start seeing the trolls come out I’m like, oh, great, we’re going to this new territory, I remind myself that that’s a good sign because it means that it’s reaching people that would not have normally watched my content before. So that’s pushing the needle forward in terms of acceptance and knowledge for our community.

I remind myself the reason why I’m here is because I’ve created stories and I’ve picked stories that I am genuinely interested in. But of course, as your series grows or you start getting brand deals involved, or you start getting agents involved and they need a certain view count, it can be very dangerous to fall into that category of like, oh, well this is not going to bring enough views so I’m not going to do the story. You feel the pressure as your channel grows on YouTube – I need to top it. I need to top the next episode and the next episode. That’s something I’ve been going through lately, but I just try to remind myself that the reason my channel is doing so well is because it’s authentic to me. If an episode only gets 40,000 views because of that, it’s okay because, at the end of the day, it’s about my catalog of episodes. If I’m passionate about a story, but it only gets 40,000 views, I’m still going to do it because that’s still 40,000 people who are going to watch it.

Photo by Ashley Purnell

What are the most important factors Matt subscribes to when he puts an episode together?

It’s grown and morphed as I’ve learned so much about the YouTube space and that every medium is different. If you’re putting content out on YouTube, you have to learn about the YouTube space. If you’re putting content out on TikTok, you have to learn about the TikTok space. But on YouTube specifically, I feel like what I’ve learned works for me is finding a story that is clickable and something that maybe somebody would think is juicy and a little scandalous. But then you click the video, and my main goal is to show the human side of that person. So, let’s say I’m doing an episode on a sex worker that works the streets in Puerto Rico, which I’ve done, and I sat with these three beautiful trans women on the street that they walk. That seems clickable because that’s so enticing, and that’s a world no one’s really seen before. But then we sit down and we talk about their family and them being scared when they leave for work every day, that maybe they’re not going to come home and see their family. They want for more in life and just trying to paint them as human beings so that when someone clicks the episode they think it’s going to be one thing, but when they leave the episode they really feel connected and they feel like, wow, that could be my sister, or that could be me, or they see themselves in that person so that everybody has more respect for everybody else. The goal of my series is to paint the human side of somebody.

With Matt being the heart of the series, does he feel the pressure to be a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community or act in a certain way?

I do feel it and it has been an adjustment, but I love it. I feel so thankful that what I’ve created has resonated with people in a positive way. When I do go out and have fun, I feel like the people who have watched my show have a positive reaction to me. Especially with YouTube, you can put things out on YouTube and you can get 2 million views but it’s hard to grasp what 2 million views is because I’m just sitting at home on my couch editing these videos by myself, clicking by myself, seeing the numbers but not really realizing the numbers. So I actually really love going out and being able to talk with people because it makes me realize and motivates me to see the impact that my work is having on people.

Not only is Matt intimately involved in the interview process, but he relives that intimacy as he spends hours editing his pieces. Considering how heavy the themes can be sometimes, how does he maintain his mental health during the process?

I honestly feel like part of the reason why I realize this is my destiny is because I don’t carry it with me. But people’s strengths inspire me. Of course, these stories are heavy and people go through a lot and it makes me sad, but I also feel like these people are still living and they pick themselves up after a hard day and they’re trying to make things work and trying to get some money so they can feed themselves or whatever the case may be. And I just find so much inspiration in that. Even though my life, of course, is so much different than theirs, I leave these interviews feeling so inspired and motivated by every single guest I’ve had on, no matter what their difficulties are. I just try to focus on that. I think that’s what really keeps me going. I think that’s really the stance that I take in how I edit the episodes, is just really showing that life is hard for so many people and we are always going to be thrown hurdles.

Matt has featured a number of celebrities on his show, but they aren’t the focus. Even when he does talk to a celeb, the content is always regarding important issues of our community. His library is ever-changing. Why does Matt insist on featuring everyday walks of life?

My show isn’t called Our Hero Queer Life or Our Queer Left-Leaning Life or whatever some people would want my show to be called. My show’s called Our Queer Life. So, if I don’t show everybody, even people that I maybe don’t agree with politically or don’t agree with in whatever the case may be, I just don’t think that that would be fair, especially with what I’m trying to do. I want to show everybody, and some people stir up people’s feathers, but that’s good too. I made a promise to myself when the show first started that I’m not going to only pick certain people if I agree with their stories or agree with the way they’re living their lives. I want to pick everybody in the queer community so that people can look back on our time and in 30, 40 years from now and look back at the series and it accurately portrays the community to this day. That’s really the goal.

And what has Our Queer Life taught Matt most about himself?

That’s a hard question. I honestly always say that I think that the show has really changed who I am and made me the person that I am today. I am someone who looks at people now in a completely different way. I know that everyone has a story, and everybody has a life that they lived and things they are going through or things that they’ve gone through. I think that sometimes you can stay so in your bubble of your friends and your life and your routine. This show has made me yearn to go outside of my bubble and try things new and talk to new people. I have learned so much about humanity and about our community that I would not have learned had I not done this series.

And his message to the community this Pride?

We all need to stand together. A lot of the episodes I’ve done have shown that sometimes there is segregation within the letters of our community, and I think it’s so important that we listen to our trans community and we stand with them, especially in the times we’re at right now. We’re stronger as one. We need all of us to stand together and listen to each other and be there for each other and fight the fight together.

You can watch Our Queer Life on YouTube.