While Speed doesn’t detail the intricacies of his own rise, he started getting more serious during COVID, when he began uploading with much more regularity on YouTube. Clips of Watkins’ hyperbolic, aggressive reactions to games such as NBA2K and Fortnite soon lit up the internet. Whether it was his reactions to slapstick jump scares, in-game freak-outs, or letting his intrusive thoughts win at any given opportunity, Speed’s total unpredictability is as hypnotising as it is polarising.

Speed’s rise isn’t without massive amounts of controversy. It is this total chaos and shock factor that keeps his viewers hooked and the followers rolling in. Much like the mantra of Manchester United, the club Speed supports, Speed has become hated, adored, but never Ignored.

Speed rarely, if ever breaks character – what you’ve seen is more or less what you get from Speed. Each viral moment leaves us wondering if he’s in control of the joke; a deliberate attempt to tap in with that community and harness their following, or just doing it on a whim, as sporadically as his other breakneck-paced content. As an agent of chaos, it’s truly impossible to tell. “I always watched YouTube growing up,” Speed says, “then I just realised I wanted my job to be playing the game.”

Soon, a whole generation of “brain rotters” and “doom scrollers” absolutely lapped these viral moments up – and Speed had cultivated his very own community to perform in front of, all the time. He has fan accounts on Twitter with hundreds of thousands of followers that clip his every move and activity. “I have a super close connection to my fanbase,” he told Dazed and Confused magazine recently. “I can relate to them. They can relate to me.”

Despite being so nascent in his career, Speed is often asked for advice from young people looking to become streamers themselves – you’d be hard-pressed to find many kids out there whose sole ambition is anything other than “being a YouTuber.” So what advice does he offer to aspiring streamers? “Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Build a fanbase off a game that has a community. Then with your community, you can take it somewhere else.”

Speed constantly wears Manchester United and Portugal kits on his streams in honour of CR7. He has a Ronaldo Lamborghini, which he’s jumped over while it drives at him with the pedal to the floor. He has a diamond-encrusted Ronaldo chain, and a Jacob & Co ‘Flight of CR7’ watch. He even has a tattoo of Ronaldo’s face. The genuine outpouring of elation Speed has when meeting Ronaldo for the first time is emotional; seeing a teenager reaching his lifelong dream in real time. When GAFFER asks about one of his life goals, he responds instantly: “I want to do a stream with Cristiano Ronaldo. 30 mins, me and him. I hope it can happen one day.”

Andrei Tarkovsky is widely regarded as one of cinema’s true masters, and Harmony Korine is a cult film director who is responsible for bringing Kids and Gummo to life. Recently, Korine remarked, “IShowSpeed is the new Tarkovsky.” While the statement may be laced with a level of trolling also found in his own vitriolic Twitch chat, Speed’s content is unlike anything else in contemporary culture and obtains the attention of millions. While Korine also made the point that “Hollywood is crumbling creatively” because young people “go other places because movies are no longer the dominant art form”, there is a level of fascination with Speed’s entertainment that is causing a seismic, disruptive shift in contemporary culture.

In addition to his streaming, Speed has released music that has gained serious traction, with songs like “Shake” and “Ronaldo (Sewey)” becoming viral hits. Speed has peaked at 12 million monthly listeners on Spotify – music isn’t something he wants to pursue full time: “It’s just a side quest 100%. I just do it when I feel like it,” he tells GAFFER, nonchalantly.

One of the clips that changes his life $1.79 donation from a fan attached to the question, “What soccer/football team do you support?” His response: “Christian Ronaldo, SUUIII.” was clipped, reposted by millions, and tapped into a whole new demographic: the online football community. It was impossible for Speed to know how much impact that would have made – but the clip resulted in Speed turning his focus to football content and becoming Cristiano Ronaldo’s number one fan.

If it wasn’t for streaming, Speed would’ve either been an astronaut or an athlete. “Ever since I was young, sports have always been fun to me,” Speed tells GAFFER, “My earliest memories were playing sports and having fun with it.” As his uploads illustrate, Speed has freakish physical capabilities. Speed hits his now-signature backflip on the spot, multiple times in a row; runs a 40yard dash in 4.44 seconds (wearing Crocs); he can jump as high as Cristiano Ronaldo; he beat Alex Pereira in a punching competition and looks like a decent UFC fighter. Followers on his socials regularly leave comments like “Bro should be an Olympian” as a result – and they genuinely have a point. Recently, during a live interview at ComplexCon, Speed made a bold announcement that he intends to run the 100 meters at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. With his natural athleticism and ability to defy expectations, who’s to say this isn’t another goal he’ll sprint toward with all the force of nature that defines him?

So what’s next for Speed? While he tours the world, rest assured there is never going to be a dull moment on his livestreams anytime soon. After purchasing a robotic dog equipped with a flamethrower and jetting out to Thailand to ride elephants and crash into sacred temples live on stream, Speed’s goals stay as lofty as his viewership. “ I want 100 million subscribers, and stream with Ronaldo,” he says expectedly, while taking a rare moment of seriousness to detail some other wholesome plans for the future: “I want to own a great business, and to start a family one day.” But while he’s still young, exploring the world, and full of irrepressible energy, IShowSpeed will continue letting chaos reign.