IShowSpeed

(For a person, see Darren Watkins Jr..)
IShowSpeed (also known as simply Speed, or Speedy), is an American variety and IRL YouTube streamer, football athlete, hip-hop musician, currently residing in Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Darren is known for his extravagant, eccentric, hot-headed, and ostentatious personality on his variety of gaming and entertainment livestreams. He also became notable for gaining over 1 million subscribers in a matter of days in 2021, making him one of the youngest creators with the fastest-growing channel of that year. With all three of his channels combined, Darren has over 20 million subscribers altogether, making him one of the biggest YouTubers of color.
Darren started to achieve widespread fame when his fanbase started publishing clips of him on TikTok, with many of them becoming internet memes. This includes his interactions with Outfit7's Talking Ben, which are considered some of his most popular endeavors, helping revitalize the app's popularity by making the game one of the most downloaded apps at the time he streamed his first gameplay on Talking Ben.
== YouTube History ==
Darren first created his account on March 21, 2016, and published his first video on December 21, 2017. He did his first livestream (which was about Fortnite) on December 28, 2018, but barely averaged with 2 viewers. Since the beginning of 2020, he started uploading and doing livestreams about video games including NBA 2K and Fortnite. He was growing slowly at a daily basis to a point where, in June 2020, he averaged about 10 viewers in his livestreams and 150 new subscribers weekly.
=== Talking Ben ===
Darren is particularly known for his overwhelming rivalry with Talking Ben from Outfit7's Talking Tom & Friends franchise, mostly arguing through the telephone feature from Ben's "Talking Ben the Dog" app. Usually, he will ask Ben if he supports Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, or other unusual questions. Darren's rivalry with Ben has since become a famous meme on the Internet, and he would also make videos with Angela and Tom, characters from games similar to Ben's. Darren also has a number of videos about him playing virtual reality (VR) games while wearing a headset. At one point, Darren and his friends did a real-life skit, where one of his friends was posing in a Ben costume.
However, on February 24, 2022, Darren received a legal strike warning email from Outfit7 telling him to stop live-broadcasting any games that were associated with the company due to countless emails sent to their support team complaining about Darren's streams related to the company's games. The email also said that the company does not tolerate any bad behavior with their mobile games, and that Darren is giving the wrong image on their games when the company was made aware of his livestreams about Talking Ben. However, it's possible that the email was fake, and was sent to Darren by someone pretending to be the company to troll him.
=== Rise in Popularity ===
In the beginning of 2021, Darren started to gain around 1,000 subscribers weekly and 350 viewers in his livestreams, growing consistently until surpassing 100,000 subscribers in April 2021. Between May and June of the same year, Darren's fanbase started uploading clips from his livestreams and memes on TikTok, which helped Darren surpass 1 million subscribers in that same period of time within June 2021 (and eventually also surpassed 1.1 million subscribers). Darren hit 10 million subscribers on July 22, 2022, and 1 billion views on his main channel on November 28, 2022.
=== Music ===
After his rise to success, Darren started collaborating with various music producers to release songs, such as Shake (2021), Bounce That A$$ (2021), Dooty Booty (2021), God Is Good (2022), Ronaldo (2022), World Cup (2022), and Dogs with Kai Cenat (2023). Darren's songs are hip hop-based that are remixes and samples of other well-known songs.
Darren sometimes adds remixes of other music videos as accompaniment samples in his music videos. For example:
* In his Shake music video, he used Ray Charles' Hit The Road Jack as an instrumental and its trio singers as incidental vocals. He also used the vocals in The Fugees' Ready or Not as another incidental vocal, but in a high-pitched, edited voice.
* In his Ronaldo music video, he used the vocals of Skrillex's Take Ü There as incidental vocals.
* In his Shake Pt. 2 music video, he used Nelly Fertuado's Promiscuous as an instrumental on the first half of the song.
** He also used Paul Johnson's Get Get Down as an instrumental on the second half of the song, which was remixed as a jersey club beat.
* In his Dogs music video featuring Kai Cenat, they used the famous line "Who let the dogs out?" from Baha Men's hit of the same name.
=== Channel Strikes ===
On July 22, 2022, the same day Darren hit 10 million subscribers, he announced on his highlights channel that he received a Community Guidelines strike by YouTube for showcasing a sexual Minecraft modifier on his screen, causing him to be unable to upload for 7 days.
On September 21, 2022, Darren announced on his highlights channel that he had received his second Community Guidelines strike by YouTube for harassment and cyberbullying, meaning that he could not upload for the next 14 days. Darren revealed he was arguing with another person on Omegle, and had then joked about the person's weight. He went on to say that he was angry that YouTube had given him a strike for something he usually does. He returned on October 5, 2022, and said he will stream less frequently in his main channel to avoid receiving a third channel strike.
On February 27, 2023, Darren announced that he had received his third and final strike. He mentioned that the FIFA Ballon d'Or was going on at the time of his stream, and he decided to pull it up, live in front of tens of thousands of viewers to watch. He also stated that he will not be able to stream on his main channel anymore, and issued a final goodbye to his audience on his secondary channel. Despite this, Darren has still continued to livestream on his main channel.
== Content ==
Darren's content is mostly based off of his past livestream's recordings, and the very few actual videos he makes are simply short clips of him doing announcements to his subscribers. In his livestreams, he mostly plays PS4 video games such as Fortnite, NBA 2K21, and Five Night At Freddy's 4, while speaking and interacting with his viewers. After breaking his PS4 console after getting swatted on August 8, 2022, he started playing video games on his PS5 console. He mostly plays FIFA 23 on his PS5. Since February 2023, Darren has played a variety of game consoles other than his PlayStation, PC, or phone, such as several video games on his Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, as well as various Xbox 360 Kinect games.
Since early-February of 2022, Darren has been known to play a bunch of Outfit7's games, particularly the ones associated with the company's Talking Tom & Friends franchise, on BlueStacks. Darren also features his school in his livestreams, and will occasionally log onto Omegle to troll people in different ways, such as barking at them, or by wearing fake breasts and having his face-cam zoomed into them. Other times, when he is on Omegle, his livestream viewers will immediately hop on Omegle to search for him. If Darren is using Omegle on his livestream, he will eventually get bored and get off of Omegle if nobody is chatting with him, people are skipping him, or racially teasing him.
Darren's "way to do things" is very unusual, considering he sometimes barks, roars, shouts, or twerks at the webcam for no reason at all. Ever since his "peak of glory" began, his livestreams consist of him reacting to the subscriber counter reaching certain numbers. Darren also produces music, particularly fast-paced rap songs, most of the songs he produced are mostly instrumented with vocal samples from other well known songs. His most popular song is currently Shake, which has gained 40 million views in the first 3 months since its release on November 2021.
Since September 7, 2022, Darren began participating in dreadful and dangerous internet challenges, such as:
* The Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge, where he put his lips inside a glass for approximately 15 minutes.
* Attempting to give himself a nose piercing.
* The Cinnamon Challenge, where he eats a spoonful of brown cinnamon powder.
* The One Chip Challenge, where he applies supposedly illegal hot sauce onto a spicy chip and eats it.
* The Ice Bucket Challenge, where one of his friends pours cold water on him.
* The Banana & Sprite Challenge, where he eats multiple bananas and drinks a big bottle of Sprite soda, which resulted in him vomiting.
* The Vacuum Trash bag Challenge where he vacuums the air of a trash bag with himself in.
* The Big Straw Challenge, where he uses the tube of a roll of toilet paper as a straw to quickly drink a glass of milk, This Causing Darren Almost Died On Stream.
* Eating a supposedly venomous black scorpion.
* The Death Nut Challenge, where he eats the world's hottest nut and starts to cry.
* The Shampoo Challenge, by pouring shampoo into his eyes while taking a shower, but he had an accident during the challenge.
* The Coke & Mentos Challenge, where he pours four bottles of 2-liter Coca-Cola and three packs of Mentos into the toilet and then into his sink Causing His Brother To Call 911.
* The Shaving Underarms Challenge, by using scissors instead of a shaver.
* Salt & Ice Challenge, where he pours salt on his face near his nose and cheeks and places an ice cube on the salt for approximately 10 minutes.
* The Condom Challenge, where he has his siblings drop a water-filled condom onto his head.
* The Juvalips Challenge, a challenge similar to the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge, but he uses a lip plumper instead of a glass cup, only to fail the challenge for putting it in his lips for two minutes.
* Black Venomous Pakistan Scorpion Challenge, where he eats an black scorpion resulting in calling 911.
* The Eye Tracking Challenge, where he must avoid looking at girls but fails numerous times.
If Darren fails to complete his challenges safely, he will call his local police department for help, only to troll the dispatcher by coughing, continuously gasping and breathing heavily for air, or claiming that he is "dying".
In the event of an incident in his livestreams which ends up involving him into some form of controversy, Darren will take a break from streaming until he is able to address the situation to his audience in his first stream after said controversy has boiled down to where it seems to have ended.
Sometime around February 2023, Darren introduced a talking robot to his viewers that cost $50,000 from a friend. The robot's name is Moxie, and it's initially supposed to answer questions correctly, but whenever Darren asks the robot a question, she will answer the question incorrectly or get confused, causing him to be irritated. The robot appears several times on his livestream, and he used the robot to chat with people on Omegle.
Since early-2023, Darren has brought special guests to his livestreams, where they interact with each other by doing a variety of activities or going out at various public places. This includes Kai Cenat with various different women, an 18-year-old girl named Aaliyah, who was jokingly rumored to be 14 years old by Darren's viewers in the live chat on their prom livestream Jamal, one of his siblings who goes by the nicknames "Big Bro" or "Big Brother", has also appeared many times in his livestreams, as well as their younger brother.
On May 15, 2023, Darren and Kai Cenat announced the official teaser-trailer of their new show The Kai N Speed Show which would be available on RumbleTV on May 26.
Darren also has a second channel named Live Speedy that he created on June 1, 2021, where he posts highlights of his past livestreams, and a third named Speedy Boykins that he created on April 26 of the same year, where he usually posts short unusual clips of his videos and livestreams.
== Personal Life ==
Darren 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 called Dian, who is currently 13 or 14. Darren lives with his mother, who can occasionally be heard embarrassing Darren in the background of his livestreams by telling him to either stop screaming so loud or to end his streams because of it. Darren used to attend high school, clearly showing his hatred for it.[citation needed]
Although mostly unconfirmed, he formerly dated Ermony Renee, also known as Dream (not to be confused with the Minecraft YouTuber), despite there being a bit of a rivalry between them. It's unknown if they are still dating, but it's also possible that Darren has had a relationship with TikTok star and singer Ava Barbie, who is transgender. Darren is a former player of Purcell Marian High School's football and basketball team.
Darren was born on January 21, 2005, but his age had been disputed several times in the past, due to an argument among his fanbase whether if he is 19 years old (born in 2003) or 17 (born in 2005) at the time it ensued. This was partially due to the jokes he made regarding minors. Darren would often state that he is 19, most likely so he could get a better chance at entering dating competitions on Discord, but besides that, he hadn't mentioned his age again several times. However, in a video he published on December 22, 2020, of him doing a Q&A, he said he was 15 (at the time), turning 16 "in a minute". During the time where his fanbase debated his age, he would often claimed to be 19. However, on November 18, 2022, Darren finally admitted on a tweet that he was 17 years old (at that time), confirming he was born in 2005.
== Controversies ==
	This article contains NSFW content and/or references; read at your own risk.
The following section contains vulgar/racist language; read at your own risk.
=== Twitch Sexist Rant ===
On December 13, 2021, Darren was on a live dating show on Adin Ross's Twitch channel. On the show, there were several women and men who were asked several questions related to dating. While on the show, Darren asked an Instagram model named Ash Kaash if she would reproduce with him in order to keep the human population going if they were the last two humans on Earth. Ash said she wouldn't and stated that their kids would have to perform incest in order for them to continue afterwards. Darren then asked "Who's gon' stop me?", to which Ash responded by saying "I will". Darren began repeating his question in a more aggressive tone, denying that Ash would stop him and started dancing in a questionable manner. This was probably the cause of Darren's ban from twitch.
Darren kept arguing with Ash until he temporarily left the stream after Adin told him to calm down. However, not long after, Darren was able to re-enter the livestream. He then went on a sexist rant, calling Ash a "bitch" and an "ugly fucking cunt". Darren then yelled at Ash, saying that he masturbates to her every single day and that "nobody wants her" before continuing to berate her. Adin forcibly removed Darren after his rant, although Ash did not seem too phased by Darren's rant, and was even smiling.
After this incident, clips of his rant became viral on Twitter and on YouTube, causing 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 was only 16 (possibly 18) at the time and he jokes like this often. However, some people like Tipster have actually questioned why Darren was on an e-dating show at 16 (possibly 18) years old at the time to begin with. Although nobody responded to this question, many agreed Darren took it too far.
The day after the rant, on December 14, Darren's Twitch account was permanently banned due to his outburst, to which he tweeted out an image of the ban message he received from Twitch, with the caption "Bye". Despite the backlash that he received, Darren's channel growth and popularity were not hindered by this, and he has continued streaming on YouTube after his Twitch account was banned.
=== Valorant Sexist Rant ===
While Darren was playing with a girl and others in a game of Valorant, he went on another sexist rant, making discriminatory remarks, such as "go do your husband's dishes", and he was banned from Valorant for 30 days. However, on April 6, 2022, YouTuber and eSports news reporter Jake Lucky News tweeted the clip where he was sexist to the girl. A Riot Games employee named Sara Dadafshar replied to Jake's tweet, saying that Darren is now permanently banned from all of Riot Games and thanking Jake for his tweet.
Darren later apologized for his rant, but many users on Twitter began to accuse Jake of being racially motivated to get Darren banned from Riot Games, and Keemstar said Jake was hypocritical for also endorsing "trash talk" in video games. xQcOW replied to Keem, saying he was "pretty rich to try to use the racism card while overlooking blatant sexism", insinuating that Keem should not defend Darren if he thinks his rant was considered "trash talk".
As the drama worsened, criticism towards Jake escalated to the point where he received hate comments and even death threats. It is currently unconfirmed if the drama has already been resolved, but it seems to have died down, with all parties having moved on.
=== 4th of July Fireworks Incident ===
On July 4, 2022, Darren decided to light some fireworks in his bedroom. He had a bunch of them in a box that he believed to be noisemakers that wouldn't burst into flames, and he lit a Pikachu-modeled firework fountain in his bed, despite his chat urging him not to do so inside. However, the firework quickly started to spark, shooting fireballs around his room.
Darren freaked out and left his room as the firework launched into a wall, and his mother can also be heard in the livestream being shocked and angry. As his desktop's face-cam can be seen falling slowly, Darren's house alarm sounds off before firefighters later show up in his bedroom as he ends the stream. Fortunately, his room and the house did not catch on fire, but the ceiling and walls in his bedroom were damaged.
This incident became viral and even made headlines on the news. Although KSI and Darren's audience was worried about him and his family while also finding the incident to be hilarious, he was heavily criticized on the news and on social media for thinking that lighting any form of fireworks inside his own bedroom could be safe, as he could have possibly burned his entire house down, or even killed himself and his family. Meanwhile, others like xQcOW and Tipster had mixed reactions, finding the incident to be hilarious while also criticizing his recklessness and being concerned for his safety.
The next day, Darren addressed the incident on his livestream, confirming that he and his family are safe and that he only suffered a few harmless burns. He also added that he didn't know the firework fountain would spark as badly as it did, giving a disclaimer to his chat to never light fireworks indoors.
=== Minecraft modifier and YouTube Strike incident ===
On July 21, 2022, Darren played an infamous Minecraft modifier labeled "Jenny Mod" while he was voice chatting with an anonymous user. Darren would censor the screen to avoid a Community Guidelines strike by YouTube, but at one point during the stream, he accidentally revealed part of the footage on stream, which depicted Jenny about to perform a blowjob on the player. Darren immediately ended the stream afterwards, but a re-uploaded video of this incident can be found here.
End of NSFW references/content.
Interviewer Jake Lucky News called him out for it on Twitter, which resulted in YouTube giving Darren a one-week strike. Soon afterwards, Darren uploaded a short video telling his fanbase that he wouldn't stream for the following week. Although his fans thought he was quitting YouTube indefinitely, Darren later returned to streaming a week after he received the strike.
=== Arrest & Swatting ===
On August 8, 2022, Darren was arrested after getting swatted following a staged prank call with the Cincinnati Police Department. People suspect that it was either because some of his fans had sent a SWAT team to his house, or that said fans requested him to prank call the police station, thought it is indecipherable who orchestrated the prank. While he was getting arrested, he switched the stream to his phone and had a friend film him being detained before one of the cops told his friend to stop.
This incident left many of Darren's viewers and non-viewers alike confused. They, along with YouTubers such as Jadyn, said that Darren deserves a better fandom and should stop doing whatever his community tells him to do. He allegedly set his PS4 on fire during a stream, but he claimed Adin Ross had bailed him out of jail and went back to streaming the next day.
=== Crypto Scam ===
On November 16, 2022, Darren went live with a subpar impersonator of Cristiano Ronaldo and another individual to advertise PlayStation 5 console giveaways to his livestream viewers, but none of them were given away, and the entire stream was to promote Paradox Crypto, a video game crypto project that was currently under scrutiny for fraud.
Darren was called out by his livestream chat and ended up blackening the camera and muting the his microphone. However, his microphone wasn't fully muted, and viewers could hear a confused Darren getting into an argument with the two individuals, during which both Darren and the two others essentially confirmed that Paradox Crypto is a scam.
This livestream was covered by YouTubers such as Coffeezilla, SomeOrdinaryGamers, as well as Penguinz0 and Asmongold TV. It was also covered by online news sites, and Darren would eventually apologize to his viewers and call the entire stream and promotion a mistake, although it was met with mixed reception by his viewers and non-viewers alike, as some didn't think his apology was genuine.
=== Racism Accusations ===
On December 6, 2022 Darren travelled to Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup for the Portugal vs Switzerland game, and he decided to livestream the event, but his phone was having technical issues. However, a clip started to surface online that shows Darren confronting a Chinese fan wearing an Argentina jersey. The fan appears confused at the question of why he is wearing the jersey, so Darren responds several times with the Japanese greeting "konnichiwa", despite the fact that the fan repeatedly insists that he is Chinese.
Immediately, commenters began to express their outrage at Darren’s insensitive comments, and some called it outright racist. Darren has since responded to the backlash in a video on Twitter, saying that he genuinely believed the fan was Japanese initially, and then tried to respond to the man with "a nickname they call me in China". He assured his fans and viewers that he did not mean to be racist, and attributed his attitude to the heat of the moment during a stream with the match still going on.
This was covered by Twitch streamers such as Destiny (who mistook Darren for Kai Cenat), which led to several people including Kai himself calling him out. Both XQcOW and Kai reacted to the clip, and showed their support to Darren.
=== False Copyright Claims ===
On February 5, 2023, YouTuber Jabroney would make a Twitter thread showing that a company going under different names such as Thumb Media, Cardigan, or Aegis TM would copyright-claim or even strike videos that had Darren's face in the thumbnail or mentioned his username (IShowSpeed). Jabroney would then show an article in the second tweet which talked about Darren being surprised upon learning that this was happening, and had later shown a response that Darren uploaded to his Speedy Boykins channel, in which he asked people to stop emailing him about the company and stated in the video that he was an affiliate of the company.
Jabroney would also link a video from YouTuber MattRadiant called "iShowSpeed is trying to have my channel terminated.", in which Matt talked about received 3 copyright strikes for making videos related to Darren. Jabroney would also explain in the thread how multiple YouTubers messaged him asking about how to resolve the false copyright claims. He would later upload a video titled "YouTube's Biggest Copyright Troll Just Outed Himself", in which he recapped the situation.
Darren was later criticized for falsely copyright-claiming videos despite his channels' collective size, with some saying that he could benefit from any kind of attention without him or his channel being affected.
=== "IShowMeat" incident ===
On August 16, 2023, a day after announcing he had "almost died" in the hospital, Darren was playing Five Nights at Freddy's: Ruin, a Security Breach DLC expansion. While playing the game, Darren stumbled across Glamrock Chica with a jumpscare by the animatronic character. Upon Darren noticing the animatronic, he start making sexual remarks, followed by him starting to air hump on camera pretending to "fuck" her, which accidentally exposed his meat. Darren stopped the stream shortly after and deleted the livestream. However, the clip would be shared online, most commonly on Twitter.
A day after the incident, the YouTube Team revealed that Darren would not receive any punishment for the incident due to him swiftly deleting the livestream.
On August 18, Darren responded to the controversy during a livestream, and revealed that flashing on stream was one of his fears. He would vent his emotions and feelings on the livestream due to the community's excessive use of the trend "IShowMeat", breaking down in tears and repeatedly begging his livestream viewers to not spam "IShowMeat" or "meat emojis" in his chatbox. The incident was subsequently featured as a "PTSD flashback" in his next Five Nights At Freddy's stream, which gave rise to more memes related to the incident.
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