Good things come to those who wait, and today, we got one of the funniest streamers out there. He first came across my radar from a Naruto skit and now he’s finally at rolling out. If you don’t know Theo, you’re probably not funny or you’re spending too much time on apps you don’t need to be on. Either way, allow me to catch you up.
Theo’s rise to Internet stardom didn’t start in some fancy studio or influencer mansion. It started on his mom’s phone, in middle school, where a 12-year-old Theo was making Vine skits about Black parents vs. White parents. “I had white lotion all over me like, ‘You’re grounded,’ and then for the Black parent, I had like five belts in my hand,” he told us. “That’s when people at school started saying, ‘Yo, I saw you on Vine, you funny.'”
Like many of us, Theo was inspired by Vine legends like Reggie Couz, King Bach and Jerry Purpdrank. “That was my introduction to short-form content,” he said. But unlike most, he took it beyond 6 seconds and built a career out of it.
It wasn’t all skits and giggles, though. Theo admits school was never really his thing. “I had like a 1.9 GPA. I failed my SAT. I hated school. I never liked reading. I probably read two books in my life,” he said, completely unbothered. When asked what he was doing instead of studying, Theo kept it real: “It was just me, my laptop, and some lotion.”
And while that quote deserves to live in meme history forever, the real turning point came after high school — during the pandemic. “I graduated in quarantine. No prom, no real graduation. Just me at home, going to work and coming back,” he said. That job? Papa John’s. “I was flipping pizzas, they loved me in there. They [were] sad when I quit.”
But quitting Papa John’s was the move. Theo saved up for a car, switched to DoorDash for flexible hours, and then made a major leap: sleeping on his brother’s couch in Midtown Atlanta. “I wanted to be closer to the city and in the mix,” he said. And within two weeks, boom: another viral video.
You might remember it. Theo would ask girls to fill out a “survey” that was just his contact list. “That got posted everywhere, Shade Room, everything. I gained like 25K followers in a week. That really started my career.”
If you saw that hilarious trend where a bunch of “street” girls and guys are dancing to the Naruto theme song, yep, that’s Theo too. “It was a trend from a while ago, but I did it my own way,” he said. And when I asked if it was hard to get people together for skits like that, he was unfazed: “I know where to find them.”
That’s the thing with Theo. He just … knows. Whether it’s timing, trends, or trolling, he knows the Internet like the back of his hand. He knows which trends to hop on and how to put his own twist on it. Like the Ashton Hall remake video he did last month that reached 2.5 million views. Or when he recreated a viral Indian slap-boxing video and made his own version that went almost as viral as the original.
Oh, and he’s a serious anime head, ready to die about Attack on Titan. “Greatest anime of all time? It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Attack on Titan,” he declared. I told him I couldn’t give him that one. He challenged me back, play-by-play, episode-by-episode. “First episode, bro’s mom gets eaten by a Titan. He joins the scouts. He’s trash at first, but keeps going. Then boom — he is the Titan. That’s deep!”
Theo’s energy is raw, unfiltered, and wildly relatable. From Vine kid to Papa John’s employee, from couch surfing to becoming a content king, his story is more than inspiring. It’s hilarious, honest and real. It’s easy to see why he gained his million-plus of followers; the conversation was almost as funny as his content. His content and comedic genius has already gotten him off his older brother’s couch, and he’s ready to take it so much further.
