Who Is Horror Skunx? 'TAF - The Aura Farmer' Came Out After His Horse's Wedding

Horror Skunx is the YouTube name of a visual artist and musician from the Netherlands who introduces himself on his channel only as Winston. He writes that he has a degree in visual effects from the Netherlands Film Academy, that he started the channel in 2020, and that he handles both the pictures and the sound. His newest song, 'TAF - The Aura Farmer', went up on Friday 13 November and topped YouTube's US daily chart of music videos for that date with 506,387 views.

TAF is a horse. Horror Skunx gave the character his first song on 9 October, 'The Aura Farmer', whose second verse has him shouting that he is a horse, and that video had 19.35 million views by 14 November. The new song is the horse's second, and the video's title adds a rooster rival, Larper Larry.

Who is Horror Skunx, and is he Dutch?

The channel gives its country as the Netherlands, and its About text, written in his own voice, calls him 'a professional visual artist and musician from the Netherlands'. On his channel he gives only his first name, and we do not print a surname here.

The YouTube account dates from 25 February 2019, and by 14 November it had 9.86 million subscribers, 299 videos and 3.63 billion views. Most of those views came from videos about characters other people made, songs among them. The biggest songs are about horror creatures and meme figures: 'Liar', for Shin Sonic, and 'Hungry Pig', for Choo Choo Charles, are both near 109 million, and 'Ratatung', for Tung Tung Tung Sahur, is near 78 million. Since 10 July the songs have followed one running story: first Verity, a character his descriptions credit to another creator, ThatMob, then a band and a 'Lord' version of Verity, and then the horse.

For business mail, his video descriptions give a CAA address and Skunx Studios. Steam lists Skunx Games, Skunx Games B.V. in its copyright line, as developer and publisher of the horror game Dark Pals, with a second chapter planned for 2027.

What is TAF? A horse from space and his wedding livestream

The initials stand for The Aura Farmer, and every chorus sings 'Aura Farmer' twice before the initials. The song opens on a twist of Neil Armstrong's Moon-landing line, “That's one small step for a horse”, before a voice asks what his name is. In the first verse he comes down from space, and once on Earth he resets the calendar to year zero.

At 20:00 UTC on 13 November the channel began a livestream billed as the wedding of T.A.F. and Verity, who would leave it as 'Mr. Aura Farmer, and Mrs. Verity Farmer', in the words of the stream's description. The bride and groom are characters, not people. The stream ran about 1 hour 40 minutes and had 2.2 million views a day later. The song went up at 21:45 UTC, about four minutes after the stream ended, and a second channel, Horror Skunx 2, posted a wedding recap at about 03:15 UTC on 14 November.

We did not watch the stream. Under the song, about 600 of the latest 3,000 comments name Larper Larry; 150 of those also mention the wedding, and 136 use crash, ruin or interrupt in some form.

What the 'TAF - The Aura Farmer' lyrics say about aura farming and Lord Larry

In internet slang, aura is the cool a person gives off, and aura farming is putting it on for an audience. The horse's joke is that he believes his own supply is endless. The video's description prints the full lyrics, each section labelled.

The chorus calls him the universe's saviour and sings 'Aura Farmer' 14 times in 2 minutes 39 seconds. In the comments, 102 of the 3,000 bring up Jesus, Christ or a saviour.

Twice, in a pre-chorus first heard at 0:36, he declares that he likes boys, girls and more besides, and that he likes your mind but prefers your looks. It is the line commenters talk about most: 111 use the word bisexual or pansexual about the horse.

His second verse makes him your daily feed, so you will not need television. He wants all eyes on him, and the boast ends on 'holy guacamole' and, going by the comments, a crude sight gag in the video at 1:17 to 1:20. Of the 357 comments that give a time, 87 point there, more than to any other moment.

Then the bridge hands the song to Larry. A larper, from LARP or live-action role-play, is someone acting a part, and Larry acts it with every phrase he can find: aura, mewing (pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth in the belief it sharpens the jaw), jawline, sigma, no cap, simping, nonchalant. He twice asks to be addressed as a lord, “Call me Lord Larry baby”, and when he finally asks TAF to say his name, the horse answers with the nickname instead.

'TAF' is slower and louder than the first Aura Farmer song

By our measurements 'TAF' runs at 107.7 bpm in F minor, and the October song at 123.0 in E minor. On the same measurements the new mix is about 2.4 decibels louder and has less space between its quiet and loud parts (a dynamic range figure of 5.9 against 8.9); an EBU loudness reading gives the whole track a range of only 2.5 LU, so its level barely moves.

Our sound classifier hears funk in both verses and disco through most of the song, with a 'music for children' label on the stretch from 0:08 to 0:38. The video is not set as made for children, though: YouTube turns comments off on those, and this one had about 14,000 by 14 November. The chorus takes about 60 of the 159 seconds. The pre-chorus is the busiest stretch, about four words a second, and between 2:10 and 2:22 the classifier hears saxophone and brass. The video's description thanks TheDarthGlader for performing brass.

As a novelty song it is well made, but it needs its video. On Spotify, kworb.net's count on 28 October gave all 75 Horror Skunx tracks 82.6 million streams together and the first Aura Farmer song 1.29 million; by 14 November that song's video had 19.35 million YouTube views.

'TAF' tops YouTube's US chart and trends in 16 countries

On YouTube's US chart for 13 November, 'TAF' was No. 1 with 506,387 views, ahead of 414,974 for No. 2. That was about three times the US views of the only two of his songs since July to chart on their own release dates: 'Be My Friend (The Verity Band)' had 166,699 and placed 25th, 'Master of Humanity (Lord Verity)' 169,545 and 19th. 'The Aura Farmer' only entered the next day, at No. 9. In the US daily charts we read back to July 2024, no Horror Skunx video had placed higher than sixth before. In the UK, 'TAF' was sixth on 13 November with 68,129 views. It was not in YouTube's global top 100 for that date.

At 22:17 UTC on 14 November it was trending in 16 of the 68 countries where YouTube publishes a trending list: No. 1 in the UK and Iceland, No. 2 in the US, Norway and Russia. At home in the Netherlands it was No. 7; Al Shami's 'Taa', the Syrian song we reviewed on 12 November, was No. 1 there. The old song climbed the same day: 'The Aura Farmer' rose from 62nd to 23rd in the US and from 91st to 29th in the UK on 13 November.

The five songs in this story since 10 July have come out on Fridays, four or five weeks apart, between about 20:15 and 21:45 UTC. On 14 November, 36 days after it went up, 'The Aura Farmer' had 19.35 million views. We expect 'TAF' to pass that in three weeks, by 4 December (UTC), and we will check the count that day, as we do for every new release we review.