In this opinion piece, Which-50.com’s Andrew Birmingham and KINSHIP Digital’s Mike Green take a look at what have been the biggest retweeted stories over the past week. And stand aside Justin Bieber there’s a new pretty young thing in town, local lad, Troye Sivan…

Girls love curls … and boy bands. That’s good news for Twitter, as the boy bands and other pretty people dominated a very busy Retweet Report — which saw activity spike to 4.4 million retweets instead of the usual 3.3 million.

And buried under the avalanche of pre-pubescent meanderings there were still a few thinky nuggets to be found.

Celebrity is the core business of Twitter, as we have pointed out before. That’s why boy bands like One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer (not to mention the omnipresent Justin Bieber) feature so prominently.

This week, however, they were all usurped by South African-born gay Australian heart throb, movie star (X-Men) and YouTube sensation (thank you Ms Montauben) Troye Sivan, whose tweet “Happiest Place” linked to a photo of what looks like a recording studio. Ironically, he doesn’t appear especially happy — or maybe that’s what passes for moody and brooding these days.

And he could do with a haircut. It’s back to school week after all.

Sivan has 3.8 million followers on YouTube and 3.3 million followers on Twitter and actually does some good in the world occasionally with all that delicious reach instead of just trying to flog a brand or a latest piece of highly processed, 3D-printed music.

His coming out video, for instance, was huge and he uses his influence to provide solace to fans in his ever-expanding base when they find themselves similarly confronted by difficult choices.

Of course, Sivan shared the retweet platform with other members of the ever-popular boy band mafia including “Jai” (@nanashemefan) and our old chums of 1D.

Of course there was also space on the retweet list this week for a few people over the age of 20.

Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain, for instance, scored a hit with this pithy and pictorial observation:

And journalist Dave Donovan found favour amongst the Twitterati with this contribution: “Lady calls Turnbull’s office to talk about women being molested on Nauru. Told to call Lifeline if worried about it. https://t.co/TgvhrSaUYV”

Finally, even Crazy Bob Katter got a look in this week from underneath his giant Stetson with “KAP call on Government to end blame game over Queensland Nickel — find a solution and focus on saving jobs https://t.co/37tFwCDBmW”