American YouTuber declared Peruvian mayor for an hour
In his latest chaotic experience, YouTuber IShowSpeed traveled to Peru, where he was greeted by thousands of fans as he sampled local cuisine and was even made a mayor.
It wasn’t just any city that he presided over; he was officially declared the mayor of Lima – the Peruvian capital – by current mayor Rafael López Aliaga, and the appointment was so official that the Wikipedia page for the List of Mayors of Lima now includes him.
Throngs of people took to the streets to celebrate the streamer’s arrival in the country before he entered the Government Palace clad in a Peru National Team jersey.
“I have never been to a country before where they welcomed me like that,” IShowSpeed, known simply as “Speed,” told Aliaga 23 minutes into the over three-and-a-half-hour video, which has more than 7.5 million views in 24 hours.
“You are now the ambassador,” Aliaga replied.
After receiving his flowers – literally – Speed was escorted by the mayor and a large posse of security personnel to a private room where he signed the paperwork necessary to make him the mayor of Lima, albeit for only an hour. He then received more gifts before going out to the balcony of the Government Palace to see thousands of screaming Speed fans, much to his bewilderment.
The streamer is currently on a tour of sorts, and this most recent leg has seen him visit several South and Central American countries, including Colombia, Guatemala and Argentina, the latter of which was where he celebrated his 20th birthday earlier this month.
Last summer, he visited multiple European countries (garnering over 2.5 billion views across multiple platforms in the process) and finished 2024 by visiting seven countries in Southeast Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Next up on his tour is Bolivia, where as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, he was already livestreaming his experience in the streets with a large swath of Bolivian citizens. More than 100,000 people had tuned into the stream less than an hour after it started.
Speed, a native of Cincinnati whose real name is Darren Jason Watkins Jr., got his start on Twitch playing video games like Fortnite and NBA 2K but was banned from the livestreaming platform following a 2021 incident in which he told an influencer that she couldn’t “stop” him from reproducing with her if they were the last people on Earth.
He achieved further fame with his esoteric and sometimes violent antics during his livestreams that were subsequently reposted on TikTok by his fanbase; in April 2021, he had 100,000 subscribers but reached a million just two months later.
Since then, he has directed most of his attention towards YouTube, where his following has exploded even more; as of Tuesday, his main channel has more than 35 million subscribers and has received nearly 3.5 billion views. Three other channels associated with the 20-year-old, Live Speedy, SpeedUniverse and Speedy Boykins, have 13.4 million, 2.9 million and 2.2 million subcribers, respectively.
The streamer has also released multiple rap songs, including “World Cup,” which was released in honor of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and charted in several countries.
Another random tidbit about IShowSpeed? He “narrowly” lost a 50-meter dash to the fastest man in the world, Noah Lyles, in a competition set up by another incredibly popular YouTuber: Mr. Beast.