Ninja

**Richard Tyler Blevins** (born: June 5, 1991 [age 29]), better known online as **Ninja** (formerly **NinjasHyper**), is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and a professional eSports Gamer who is mostly known for playing and streaming Fortnite: Battle Royale. He currently live-streams and plays Fortnite: Battle Royale, Fall Guys, VALORANT, and Among Us.

Tyler was previously known for live-streaming himself playing Halo, H1Z1, and PUBG before playing Fortnite, along with playing Realm Royale, Blackout, Sea of Thieves, and Apex Legends alongside his Fortnite journey. He found success streaming Halo and became the number one streamer online.

Tyler is currently the most followed streamer on Twitch, having over 14 million followers and 470 million views. Along with being the most followed Twitch user, Tyler's YouTube channel currently has over 24 million subscribers and more than 2.3 billion video views. He is currently the most subscribed YouTube channel in the Fortnite community, surpassing Ali-A in June 2018.

On August 1, 2019, Tyler announced that he would be leaving Twitch to stream on Mixer. Tyler is the most followed streamer on Mixer, currently having almost 3 million followers. He became the most followed in less than a week after his announcement.

## About

Tyler is more notable as a streamer and professional gamer. It all started when his dad was addicted to games, he played all night. Young Tyler followed his dad's footsteps. Tyler started playing competitively in 2009 and joined in his first tournament featuring Halo. He earned money by participating and winning tournaments with his current team, Luminosity. Tyler has two older brothers named Jon (born September 20, 1987 [age 33]) and Chris (born May 4, 1989 [age 31]). According to Jon, when Tyler was about 10 he begged him to play Halo. Tyler mostly plays Fortnite. Many call him the "best Fortnite player in the world" and look up to him for that widely shared opinion which thus creates more popularity for the game. He has self-proclaimed that he is also known for his "goofy energetic personality" and "incredible impressions" in his videos, and has been the fastest-growing Fortnite YouTuber since. However, ever since July 2018 he has been getting more disrespect from some of the Fortnite community and others as well being cynical about him. This has led to Ninja hate accounts and offensive memes being made, as well as massive controversies calling Tyler a hypocrite and toxic person.

## Fortnite Events

### Ninja Vegas Tournament

Tyler was able to create his tournament featuring Fortnite and a lot of professional players, YouTubers, and Twitch Streamers. The tournament is based on eliminating Tyler. There are 9 games and 3 heats. Each heat is a group of Fortnite players who signed up to play in the tournament. If Tyler wins a game of Fortnite, $2,500 will be added to Tyler if you eliminate Tyler. The money starts at $2,500. If you eliminate Tyler, you win $2,500. But if Tyler loses after winning a game, the money goes back down to $2,500. But if Tyler won a game, and you eliminate him the next game, you win $5,000. If Tyler won 2 games in a row, you can win $7,500 if you eliminate Tyler afterward. If you win a game of Fortnite at the tournament, you also get $2,500. All the money Tyler earned in the tournament was sent to the Alzheimer's Association for Charity. The tournament was live on Twitch and it made a new world record of the most-watched on Twitch, over 680,000+ viewers. Which is 40,000+ more than Tyler collaborating with rapper Drake.

### Pro-Am Tournament

Pro-Am Fortnite Tournament is a tournament where 50 professional players are playing, but with 50 other celebrities (actors, musicians, etc) playing Fortnite as well. In Game 1, it's every person for themselves (solo). In Game 2, you are playing duos, with one teammate being the pro player, and the other being a celebrity. Game 3 is another Duo game. However, the third game is where you win money depending on which place you're in. First place is $1,000,000 richer.

Tyler's Duo partner was Marshmello.

* 1st place: $1,000,000
* 2nd place: $500,000
* 3rd place: $250,000
* 4th place: $100,000
* 5th place: $80,000
* 6th place: $70,000
* 7th place: $60,000
* 8th place: $50,000
* 9th place: $40,000
* 10th place: $30,000

### New Years Event

Tyler announced at TwitchCon 2018 that he will be setting up a Livestream at Times Square, where the New Years Ball Drop takes place, where he will play and stream Fortnite, as usual, at the location to celebrate New Years. Tyler plays with his collaborators Timthetatman, DrLupo, and CouRage along with bringing in special guests onto the live stream to play Fortnite together with Tyler and one of his collaborators. The live stream started at 4 PM ET up until 4 AM ET after the new years' ball drop.

## Switching to Mixer

On August 1, 2019, Tyler has announced that he is going to switch from Twitch streaming to Mixer streaming full-time. Many of his fans and many other big streamers supported/respected his decision on changing his routes. The minute of his announcement, Tyler's Twitch partnership was revoked, removed all his subscriber badges, and left the chat as emoting only with a lot of fans still typing in the chat. The reason was that you can only be partnered to one streaming service at a time and that Tyler didn’t want to be streaming on Twitch anymore anyway. Tyler started his first Mixer stream a day later at Lollapalooza.

### Re-returning to Twitch

After Mixer's shut down, Tyler decided to make his return to Twitch and become a full-time live-streamer on the platform after signing a multi-year contract. His first stream was playing Fall Guys and had accumulated over 100,000 live viewers.

## Controversy

### Jake Paul's Misleading Clickbait

On March 17, 2018, a YouTuber known as Jake Paul made a video called, "*I DONATED $200K TO MY FAV TWITCH STREAMER (ninja)*", and in that video, Jake Paul only donates to his friend. According to Jake Paul, Tyler never showed up in the video but was in the thumbnail and title. After the release of the video, many fans who donated to Tyler, including his friend KingRichard, questioned Tyler saying if Jake Paul donated to him. Tyler keeps saying that Jake Paul used him for attention. On April 23, 2018, Tyler joined the 'H3 Podcast' episode 63. At one point in the video, h3h3Productions told Tyler his opinion about the Jake Paul controversy and what might Tyler do. Tyler first said that he didn't reach out to Jake Paul because he does not want to talk about Drama or any controversy that is going towards him. Tyler also mentions that he is trying to strike down every channel that puts his content that is simple gameplay, but not montages. On April 29, 2018, after all the controversy has shown, Jake Paul finally makes a video called, "*My Response To Ninja...*", and in that video, Jake responds about the controversy, and he apologizes to Tyler about it. Afterward, Jake Paul changed the Title from "Ninja" to "Insane Reaction", and showed the people Jake Paul donated towards.

### Tyler says the N' word

On March 28, 2018, Tyler was rapping the lyrics of the song "*Logic - 44 more*" while on Nadeshot's stream (Tyler wasn't streaming himself) and Tyler after rapping the third line of the song said, "my n\*\*\*\*" which wasn't in the actual song at all (and continued to the last part of the fourth line, "and compartmentalize ya"). At first, Tyler ignored the fact he said that in the stream but Nadeshot heard it (as you can see a shocked expression on his face and that's all he did). Some people thought it wasn't that serious because he was rapping and not using as any harm and he didn't use the racial counterpart with a hard R, but others compared it to PewDiePie's slip up (as he used the hard R version out of anger). Tyler the next day after noticing his incident spread on the news released four statements on Twitter. The first statement says he doesn't want anyone to feel disrespected or misunderstood. The second statement says he wants people to feel safe and welcome and never wants anyone to be hurt. In the third statement Tyler explains the word's usage, and what's he all about equality. The last statement says that Tyler didn't mean any malicious intent and that he wasn't even trying to say the word and just fumbled lyrics and got tongue-tied, and apologizes.

### Jack Doherty vs. Ninja

On March 30, 2018, a YouTuber known as Jack Doherty, who is a YouTube vlogger, made a video called, "*EXPOSING NINJA!*" where he talks about Tyler's direct messaging Jack to take down the donation video Jack did to Tyler. If Jack didn't take down the video, Tyler would give him a strike on his channel. Jack did remove the video and afterward, Tyler blocked Jack on Twitter. Tyler did mention in the beginning that he refunded all of Jack's donations and then told to take down the video. Jack then responded talking about MrBeast donating to Tyler and that Tyler was alright with it. Tyler never did respond to the MrBeast video and continued to tell Jack to take down the video within the next 8 hours. Tyler also mentions that Jack made a lot of money off the video. And Tyler says again that he refunded, and said the video was fake. Jack then shows that he donated Tyler $300 and did not refund the money. After the video release, it was released on , and both Tyler and DramaAlert fans defended Tyler and Jack received thousands of dislikes off his video.

### H1Z1 Rages

Tyler said in a March 2018 Livestream to not bully people and to not make fun of them. People then shared his clips back from 2017 when Tyler used to play H1Z1, with one being of him eliminating a kid who said "Aw, f you f\*\*\*ot" in which Tyler shouted back at the kid "THE F\*YOU SAY TO ME YOU LITTLE SH\*T?" in which the kid laughs and Tyler mocks his laugh. He then asks the kid if he kisses his mother with that mouth and why he is not in school at that time. The kid laughs again and questions why he is so mad at him, and Tyler mocks him again and tries to explain how bad the youth of society is, but the kid interrupts, creating loud static with his mic and Tyler shouts at him telling him to shut up while he's talking to him. The static dies down, and seconds later Tyler realizes it was Presidents Day which explains why the kid wasn’t in school (the kid even said so but Tyler couldn’t hear him). Tyler has made multiple responses to this occurrence after it happened, especially after he blew up in fame, describing how the kid was toxic and that Tyler decided to get furious at him for comedic effect and he was not as mad as he displayed himself. Since he blew up in fame, the occurrence has become a meme and inside joke, with Tyler’s friends sometimes joking around with him saying the famous line.

Another includes a kid who said "F you Ninja" and Tyler replies with saying "F you kid; You're adopted." and a final clip where he is furious towards OhMyPulse, after eliminating Tyler in Fortnite and saying that Pulse and his friend "stream sniped" him, with Tyler dropping multiple insults. It has been claimed Tyler doesn’t act like this anymore by many fans which are true since the spring of 2018 when he went family-friendly.

### Death Hoax

On July 17, 2018, a variety of Tyler's fans were worried and confused if Tyler had passed away due to Ligma, which is an aggressive string of ebola, and started as a meme called "Ligma Balls".

A user on Instagram, known as 'Ninja\_Hater' made an Instagram post on the night of July 16, 2018, saying "Spread this. Let's make fake news. OC". He then showed an image of "Tyler" in heaven along with other well-known people and animals featuring, Harambe, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Lil Peep, and many more with the phrase "*Join us, Ninja*". On July 18, further confusion arisen; as commentated Fortnite gameplay was posted on Tyler's YouTube, Twitter and Twitch accounts. Despite the fact, it had been two days since his "death" at the time. An investigation is taking place as to how a Fortnite stream featuring Tyler occurred days later.

On July 20, 2018, Instagram user spookid uploaded a clip from a stream that featured Tyler, which showed him requesting moderators to ban users who mentioned Ligma in the chat, stating that first offenses would be met with a 24-hour ban and repeat offenses would be permanently banned.[20] The user then posted a video of him commenting about ligma on Ninja’s Instagram post, then showing a photoshopped Tyler response to the comment asking ‘what’s ligma?’ with ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we got him’ and ‘Breakbot - Baby I’m Yours’ playing in the background, which is usually played in meme videos when someone gets fooled or something hilariously bad happens. A few hours after the comment was posted, the user then deleted his comment, because it was only for the meme. This resulted in some users trying to find his comment under the original post, and of course it wasn’t there anymore.

On July 22, 2018, PewDiePie posted a Meme Review covering the Ligma "meme", applied to both Tyler and other internet celebrities such as H3h3Productions and Supreme Patty. Tyler did comment on the video saying "*RIP ninja... that damn ligma*﻿" which was later pinned by PewDiePie, which confirmed the end of Tyler’s disliking of the meme, as it grown on him and he started becoming cool with it and joking along about it. However, the comment was deleted on April 1, 2019 by ‘Cringemaster64’, a PewDiePie channel moderator as an April Fools prank

### Female Twitch Streamers

On August 9, 2018, at the Samsung event and previously weeks before on stream, Tyler had explained why he doesn't play with female Twitch streamers. The decision had a lot of controversies and was shared by Polygon. Tyler explained why he decided not to play with female streamers, is because it will cause drama and a relationship. Tyler says if he made a joke with the female, it would be clipped and used for clickbait and manipulation on YouTube and can make people think that Tyler is flirting with other women making Jessica (Tyler's wife) "angry". His decision had gotten a lot of support, but some of the females did not respect his decision. But other female streamers also agreed with Tyler's decision, one of them being Valkyrae. Tyler also explains that he has nothing against female streamers nor does he hate them. The only thing he hates is the clickbait if he possibly ever plays with a female. Some time afterwards, Tyler changed his mind, and only seems to play with taken females, but still almost all of the time plays with males.

### Reporting Players

#### **Ban Attempt Towards a Non-Stream Sniper**

On the evening of November 10, 2018, Tyler had thought he was eliminated by a stream sniper who goes by IcyFive. After Tyler gets eliminated by IcyFive, DrLupo said "wait for the emote", and IcyFive did do an emote. Tyler then immediately reports him for allegedly stream sniping. After the report, Tyler tells IcyFive to leave the game and not get eliminated by someone. Immediately after what had happened, people started friend requesting IcyFive telling them that Tyler reported him. IcyFive immediately said that he did not stream snipe, and only emoted because he had 6 spectators. IcyFive made a video about the situation and said he played squads to help a 9-year-old kid get his first Fortnite win.

DrLupo did respond to IcyFive and said "I didn't think you did, all good on my end.", which was both supportive and hated on, because Tyler's fans do think IcyFive stream sniped, but others did not think that. Tyler also responded saying "Did you use to have an account called ninjasrealloot? Lol", and which was completely hated due to it being childish and immature. IcyFive responded to Tyler saying that he owned an older account named 'Historical' and 'IcyViiral' until it was hacked.

3 hours after the situation, Tyler on Twitter admitted he was wrong and apologized to IcyFive. In the same tweet, which was a reply, he told people to stop milking the situation and claims IcyFive is trying to play the victim. IcyFive responds saying that he knows Tyler can get him banned, which Tyler later explains that Epic Games investigates the player's actions and doesn't blindly do what the reporter says, famous or not.

After the entire situation, many of Tyler's haters then mocked Tyler by saying he blames every time he gets eliminated in Fortnite on stream sniping, going far to claim he would blame it on the storm or a trap. DrDisRespect also mocks Tyler as well, with NICKMERCS laughing.

Tyler did apologize publicly on the incident, but his apology was not 100% mature.

#### On October 3, 2018, Tyler was eliminated by a player who possibly had a high ping. Tyler was placing a wall to prevent the players' bullets from going through, but since Tyler was on low health and the player was using an SMG the bullets eliminating Tyler as soon as the wall was destroyed. Tyler was suspicious of how fast it happened then reported the player for "having a higher ping than me". A Reddit post was published on November 16, 2018, by the player claiming he was supposedly banned, which made a lot of Fortnite fans think Epic Games is becoming careless. However, Tyler's report was not the reason for the players' ban, it was someone faking the ban and was successfully done to slander Tyler and the Epic Games staff. Tyler responded on stream to this occurrence by stating that he jokingly reported him and knew that he wouldn't get the guy banned.

A staff member responded on Reddit about Tyler having a player banned for having a high ping.

"*We take the reporting and actioning of accounts very seriously. We treat every report the same and follow the same process to determine what action is necessary.* *There are two accounts involved in this: Account A which was the account originally reported by Ninja and Account B which is tied to a YouTube video we discovered*

* *On Oct 2nd, Account B was disabled for reasons unrelated to player reporting.*
* *On Oct 3rd, Account A was reported by Ninja. It was investigated and not actioned due to lack of evidence.*
* *On Oct 4th, Account A changed its display name away from the name reported on October 3.*
* *On Nov 13th, Account B was re-enabled based on a review of the underlying system.*
* *On Nov 17th, account B changed their display name to match the display name of account A at the time of Ninja's report.*

*We became aware of a YouTube video claiming that we banned (and then unbanned) account B based on Ninja's report, which is false. We hope this clears up the sequence of actions.*"

#### **Ninja Response**

Tyler made a response on DramaAlert and says that he was being a troll when the stream sniping incident happened on November 10 and made a public apology.

As another controversy came in on November 16, Tyler mentions that the "banned" player had changed his username of another banned account to make it look like he’d been punished for the high ping report. However, the ban was found out to be false, and was used to slander Tyler and to make him look bad. Which, said by Tyler, was successful.

### Drake's Fortnite Account Hacked

During Tyler's charity Livestream on November 23, 2018, Tyler receives an invite from Drake's Fortnite account named 'Duddus647' (on PlayStation 'TheBoyDuddus') to play Fortnite duos. Tyler previously played with Drake last on April 10, 2018, and became Tyler's 2nd most viewed live viewers before Ninja Vegas. Tyler was skeptical at the start of it all happening and said he didn't think Drake meant to send him an invite. Regardless, he accepts the invite and readies up. "Drake" had not said anything, and which Tyler thought it could be that "Drake's" audio isn't connected. Shortly after getting into the match, he realizes that the player on Drake's account is playing on a PC and not a PlayStation. He gets more skeptical, still unsure if it's him or not (he also said it could be one of Drake's friends playing). About a minute later, the hacker who got into Drake's account connected his mic, and seconds later spammed the N' bomb with a hard R 9 times heard. Tyler immediately left the match and leaves the hacker's party. He responds "Well. There you go! Fake Drake!" with nervous laughter, and says "Well that was awkward! (laughs) On a charity live stream! What are you gonna do about that?". Tyler continues to react with laughter for a few more seconds and afterward says "I'm gonna text Drake and tell him his account was hacked" then nervously laughs again. A few more seconds in the stops laughing/grinning and starts seeing the situation more seriously, then says "I'm going to report that guy to Epic and hopefully something serious happens, we'll see" and contacts Epic about the hacker. After Tyler goes into the next match, he says "Jesus Christ man. What is wrong with people?" and minutes later in responses to two donations reacting to the situation says "(with regret) I should've known something was up when I realized he wasn't on his PlayStation" and "That's life man. You have to block out all the stupid idiots and negativity and all the racism."

The situation became controversial as many fans believed Tyler could get banned from Twitch because of it but wasn't since it wasn't in his will. Tyler made no responses to the situation on social media, and neither has Drake (it's not even known if Drake responded to the text Tyler sent him).

### Calling out Twitch

Ever since Tyler made his switch to livestreaming on Mixer, Twitch went on to leave a message on top saying "*The Ninja you're looking for is in another castle*" if you were to look up Ninja on Twitch. Below that message shows other popular streamers. Ninja did not agree with it the most, since he was the only one that had something like it, but stated that he wanted to stay professional and leave it how it is. As time went on, a pornography stream unexpectedly showed up and had the most live viewers (was possibly view-botted, but was able to be one of the most live viewed) and the thumbnail alongside others showed up when searching 'Ninja' on Twitch. Tyler was disgusted by this, which was the motivation to his Twitter video that was released on August 11, 2019. Twitch immediately changed it back to what Tyler's offline stream would look like.

### Feud with Dakotaz

Tyler and Brett "Dakotaz" Hoffman has had backlash at each other while livestreaming and on Twitter. It all started on December 19, 2019, with a tweet by Brett talking about how Fortnite is in a "hot garbage" state. Tyler responded saying that he could play another game, but gets bored and 'sleepy' of other games besides Fortnite.

Tyler made a response while live streaming stating that Brett should not call the game "garbage" if it doesn't make him bored or "fall asleep". Brett's final response was to let his opinion go through.

Since the beef days later, Brett hated Tyler's fans sending hate and negativity towards him, and decided to block Tyler on Twitter on December 24, 2019.

## Quotesedit

* LET'S GO, BABY!
* Got him.
* THAT'S WHAT WE DO!
* Uh, I can explain.
* Hit your shots, kid.
* You're trash kid, get good!
* OH MY GOD!
* Are you out of your mind!?
* Pentakill!
* Disco disco good good!
* Gotta love it when there's proof!
* COURAGE JAYYYY DEEEEE!!!
* Quit horsing around! Play me some of that jumping music.
* Not even a thank you?
* Oh my god, it’s massive!
* Uhh, you’re the one who got knocked!