On his Twitter page in recent days, Jonah Mowry has been busy tweeting thanks to celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell, Lady Gaga and Paula Abdul.

The 14-year-old gay teen from Orange County, CA has gone from obscurity to internet sensation because of a heartbreaking and tearful YouTube video he made last summer about the pain of being bullied and his determination to stay strong. As Sia’s Breathe Me plays, he tearfully holds up flashcards describing his plight.

Because Jonah appears upbeat in more recent videos, some have questioned his credibility.

'To everyone who thinks I'm lying, I admit I was a bit douchy in my follow-up video and I'm sorry,' he wrote on Twitter Tuesday. 'I was excited. I'm still a kid. But I didn't lie.'

The teen had already written a detailed message to friends and supporters on his YouTube page explaining his state of mind when he made the video four months ago. He was 13 and dreading a new school year.

‘It was a very emotionally dark time in my life. … I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say. All I could think about were all the bad things that had been happening at school last year, every year for that matter.’

Jonah made the video, he says, to let his high school friends know that he was taking a stand ‘and to tell the haters at my middle school that I’m not going anywhere. I am who I am.’

He posted the video on YouTube before the start of the school year. Few saw it. But friends encouraged him to post it on his Facebook page which he did on Dec. 1. His parents saw it for the first time the next day.

‘Then.....all this happened,’ he writes.

How ‘all this’ happened is a fascinating example of how quickly an obscure video can go viral and change someone’s life.

The video had just over 200 views on YouTube when it was spotted on Dec. 3 by Gary and Larry Lane, gay twins from Los Angeles whose documentary, Hollywood to Dollywood, has been a hit at more than a dozen major film festivals this year.

‘When I first saw this video, I was sitting there with tears running down my face,” Gary Lane says. 'It only had 200 views and I thought, ‘There’s no way this video cannot be out there.’ I went through all the people I follow on Twitter - Rosie [O’Donnell], Ellen [DeGeneres], Perez [Hilton], Lisa Ling. Anyone with a voice with millions on followers.’

As of Tuesday, the video had been viewed more than 5 million times.

Among the first to react to the Lanes was the Oscar winning screenwriter of Milk, Dustin Lance Black. He quickly posted Jonah’s video on his personal blog and wrote: “You’re a magnificent creature, a beautiful soul and we need you in this world.”

But it was blogger Hilton who really put it on the map when he posted it to his site and reached out to a who’s who of LGBT celebrities and their straight allies.

'[Jonah] is so touched by all the love being sent his way,' Hilton wrote on his site this week. 'He tells us he is truly in a much better place.'

Andy Marra of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network said the teen's video illustrates a sobering reality about the bullying crisis in schools:  “We know there are far too many students like Jonah that experience harassment simply because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”