Darren Watkins Jr. started uploading videos to YouTube and Twitch when he was thirteen, with no particular goals or immediate success. He was an American teenager who, like many others, recorded his games in very popular video games such as NBA2K, GTA o Fortnite and uploaded them to the major online sharing platforms under the nickname “IShowSpeed”.
Between 2018 and 2020 the videos he recorded in his bedroom of Cincinnati, Ohio, were lost among the many online similar and at best still did not exceed a thousand viewers. Then came the first lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and its consistency in publication increased, as well as views, albeit with still low numbers. His exposure in the videos he made also grew: he began to film himself more often, to accentuate tones and reactions, to present himself in a way that was not necessarily truthful and to be known more simply as “Speed”.
So in 2020 he ended up getting noticed more and more frequently on social networks, he met Adin Ross, an already quite famous youtuber who created content similar to his, and then other American youtubers with whom he began to collaborate and thus expand his network from a few thousands to tens of thousands of spectators. Like many other youtubers, he found in exaggeration a way to continue gaining viewers: he risked setting fire to his room after lighting a firework in the shape of Pikachu, for example, and had himself filmed while was arrested outside the house by the Cincinnati police after an anonymous false report against him.
However, it was a video in particular that contributed to the enormous popularity that Speed has reached today, whose Youtube channel has over 19 million subscribers with peaks of 185 million views for a single piece of content. During a live broadcast where he played a Fortnite answering online questions from users in exchange for small sums of money, a user named Bradley paid just over 2 euros to ask him which football team he supported. He replied: “Simple, Crista Ronaldo, suiii!”, mimicking Cristiano Ronaldo’s famous exultation badly.
Those ten seconds of video culled from a much longer live slowly began to circulate online, especially on Instagram and TikTok, generating more and more reactions. This happened especially in Europe and the rest of the world where that answer sounded as absurd as it was funny and exemplifying the superficial knowledge of football that is often attributed to the US public, mostly accustomed to other sports.
Keeping an eye on his content, Speed noticed the amount of reactions to that piece of video and began to exploit it by reinventing himself as a die-hard fan of Cristiano Ronaldo. He began to over-support him, him and his teams, and became sworn enemy of Lionel Messi, i.e. the only modern player to whom Ronaldo can be compared, and his historic rival. He therefore entered the exasperated and global debate on which of the two is the best of his era, even if at the same time he continued to know practically nothing about football: in the first videos his ignorance was sincere, but then, as happened for the first Ronaldo videos, began to use it deliberately mispronouncing the names of teams and players, if not even their countries of origin.
By identifying trends and viewer requests, Speed has become one of the fastest growing and most well-known YouTubers in recent years, generating an average of over 3 million views per day, more than 230,000 subscriptions per month and up to $400,000 of monthly revenue only through YouTube: on Instagram he is followed by over 11 million, on TikTok he exceeds 20 million. His following has become so vast and influential that it has become a sort of platform to which football clubs, brands, media, leagues and international tournaments turn to to increase their exposure in a market segment, the youth one, which does not follow the football through traditional channels and methods.
Speed was in the stands during the World Cup matches in Qatar and made a song about it that has been played 107 million times on YouTube. He chased Cristiano Ronaldo between matches for Manchester United, the Portuguese national team and Al-Nassr, and recently managed to meet him for the first time. He was in the last Champions League final wearing the Inter shirt, which for him is «the best Spanish football team in the world», and he cheered believing Inter had scored the equalizer in the closing minutes. More recently, he watched Messi’s debut for Inter Miami from the sideline, and he took off Ronaldo’s shirt for the decisive goal scored by the latter showing some one of Messi that he had underneath.
In recent weeks he has been in Tokyo to follow the All-Nassr summer tour, who played in friendly matches against Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan, met other famous players but was then hospitalized for an acute attack of headache bunch, as he himself explained: in the direct that broadcast from a hospital bedseen by over 3.5 million users, has surpassed the 19 million subscribers to his channel.
Its popularity has reached such levels that it has become a meme recurring on social networks, even for content not related to football or video games: he is a known figure, or at least not new, even to those who don’t know who he is or what exactly he does. Her stunts are often taken up by the traditional media, including certain Italian newspapers, but the global success she has achieved in recent years has also shown the superficiality of certain behaviors of hers. For example, he has been sanctioned several times by social networks, such as Twitch, which in 2021 banned him indefinitely for transmitting sexist content and sexual intimidation.
Sexism is one of the most recurring accusations against her, and in the last year there have also been accusations of racism for some of her interactions had both online and live with Asian people. To these reasons we owe the decision taken in the United Kingdom by Sky Sports to remove the content that concerned him and stop any type of collaboration. Speed had then responded by writing: «I’m 17, I was 16 when it happened and I made a big mistake. That was stupid and immature, I realized and apologised. I will continue to work on myself as I explore this world, growing online.”
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