An American mega-influencer flew to Lithuania. Then the chaos began.

Yahoo

4 days ago

When the YouTube mega-streamer IShowSpeed walked shirtless recently off a private jet into the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, the nation's economy minister was waiting for him on the tarmac with shots of šaltibarščiai, a cold pink beetroot soup.
A mob of chanting fans was waiting, too, so the streamer - a 20-year-old from Cincinnati named Darren Watkins Jr., who has 120 million followers across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube - piled with his security detail into a minibus to drive to the city's historic Palace of the Grand Dukes, where the mayor served him cheese and honey and a troupe of young Lithuanian women taught him a traditional folk dance.
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.
'These lyrics are about stabbing someone in the heart,' one woman said, with a smile.
Speed, as his fans call him, became famous during the pandemic for his hyperactive, hours-long broadcasts, where he'd rage about video games, leap over Lamborghinis and perform unprompted backflips. But lately, his real star power has come from his international tours, during which he blitzes into foreign countries to see the sights while surrounded by screaming teenagers, all of it live-streamed.
Speed's TikTok-era travelogues often descend into chaos, but government officials have learned to love them nevertheless. His two-week trip through China this spring, where he fawned over the country's state-of-the-art phones and luxury cars, went so viral that the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper hailed it as a 'digital-age Marco Polo journey.'
'The U.S. has spent billions on anti-China propaganda, only to be undone by … IShowSpeed,' one report by the state news agency Xinhua said, citing a YouTube comment.
This month, it was Lithuania's turn. When the Baltic nation learned that Speed's next adventure would cross through northeastern Europe, local tourism officials scrambled to craft him an extraordinary itinerary, including throwing a discus with an Olympic silver medalist, swinging swords in 14th-century armor and walking along the crown of Lithuania's tallest tower. They also extended Speed an honorarium worth about $23,500 and spent an additional $8,000 on minibuses, snacks and 10 security guards supported by the Lithuanian police.
'We want teenagers to know, just like London and Barcelona, that Vilnius is really, really cool,' Akvilė Lesauskaitė-Hu, an official for the city's tourism agency, said in an interview. 'How else do we reach them? They don't watch CNN. They watch TikTok.'
The stream was watched live by more than 115,000 people at one point, and its clips have been viewed millions of times.
Speed's wild trip showcased how the business of social media influencers, known as the creator economy, has helped mint a new kind of celebrity, upending traditional hierarchies of culture, authority and fame.
It also revealed how governments are focusing on creators' giant fan bases as a new strategy for soft power, pushing novel methods of attention-getting that could reshape how nation-states portray themselves to the rest of the world.
Speed's lighthearted visits to China, Saudi Arabia and other countries have drawn criticism as propaganda exercises that promoted the countries in ways they wanted, rather than reckoning with their more complicated reality.
And they have become a model for broader ambitions: China last month invited American influencers with more than 300,000 followers to a 10-day, expenses-paid nationwide tour, where they would work with Chinese influencers on videos and other kinds of 'collaborative storytelling.'
Creators' 'emotional capital' with their fans has made them 'a scarce resource that many governments seek to harness,' said Jian Xu, an associate professor at Deakin University in Australia who researches digital celebrity and politics. Speed 'aimed to explore the lucrative Chinese market … [and] the government effectively capitalized on it as a 'laid on a plate' opportunity.'
Crystal Abidin, an anthropologist who studies internet culture, said it only made sense that governments would tap influencers, whose fame now rivals that of movie stars, for their ability to churn out viral moments of spectacle and surprise. Speed's giddy reaction to China, she said, was just how he acted everywhere - and was what his fans wanted to see.
'This idea of glamorizing or popularizing China as a highlight reel, Speed does that with all countries,' she said. The question, she added, is whether that's 'propaganda, or simply good advertising.'
Povilas Kondratavicius, a 25-year-old Vilnius native who worked as a sales manager at a military industry company, first saw Speed on TikTok three years ago and has watched him ever since, admiring his high-energy social interactions and feats of athletic talent. He remembered thinking while watching Speed's China videos that the country he'd been taught was 'underdeveloped and authoritarian' actually seemed pretty advanced and culturally rich.
So when Speed announced on stream that he'd be heading to Lithuania, Kondratavicius emailed the national tourism development agency and encouraged them to 'follow China's example' by taking the visit seriously. He said he felt it was his duty 'as a patriot' to ensure that Lithuania looked great online.
'We're a really small country, we're in Eastern Europe, so we immediately have a bad reputation,' he said in an interview. 'And for my generation, and Gen Alpha, he's one of the most famous people there is.'
After they got Kondratavicius's email, agency officials met with the tourism boards in Vilnius - as well as in Estonia and Latvia, the other Baltic countries on Speed's European tour - to pull together an emergency plan, Lesauskaitė-Hu said. Speed had promoted the tour with an online poster showing him on a throne near the Eiffel Tower, but officials didn't learn his exact visit date until it was only a week away, thanks to a tip from the manager of a popular Latvian TikTok star.
Members of Speed's team did not respond to requests for comment. But on stream, Speed has said his security detail works to keep his plans secret until the last minute, in hopes of heading off public mayhem.
Speed's plan, the officials learned, was to visit all three Baltic capitals in a single day, spending a few hours in each before racing to the next in a charter jet. So when he began the day in Estonia, Lithuanian officials watched his stream closely, expecting he'd get a meager reception; the fellow Baltic country's culture, Lesauskaitė-Hu said, is 'very Scandinavian … very reserved.'
Instead, Speed was mobbed at every turn - so much so that a waterfront dock swarmed by onlookers collapsed. (Speed raced over dramatically on a water scooter, though no one appeared to be hurt.)
When Speed landed in Vilnius later that afternoon, crowds had already amassed in the rain outside the airport and in the city center, half an hour's drive away. His videographer - a minor celebrity in his own right, known as Slipz - trailed Speed closely as he exited the jet, wearing only bulky slip-ons and shorts covered in the McDonald's logo. 'Lithuania, we are here,' he shouted, mispronouncing its name.
Speed shook hands with Lukas Savickas, the country's sharply dressed minister of economy and innovation, and was given a tie-dye shirt like those the Grateful Dead gave to the country's bronze-medal-winning Olympic basketball squad in 1992, a source of national pride.
Then he continued his whirlwind tour, first with the folk dancers, then some basketball, a medieval sword battle with members of the military, a meeting with a Lithuanian illusionist and a flight in a hot-air balloon.
'Yo, look at the whole of Lithuania, though,' he said from the top of the Vilnius TV Tower. 'This looks so beautiful, bro.'
Speed's sprint through the Baltics drew frustration from some locals, including in Latvia, where he did a backflip at the Freedom Monument honoring soldiers killed in the country's 1918 war for independence and sang to fans from the balcony of the nation's ailing public radio station. One journalist there wrote that the moment - 'an unregulated content creator peacocking at the home of Latvian broadcasting' - offered a foreboding symbol of how modern media had changed.
The biggest debates, however, centered on the cost. Lithuania had offered 20,000 euros (about $23,500) to Speed's team, and the other Baltic countries extended similar packages, sparking debates in the local press over whether the streamer and his entourage truly warranted public funds.
A columnist for the Lithuanian newspaper, Kauno Diena, wrote that the money could have helped stimulate the economy but was instead spent on an event whose main audience was minors - 'economically inactive people with unformed views and sporadic needs.'
Others argued that the cost was worth it, compared with the price of a travel-agency billboard or TV ad. Lithuanian journalist Andrius Tapinas wrote on Facebook that it was a bargain for that kind of global name recognition, particularly among a young generation for whom 'there's simply no other way to catch their attention.'
'Now parents have seen what drives their kids crazy,' he wrote, in Lithuanian, 'and maybe even had something to talk about with them over dinner last night.'
Beyond branding, some in the Baltics argued that the money was an investment in national security, given their borders with Russia and Belarus. Gediminas Užkuraitis, co-founder of a consulting firm in Vilnius, told Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT that raising national awareness was critical given the country's 'image as a front-line state' to the war in Ukraine.
'If, for example, the American public had to decide whether Lithuania is worth defending, it helps if they've actually heard of us,' he said.
After about 12 hours of streaming, Speed ended his Lithuania trip at Hotel Pacai, a converted mansion from the 17th century, bidding the country a live-streamed goodbye as young people ran alongside his car.
He continued his European tour the next day with a visit to Poland, then Slovakia and France. By then, Vilnius's social media team had already posted their own video recap of the trip on Instagram.
'IShowSpeed caused minor chaos in Vilnius,' the post said. '10/10 worth it.'
Related Content
In a stressful human world, 'mermaiding' gains popularity in D.C. area
'College hazing' or training? Amid shortage, air traffic recruits wash out.
A 100-year-old on a bike? Yes. 'The right to wind in your hair'
Solve the daily Crossword