Last week the internet’s most annoying teenager prowled the streets of – you guessed it – Enniskillen. Ever since John Wayne starred in The Quiet Man, Yanks haven’t been able to help themselves from disturbing the peace on our little green isle.
The latest to descend upon our land is called IShowSpeed, and he’s the United States’ attempt first to produce the most irritating young person and then to elevate him to stardom, apparently as some form of psychological warfare. That kids idolise this 19-year-old menace makes you want to throw your phone away.
Speed, as he is more commonly known, has 27.5 million subscribers on YouTube. The goal of his Irish livestream is to gain 85,000 more. (Subscribing is free, but fans can pay extra for “loyalty perks” that show their status to their peers.) I’ve watched it so you never have to. Public-service journalism at its peak.
In the livestream he walks briskly from person to person, feigning interest in someone or something, before losing attention and moving on. Of course, he’ll stop for photos with fans, most of whom are under 18. (When he’s not sure what to say to his audience, Speed incessantly claps and screams. I wonder if Patrick Kielty has thought about trying this to get young people back watching The Late Late Show.)
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Still, Speed fits a lot into his Irish adventure, making a pizza, dropping in on a trad session and trying his hand at Gaelic football. If he has any talent, it’s at making a fool of himself. All told, 3.6 million people decide they’ll be entertained enough to tune in. One boy he meets calls him “IShowMeat”, in reference to an incident in which, in an apparent accident, Speed revealed his genitals during a livestream.
Speed, if you haven’t guessed already, is a paragon of virtue. He once lit a Pikachu-shaped firework in his bedroom, made fun of a Chinese man in an apparently racist manner while livestreaming, and is known for his trademark rage. Worst of all, he was banned from Twitch, the online streaming platform, in 2021 for what was widely interpreted as a threat to sexually assault the model and influencer Ash Kash if they were the last two people on Earth. “Who’s gonna stop me?” he screamed into his camera.
There are better role models.
The inflammatory behaviour Speed has come to define typifies the race to the bottom in this corner of the internet. In an online arena that rewards negativity, it’s the shock factor that wins out. Speed is like an annoying 14-year-old whom people tolerate only because they know he’ll grow out of it – except that, instead of maturing, he has monetised his immaturity.
Even after the outcry at the overtly misogynistic Andrew Tate, the online influencer who has been charged with human trafficking and rape – he denies all of the allegations – many other internet idols retain a sexist undertone. Parents might take solace in the idea of Ireland as a bastion of progress, but their children may well absorb the “banter” of their internet heroes.
‘Galway is one of the bigger towns in Ireland,’ one of the Sidemen says. ‘The south is barren’
Another pack of feral content creators who, like Speed, seem never to have left the schoolboy phase of existence are the Sidemen. The British group released an Abandoned in Ireland video earlier this year. It has higher production values than Speed’s patchy broadcast, but the diddly-eye shtick remains.
Your children will probably be well aware of their frontman, KSI. He’s known for his humorous videos, boxing antics and being one half of the duo behind Prime. (His former nemesis in the ring, Logan Paul, is the other content creator raking in preteens’ pocket money.) If you don’t know what this hydration mulch is, my colleague Patrick Freyne aptly described it as liquidised My Little Pony.
In the video, six of the crew are blindfolded and dropped in pairs at seemingly random locations across Ireland. They have a map and some money but no phones. The goal is to reach Dublin first. Like much of their content, it has the feeling of a stag weekend gone awry.
They’re dropped by a bridge that features in The Quiet Man, near “a town called Galway”; at Hook Lighthouse, in Co Wexford; and at Clare Glens waterfall, outside Limerick city.
“Galway is one of the bigger towns in Ireland,” one of them says. “The south is barren.” Such ignorance can be forgiven – I couldn’t tell you the first thing about England’s midlands outside of the film Hot Fuzz, for example – but that these mistruths aren’t corrected means they become an unfortunate advertisement for Ireland. The soft power of these folks is difficult to overstate.
One of the guys opens a bag of survival items. “Is that a rape whistle?” his partner says. “We might need it, mate,” he jokes back. That kind of humour wouldn’t fly on broadcast television – but, at 11 million views online, you’d wonder how many people idolise these guys.
KSI is flanked at all times by Steve, a ridiculously tall bodyguard, who spends his time gently pulling hands away when they linger a little too long on the star.
Through a combination of taking public transport, crossing farmland and thumbing lifts from bewildered locals, they make it to Dublin. As soon as KSI steps off a bus in the city he’s greeted by some Canada Goose-sporting young men on bikes who offer to sell “the best crack in Dublin”. You don’t see that in Tourism Ireland ads.
KSI stops at Doyles pub, by Trinity College, for a pint of Guinness and a crisp sandwich before making a diddly-eye TikTok. The talk of pots of gold, and the mocking of jigs and trad music in the background, grow tiresome.
Then two of them walk the streets around the Guinness Storehouse, asking strangers to teach them how to “Riverdance”, and are promptly reminded that by doing so they’d “probably find a junkie”. Still, the brewery is one of Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions.
Through childish hooliganism, the Sidemen offer that older-brother dynamic without the messy complexity of a real relationship. And in our ignorance to put guard rails on the internet – a slippery slope, in fairness – we’ve left our children with these idiots to look up to.
Speed and KSI and his band are in a league of celebrity our culture has embraced by stealth. Not in the pages of the press or around office water coolers but on the handheld screens we retreat to at the end of the day. It would make you miss The Quiet Man.
