Who is Dan Bilzerian? Why is his net worth constantly being Googled? And why does he always seem to be surrounded by insanely hot, and mostly topless women, like Lindsey Pelas?
The man's meteoric rise into the internet A-list started with just one five-second clip, lifted from the live TV coverage of the 2013 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It shows a player sitting at a felt table, betting on a hand, with $7 million in the pot. Or at least that's what you think it shows the first time you watch it. But then the clip repeats, and repeats... until, finally, you notice the intensely staring, Tom Cruise-ish figure in the top-left corner of the screen. He's sitting in the spectators' gallery, bathed in blue mood-lighting, watching the game. More to the point, there's a young woman draped over him - black dress, long hair, adoring eyes - who appears to be employed for the sole task of, well... stroking his beard.
The beard stroking moment is at 1:43:39
Thus the internet - and the world - was introduced to the strange and unsettling phenomenon of Dan "Blitz" Bilzerian, the 35-year-old son of an exiled Eighties corporate raider, and a kind of Bruce Wayne-meets-Hugh Hefner for the social-media age.
Before the beard-stroking video went viral, few had heard of Bilzerian outside the sweaty male sub-culture of high-stakes poker or the core group of fans who kept track of him online.
One year later, however, and Bilzerian - a 5ft, 9 and a half inches tall, barrel-chested former US Navy Seal trainee and self-described "venture capitalist" who splits his time between Los Angeles and Vegas - is one of the biggest stars on the internet, and a man through whom millions now vicariously live out their fantasies in real time.
Crowned the King of Instagram by his followers (he has over 16 million of them, and adds another 20,000 or so a day) his feed documents a lifestyle so outrageous and seemingly free of moral, financial or legal constraints, it's as though he inhabits a Jason Statham movie, or a Hunter S Thompson novel - only with faster cars, less inhibited females, and more advanced weaponry.