- IShowSpeed won multiple awards at the 2024 Streamer Awards
- He has gone viral for his steams and stunts
- IShowSpeed has earned millions in recent years
IShowSpeed has emerged in recent years as a rising online star, with his gaming streams and physical stunts winning him millions of fans – but who is he?
The year is only three weeks old but already IShowSpeed has gone viral for a seemingly death-defying stunt and hinted at plans for future streams. This builds on a stellar 2024 for the streamer and YouTuber, which culminated in him taking three awards at the 2024 Streamer Awards. IShowSpeed won Streamer of the Year, Best International Streamer and the Get Off Your A** Award, which recognizes the best IRL streamers.
Earlier in January, IShowSpeed completed one of his most dangerous stunts yet – performing a backflip on an iconic sculpture in Guatemala. The clip went viral as fans held their breath to watch.
Online career
While IShowSpeed now has more than 27.5 million followers on Instagram and 34.8 million subscribers on YouTube – at the time of writing – it has been a long-ish journey to get to this point.
IShowSpeed first began uploading gameplay videos to his YouTube channel in 2016. Initially, this was sporadic – he was still in school – but in December 2017 he started to livestream and upload videos too. Initially they had very small viewing figures.
It wasn’t until the COVID pandemic in 2020 that his career started to take off. Initially he focused on gaming videos, usually NBA 2K20 and 2k21, before expanding into Fortnite and Five Nights at Freddy’s. In June 2021, he hit the 1 million subscribers milestone on YouTube. In 2021, he is also said to have made his first $1 million.
He also moved onto TikTok, where some of his streams went viral, boosting his burgeoning popularity. Sometimes it was his reactions to gameplay – sometimes extreme and profane – that went viral and some became memes.
As his fame grew, IShowSpeed started to branch out away from purely gaming content to include stunts, physical feats and Parkour.
IShowSpeed real name
IShowSpeed, who turned 20 on January 21, was born in Cincinnati as Darren Jason Watkins Jr
The American has built up a net worth of $10 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He has built this wealth up thanks to his streaming activities, but also through sponsorship and endorsement deals, such as with Rumble, where he co-hosts live streams with fellow creator Kai Cenat.
He is known for his love of Japanese anime series One Piece, and has a collection of merchandise from the show.
IShowSpeed Music career
In 2021, IShowSpeed branched out into music, when he released his first single, Dooty Booty on his YouTube channel, and it quickly became popular. He followed this up with Shake, released in Nobember 2021, which sampled Fugees’ Ready or Not and Ray Charles’ Hit the Road Jack. The video for this track garnered more than 211 million views on YouTube.
Since then, he has released several more tracks, including an EP in 2024 called Trip 2 Brazil.
Future
IShowSpeed has no inkling about scaling back on his videos and clips – pushing himself to go bigger and better.
In 2024, he revealed his ambition to compete for the USA team in the sprint events at the 2028 Olympic Games, which will be held in Los Angeles.
Earlier this year, he announced that he had got permission from the makers of One Piece to stream the show on his channel – a rare honor. However, he has yet to reveal how he plans to use the content.
