| “ | SPEED, IT'S BECAUSE I'M SPEED | ” |
―Speed hitting 1M subs | ||
Darren Watkins Jr. (born: January 21, 2003[1]), better known online as IShowSpeed (or simply Speed or Speedy), is an American YouTuber from Cincinnati, Ohio. He's known for his gaming & entertainment livestreams and for gaining over 1 million subscribers in a matter of days in 2021. He started to gain fame when his fanbase started publishing memes about him on TikTok.
History
He first created his account on March 21, 2016, and published his first video on it on December 21, 2017. He did his first livestream, about Fortnite, on December 28, 2018, but barely averaged with 2 viewers. Since the beginning of 2020 he started uploading and doing livestreams about the video games NBA 2K and Fortnite Battle Royale. He was slowly growing daily, and reaching a point where in June 2020 when he averaged at around 10 viewers in his livestreams and 150 new subscribers weekly. In the beginning of 2021 he started to gain around 1k subscribers weekly and 350 viewers in his livestreams, growing consistently until reaching 100k subscribers in April 2021. Between May and June of the same year his fanbase started uploading clips from his livestreams and memes about him on TikTok, which helped him gain 100k new subscribers weekly and reaching 1.1 million subscribers just in the month of June.
Content
His content is mostly based of his past livestreams recordings, and the very few actual videos he makes are just really short clips of him doing announcements to his subscribers. In his livestreams he mostly plays PS4 videogames such as Fortnite, NBA 2K21 and Five Nights at Freddy's 4 while, of course, speaking and interacting with his viewers. Since early February 2022, he's known to play a bunch of Outfit7's games (particularly the ones associated with the company's Talking Tom & Friends franchise) on BlueStacks.
His "way to do things" is very unusual, considering he sometimes barks, roars or shouts at the webcam for no reason at all. Since his "peak of glory" started his livestreams consist of him reacting to the subscriber counter reaching certain numbers, such as 800k, 900k, 1M, 1.5M, etc.
He also does music, doing fast-paced rap songs. His most popular song is Shake, released on November 2021 and has gained 40 million views in 3 months.
Personal life
He has a younger sister who sometimes enters his room during his livestreams to tell him goodnight or to interact with him. He also has a younger brother. He's currently attending highschool, though he clearly shows his hatred for it. Darren is 6'5 feet tall.
Though mostly not confirmed, he formerly dated Ermony Renee, also known as Dream (not to be confused with the YouTuber), though there is a bit of a rivalry between them. It is unknown if they're still dating. It's also possible that he had a relationship with TikTok star and singer Ava Barbie, who is transgender.
There's an argument among his fanbase whether if Darren is 17 (born in 2005) or 19 (born in 2003), partially due to the jokes he made regarding minors. Darren saying he is 19 was most likely so he could get a better chance at Discord E-dating competitions, but besides that he wouldn't say his actual age at all. However, on a video he made on December 22, 2020 doing a Q&A, he said (at the time) he was 15, turning 16 "in a minute",[1] thus making this argument technically useless.
Controversy
Rape Joke, Sexist Rant, and Twitch Ban
On December 13, 2021, Darren was on a live dating show on Adin Live's Twitch channel. On the show, there were several women and men who were asked several questions relating to dating. Darren asked a women named Ash.Kaash "Say if were the last two people on Earth, and had to reproduce to make world continue". Ash said no, stating that their kids would have to perform incest in order for them to continue afterwards. Darren then said "Who gon' stop me?", and started repeating the phrase in a more aggressive tone after Ash said that she would.
Darren temporarily left the stream afterwards after Adin told him to calm down, however not long later he was able to re-enter the livestream and went on a rant, calling Ash a "bitch" and an "ugly fucking cunt". Darren then yelled that he masturbates to her "every single day", before continuing to berate her, saying that nobody wants her. Adin forcibly removed Darren after the call afterwards, although Ash did not seem that phased by this and was even smiling. Not only did this take place in front of over 100 thousand live viewers on Twitch, but also immediately went viral on Twitter and YouTube too. This caused Darren to receive major amounts of backlash, with many accusing him of being creepy and sexist. Many fans of Darren defended him, stating that he's only 16 and he jokes like this often (some people like Tipster have actually questioned why Darren was on an E-dating show at 16 to begin with, however nobody has responded to these questions), however they too also said that he took this too far.
The day after on the 14th, Twitch permanently banned Darren's account because of this outburst, with him tweeting out an image of the ban message he got from Twitch, with his caption just saying "Bye". Despite the backlash that he received, Darren's channel growth and popularity were not hindered by this, and he has been streaming on YouTube to large fanfare ever since his Twitch ban.
Trivia
- He's particularly known for his overwhelming rivalry with Talking Ben from Outfit7's Talking Tom & Friends franchise, mostly arguing through the Telephone feature from the latter's app. His rivalry has since became a famous meme on the internet.
- On every livestream where Speed anticipates to hit a subscriber milestone, his fanbase collectively unsubscribes at the point where he's gonna hit it to annoy him and cause some reactions.
Quotes
- "ROAR, NEXT LEVEL, I'M A LION NOW, LET'S FUCKING GO!" (Speed about to hit 1M subs)
- "My name is IShowSpeed and I made history, they call me Speed for a reason, bro." (Speed moments after hitting 1M subs)
- "🎵 GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS GREAT, GOD IS GOOOO, OOOOO- 🎵 OUUUUURAUUUUUUUGH"
- "DO YOU LOVE GOD?"
- "Did you just hang up the phone on me?"
- "WHO GONNA STOP ME?" (Speed to Ask.Kaash)
- "Johnny ate a booger!, It taste like Sugar."
- "ARF ARF ARF!" (When Speed gets jumpscared or meets someone he doesn’t like on Omegle)
- "Am I gay, man... AM I?!"
- "Yo what the fuck?"
- "Deadass bro?"
- "HOUAGH! AAHHhgagagagagagaa!"[2]
- "LET'S GOO! I'VE BEEN WAITING TO KILL A BLACK GUY!" (While playing Super Smash Bros)[3]
- "LICK DAT CLIT!!"
- "SPEED GANG!"
- "DUBS IN THE CHAT!"
- "NOTI GANG!"
- "I JUST want to be friends, That's all I wanna be! I wanna be friends."
- "OK, We friends now?"
- "NOW YOUR GOING TO COPY ME?!?!?!?"
- "...And you wondering why I'm gay."
- "Ben. Yes. No. Hohoho." (Speed impersonating Talking Ben after he loses at Five Nights at Freddy's 4)[4]
Channel milestones
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
IShowSpeed
Subscriber milestones
- 20,000 subscribers: February 11, 2021
- 100,000 subscribers: April 20, 2021
- 200,000 subscribers: May 18, 2021
- 300,000 subscribers: June 10, 2021
- 400,000 subscribers: June 23, 2021
- 500,000 subscribers: June 24, 2021
- 600,000 subscribers: June 28, 2021
- 700,000 subscribers: June 29, 2021
- 800,000 subscribers: June 29, 2021
- 900,000 subscribers: June 30, 2021
- 1 million subscribers: June 30, 2021
- 2 million subscribers: July 18, 2021
- 3 million subscribers: December 15, 2021
- 4 million subscribers: January 27, 2022
- 5 million subscribers: February 16, 2022
- 6 million subscribers: March 6, 2022
Video view milestones
- 10 million views: April 29, 2021
- 20 million views: June 10, 2021
- 30 million views: July 1, 2021
- 40 million views: July 8, 2021
- 50 million views: July 23, 2021
- 100 million views: September 18, 2021
- 250 million views: January 30, 2022
- 300 million views: February 14, 2022
- 350 million views: March 1, 2022
Live Speedy
Subscriber milestones
- 1 million subscribers: February 23, 2022
Video view milestones
- 100 million views: February 21, 2022
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 hhttps://youtu.be/97KxxVKRXH0
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5cTXNt-L6w#t=4m11s
- ↑ https://youtu.be/_2wBmmnyubU
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4egEw-85as