Usually seen in Guelph’s downtown core with a speaker balanced on his head and a popular hit song playing, Long Chung has been an animated street performer for nearly seven years - carving out a spot in a niche market that has boosted his social media presence.
Born in Guelph, the 26-year-old started his entertainment routine in 2015, combining his skills as a dancer while balancing a speaker on his head.
Having entertained locals for years, the rise in social media content creation, particularly TikTok, has given Chung the opportunity to win over a following roughly the same size as Guelph's population.
He has racked up an impressive 122,200 followers on TikTok and amassed 2.3 million likes on his videos.
Going by LongTendo225, his videos have accumulated over eight million views, with his top three videos sitting at over two million views each.
Chung said it all started in 2015 when he was 19 and doing his best to perform on the streets of Guelph and entertain people as a singer and dancer.
Within two years, he began to note some positive reactions from crowds and began to harness the energy and develop his choreographed performance.
After five years, Chung said he was noticed by Barstool Sports and on their Instagram page the video of him went viral with over 500,000 views.
Having gained some notoriety outside of the local community, Chung began working harder on his performance, starting to run short distances with the speaker balanced on his head and working to keep it from falling off.
He learned that using his finger delicately holding the top of the speaker, he was able to spin the speaker as he movies and dances - adding a new element to his performance.
Chung said he noticed he had a flat head, which lead to him having to incorporate some specialized techniques that he said he wouldn’t need to use if he was born with a more egg-shaped head.
Often practicing at home before heading downtown on weekends to make tips from fans, Chung credits his balancing ability of his xb40 and XB41 speakers to a considerable amount of time he has spent at home working out the best techniques.
Having conquered the local downtown busking scene, Chung's performance spread to amongst the University of Guelph crowd, who stop him as he walks through the campus, with some even going so far as to paint the University of Guelph landmark cannon in homage to him.
Chung said he was first notified the cannon had been painted last week, and on Tuesday afternoon the cannon had not yet been painted over.
Long has won over the university crowd who frequently ask for his photos and shoutouts in their videos and piggyback on his popularity to create their own TikTok videos using his as the selling point.
