This story originally appears in i-D’s “The Unknown Issue.” Get your copy here.
written by ROBBY KELLY
photography EDGLRD
styling BLOODY OSIRIS
Wake up, turn a camera on, and broadcast your life to the world. One day you’re blasting a 24-hour livestream from your bedroom, playing nothing but Minecraft. Next, you’re shaking hands with football legend Cristiano Ronaldo, fresh off the pitch. Then, come Friday, you’re risking your backbone (and life) for a stunt, leaping over a Lamborghini racing toward you at full speed. That’s the life of 20-year-old Darren Watkins Jr.—or, to the 80 million plugged into the professional livestreamer’s content, IShowSpeed.
“I just wanted to make some income where I didn’t have a job,” Speed says of the streaming phenomenon that has become just that—a full-time gig that started in a stock-photo suburban bedroom in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eight years later, he’s living the wet dream of most chronically online male teens.
Today, Speed is bouldering into the office of Harmony Korine, the provocateur-auteur known for his hallucinatory depictions of American youth. “Leave me alone, bro, leave me alone,” Speed is yelling, near tears, from a flat-screen TV in the foyer of Korine’s Miami Beach, Florida, outpost—a space resembling the HQ of a Series A crypto start-up, with freakishly large computer monitors and young staffers in hooded sweaters and Vans sneakers.
Speed is here to join the roster of global superstars (Gucci Mane, Selena Gomez, and Travis Scott, among others) who have ceded full creative license to Korine so he can use their likeness in however he sees fit in his photography and films—much like Scott in Aggro Dr1ft, the experimental infrared thriller that premiered at 2023’s Venice International Film Festival.
Speed winces as he shuffles past the TV projecting his YouTube videos to 30 strangers at full volume (no longer on the edge of tears, now shown playing Fortnite). On screen, he’s yelling to commenters in his live chat about stream snipers, the in-game trolls succeeding at getting a heated reaction out of him.
Surrounded by his entourage, he wanders through the office’s open entryway, ambling with no clear destination in sight. It’s early afternoon and he’s an hour early, dressed like he’s only recently rolled out of bed, wearing a pair of Yeezy Foam Runners, loose sweatpants, and a bootleg sweatshirt plastered with the face of Mario Balotelli (the 34-year-old Italian footballer as recognised for stunts, like setting off fireworks in his toilet, as he is for scoring goals at the World Cup).
Speed is joined by his father, a security guard, and a few friends dressed in comically matchy football ensembles, looking ready to tear off their tracksuits at a moment’s notice should an impromptu game of futsal break out.
“Speed” is a household moniker to any young man in possession of a games console. He began livestreaming video games on YouTube at the age of 12 in 2016. “Once I found out about streaming, I knew that’s what I wanted to be,” he intones matter-of-factly.
The 12-year-old Speed came to this unlikely career at a time when Twitch was booming, riding a testosterone wave set in motion by American Twitch.tv megastar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and British streaming kingpin JJ “KSI” Olatunji. Where livestreamers like Blevins were able to turn marathon 12-hour gaming sessions into $20 million exclusive-platform contracts, creators like Olatunji specialised in hyper-stimulating montages, outbursts, and pranks.
Speed’s success is in his ability to master both sides of the gamer attention economy coin, synthesising creative chaos and caustic reactive commentary to keep his mostly male followers gripped.
“He’s America’s greatest cultural ambassador,” explains Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American political streamer whose US election-night coverage netted around 7.5 million views. “The moment I understood why people love Speed was when I saw him go to a döner place in Germany. Surrounded by all these adoring fans, Speed tasted my people’s best contribution to the culinary world for the first time. He couldn’t believe it. He got addicted. He kept eating döner and backflipping into crowds! He tries out the local food, and appreciates everything a country would love to show the rest of the world.”
Speed checks his mobile out of impulse during conversation, quickly thumbing through an avalanche of push notifications before locking his mobile, and attempting to return to the present moment. He apologises immediately if it happens to distract him from his train of thought, though it rarely does. Admittedly, you’d expect someone whose bread and butter is capturing content to raise their camera at every opportune moment. However, he’s very much present, working his way into a Louis Vuitton suit before being turned into a digital avatar by Korine.
When asked if he’d like his hair touched up for the shoot, he asks to see the makeup artist’s Instagram account to review her portfolio. “I’m just looking for a Black person, I’m not gonna lie,” he jokes after scrolling through the digital feed for longer than you’d expect. Satisfied, he sits down in the chair and pulls out his mobile where he has a video from one of his streams ready to show how he’d like his hair trimmed. “Just straight across,” he directs.
It would appear the same exactitude for grooming doesn’t extend to his outfits, but Speed’s recognisable day-to-day uniform—one that could mistake him for an off-the-clock academy football prospect—has also contributed to his online fandom.
“A [football] kit” is his foundational wardrobe piece. “And whatever pants are comfortable.” (When asked how many international and club football kits he owns, he estimates the number to be around 1,000—a number he shares with direct eye contact and the seriousness of a heart attack.) That reflects a shift in his content since his career’s astronomical growth in 2021—from a focus on Minecraft and Fortnite to football, developing an obsessive love of the sport and Cristiano Ronaldo. (You could argue his ban from Twitch between 2022 and 2024, for alleged inappropriate behaviour, played a large part in that, too.)
The footballing world has been a strong, if not unlikely catalyst to Speed’s meteoric rise over the past year. Video compilations of him opening digital player card packs in the video game EA Sports FC have gone viral. In them, he excitedly butchers, mispronounces, and misidentifies—with varying degrees of comedic intent—nearly every professional player in the world. His lack of ball knowledge and slapstick reactions have integrated him within the younger generation of football loyalists, typically hostile to American accents and one’s inability to recite 2012’s Spanish Federation starting lineup from memory.
Speed’s virality in the football world has earned him a guest spot at the prestigious Ballon d’Or ceremony, the sport’s award show of record. It even got him into a VIP party with the Manchester United team after its 2024 FA Cup victory. When a photo of Speed alongside then-manager Erik ten Hag leaked online, outrage from Man United fans, as well as club staff not invited to the event, was levied at Speed—a rookie fan infiltrating the club’s hallowed halls, seemingly just for having a huge follower count. It was later revealed he was a plus-one to 20-year-old Spanish left-winger Alejandro Garnacho, a fan of Speed’s content.
Most might scoff at the idea of Ten Hag being into Speed’s aggressively Zoomer-skewed content, but Korine is a fellow quinquagenarian fan, discovering the streamer via his 14-year-old son.
Video games are a pillar to both EDGLRD’s creative and commercial pursuits, and Korine speaks with an intoxicating level of passion about how he weaves them into projects—his favourite game from last year was Astro Boy and he’s an ardent lover of the Zelda franchise. The company’s futurist endeavours lean into virtual reality, and Korine, who lives near EDGLRD’s virtual reality lair in Miami Beach, often ends his days staring out into the ocean in an attempt to bring his brain back into the material world.
Korine sees a fellow futurist in Speed. A non-professional video game player from Ohio with the ability to wander foreign countries, while holding the attention of over 1 million live viewers, makes him something of a new genre of celebrity.
“What’s happening in Hollywood—and you’re starting to see Hollywood, I think, crumble creatively—is that they’re losing a lot of the most talented and creative minds to gaming and to streamers. Like IShowSpeed is a movie. Kai Cenat is a movie,” Korine declared at the Venice Film Festival last year. “But IShowSpeed is, you know, the new Tarkovsky.”
If EDGLRD’s aesthetics could be boiled down into brain rot lingo, it might be that they find joy in the idea that the flavour profile of a single Dorito would have fatal implications on a Victorian child. Where other cultural observers see Speed’s content as over-injected with processed ingredients, EDGLRD sees a fellow risk-taker who opts out of 2025’s boring-dystopia, nostalgia-porn culture.
With Speed fully dressed (with his freshly trimmed hair) and on set, Korine begins uploading Speed into EDGLRD’s multimedia universe, the process akin to receiving a digital spray tan. A handheld mechanism with hundreds of tiny cameras is manoeuvred around Speed’s body, while a digital version of him starts populating the computer screen behind him.
Korine fires off facts about Speed’s career to keep him engaged until the scanning process is complete. For about two minutes, Speed must remain statuesque while cameras and iPhones orbit around him—an unrefined skill in his blossoming repertoire.
The Q&A distraction turns into a bit of a fan-out, as Korine excitedly asks Speed about a rumoured race between him and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, the fleet-of-foot NFL giant, fellow Fortnite streamer, and self-nicknamed “Cheetah.” The challenge came from Hill himself on X, after Speed nearly bested Olympic track and field sprinter Noah Lyles in a 100-metre dash.
Similar to infamous influencer Jake Paul’s foray into boxing, athletic challenges have become another unexpected cornerstone of Speed’s career—protein-powder-laced honey to his swarm of followers. If in the early days Speed gained virality from high-risk stunts and hotheaded reactions during gameplay, his audience now yearns to see him on the knife’s edge of sanity in the real world.
In August, Speed posted a video of himself jumping over two consecutive Lamborghinis speeding towards him, racking up 340 million views as of January 2025. In October, he attempted to break the world record for most backflips completed in 24 hours, resigning after 660 consecutive flips in less than six hours (347 short of the world record). “My legs are dead. I’m not giving up,” he declared in his chat to an audience keen to see him pushed over the edge.“I’m just being mature.”
“I just woke up bored that day,” Speed says of why he did the Lamborghini stunt. “I just woke up and said, ‘Yeah, I want to do that, I know I can do it.’”
Despite his newfound access to rarefied circles in the real world, he still sees streaming as the foundational comfort zone for his output and something he doesn’t intend to walk away from.
“I know what it’s like to be a kid and watch your favourite streamer every day. I was a kid not that long ago,” he says. His lightning-fast rise to fame seems to skew his sense of time as most people would still, in fact, declare him a kid.
Speed ultimately chalks up his own success to a common cliché among digital personalities: He’s “being himself,” and audiences connect with that level of authenticity. But the version of Speed showing a shade of insecurity while trying on high-fashion clothes and asking for posing advice from Korine appears wildly different from the version of Speed available via a YouTube search that can be broadcast on a waiting-room TV.
“I was a wandering kid,” he says, briefly breaking from his hyper-confident shell. “I just had something
I was set on. I wanted to be a streamer. I never said I wanted to be a big streamer. I just wanted to make some income where I didn’t have a job. Then it got to a point where I was like, wait, I want to be the biggest streamer. I think I can do this.”
He references back to his newfound goal of competing as an Olympic sprinter—a marker that if his test with Lyles is to be believed, he’s not far off from. “I know I can do it and I’ve got the time to,” he attests, while being swept away by his manager, off to his next meeting, video game livestream,
or corporate engagement. “I think I’ve got the time to do it.”
in the lead image, speed wears suit and shirt LOUIS VUITTON
grooming ARIELLE WOLFF-SACHS USING SHADE COUNTY
creative director JOAO ROSA
visual director MEDET SHAYAKHMETOV
CG supervisor SAM GOLDWATER
designer CHUCK BOSTON
EP JAMES CLAUER
post production EDGLRD
location EDGLRD STUDIO