Tragic Details About IShowSpeed
IShowSpeed has been at it for quite some time now, but he absolutely dominated streaming in recent years, and ever since then he's been one of the most-watched internet personalities around. Fans love Speed because of his extremely high energy and over-the-top reactions to basically everything that happens during a broadcast. No matter how his games go or what chat has to say, Speed will always respond with an exaggerated facial expression and some (usually good-hearted) yelling.
For as much as some people love IShowSpeed, the streamer has also been able to stay on everyone's radar by being a somewhat controversial figure. He has a tendency to take things too far, which sometimes means he gets himself permanently banned from games for toxic behavior or he nearly burns his house down (seriously). You never know what you're going to get with Speed, but you always know it's going to be, well, a lot. IShowSpeed is a super entertaining streamer, but he's not all smiles and big reactions. Like anyone else, Speed has also dealt with his fair share of tragedy — and often enough, the worst things that happen to him are directly tied to his work as a streamer.
Speed's been swatted repeatedly
Working from home as a streamer sounds like a dream, but there are plenty of ways that it can become a nightmare. Maintaining an audience often requires streamers to stay busier than other full-time employees, because taking even a day off the usual schedule can result in viewers fleeing to other channels. On top of that, because a streamer is often at home and getting very personal with their audience, some viewers can figure out where a streamer lives pretty easily.
IShowSpeed is intimately familiar with just how disruptive some viewers can be once they find out where you live. Some people like to play a dangerous prank on streamers where they call in a fake police report to get a stream disrupted by the cops. Speed has dealt with so-called "swatting" before, and one time this "silly" prank resulted in him getting arrested. His bail was set at $20,000, and Speed might have spent a bit longer behind bars if Adin Ross hadn't gotten him out of jail. That particular incident was the most expensive swatting prank IShowSpeed has had to deal with, but it's far from the only time someone thought they'd be funny by getting the cops to show up at Speed's house. Unfortunately, he's been a victim of these pranks pretty regularly.
A severe infection made him think he was dying
In July 2023, Speed uploaded a video in which he explained to his fans that he was in debilitating pain. An intense cluster headache was preventing him from even opening his eyes, much less following his usual streaming schedule. That video was uploaded on the 28th, and things got much worse before they got better. IShowSpeed was in Japan at the time, but his visit was sadly cut short. Three days after his initial video, he made another post revealing that he was in the hospital.
please pray for me i beg of y'all i need it pic.twitter.com/GqeITfMHjc
— Speed⭐️ (@ishowspeedsui) July 31, 2023
Between that short look into his situation and his triumphant return stream, Speed explained what led him to think he was dying in Japan. His extreme headaches turned out to have been caused by a sinus infection. Luckily, that meant that his life wasn't in immediate danger, but the pain led him to believe otherwise, especially as the infection made one eye swell shut. Speed wasn't totally back to his normal self when he returned to streaming — see the above point about how streamers can never really take a break — but he was excited to get back into the swing of things. Since then, he hasn't had another cluster headache severe enough to knock him out of the streaming game, and fans are crossing their fingers that it never happens again.
His WWE debut ended painfully
In April 2024, IShowSpeed got some firsthand experience with the WWE, and it didn't end well. Speed was at the United States WWE Championship to support Logan Paul's bout against WWE Superstar Randy Orton, and he went all out to support his fellow YouTuber. Sporting a full-body Prime bottle suit to rep Paul's sports drink, Speed brought all the bombastic energy that his fans have come to love, but maybe he should have reined it just a bit more. While standing on the edge of the ring, Speed couldn't help but lean in and interfere with the match, which Orton didn't take kindly to. Orton came right for Speed and slammed him onto a table. Getting hit by Orton's signature RKO move is something that even highly experienced WWE stars try their best to avoid, and needless to say, Speed was utterly unprepared for what he experienced.
Ishowspeed says WWE is real after getting rko'd by Randy Orton pic.twitter.com/t0eS93llNS
— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) April 8, 2024
Though the moment was clearly semi-planned, the hit turned Speed into a WWE believer. "I got RKO'd by Randy Orton, you know. [I'll] be honest, everything is real man," IShowSpeed said in a video to his fans, adding, "I'm going to be in the hospital for like one day, but I'm not dead, and I'm going to be okay." Don't anticipate IShowSpeed following Paul's path from YouTuber to professional fighter anytime soon.
He's been targeted by racists
The internet is a semi-magical place that connects people across the globe and brings together communities that would never exist otherwise, which makes it a shame that the internet is also a place where the worst of humanity is constantly on display. IShowSpeed has seen the internet's ugly side plenty of times. It's sad — but also utterly unsurprising — that Speed has been the victim of racist comments and attacks for years.
Back in 2022, just as IShowSpeed's streaming career was really starting to take off, he found himself fielding donations from racist viewers. The viewers were sending money because the comment attached to the donation would be immediately read on stream. After a couple of hateful donations included comments about racial stereotypes, Speed packed it up and ended his stream early.
Though IShowSpeed is a bonafide streaming star these dats, that hasn't insulated him from these kinds of incidents. In late 2023, he went out of his way to feature fans in one of his streams by FaceTiming them during broadcasts. It took under 40 minutes for someone to call in and unleash a barrage of slurs at Speed. He was able to ultimately shrug off the attacks and continue enjoying his stream with real fans for several more hours, but this just goes to show that no amount of success can totally shield someone from this kind of appalling behavior.