A game changer
AT 14, YOUTUBE WHIZ REEKID EARNS THOUSANDS A WEEK AND OWNS HIS OWN HOME
It certainly beats doing a paper run. Aussie teen Reekid is earning thousands of dollars a week making videos for his nearly 900,000 YouTube followers. The 14-year-old has even bought his first house, a two-bedroom prefab home he built on his parents property on the south coast of NSW.
Reekid, who wants to keep his real name private, is part of a new wave of social media celebrities, earning what many would consider a fortune for his gaming videos.
“I could go work in retail if I wanted to or I could go get a job at Macca’s flipping burgers,” he says. “It is astonishing to me that I am where I am. I had never even thought it would happen and to the degree of never thinking it would happen by never pursuing it. Over time, it just came to me. It went from me playing virtual reality here and there online and talking to people to meeting a few smaller VR YouTubers and then us all blowing up from each other’s antics.”
Reekid’s parents recently helped him sort out management representation and he pulled out of year nine at regular school in February to study remotely with big dreams for his future.
Now his days are spent in front of the $10,000-plus computer set up in the spare bedroom of his small home he says he had to get because “otherwise I would have driven my parents insane”.
The blonde teen still lives on the same block as his parents, who stay in a granny flat they extended after the family home was burnt down in the 2020 bushfires that ravaged much of NSW and Victoria.
“In layman’s terms, I create videos for people on the internet. I do virtual reality,” he explains. “It is pretty much a headset that you wear over your eyes, like a mask that puts you in a virtual world.”
Reekid, who has six-year-old twin siblings, says he has “lost count” of how many hours he spends a day on his computer.
“I get up, eat breakfast, have a shower and sit down and see what I can record for the day and play video games,” he says. “I just generally like video games. It’s always been something that I’ve enjoyed doing.”
Virtual reality enables a gamer to transport themselves into another world. “You can take the game tag or tips for example but with it in the middle of space with robots, or you play tag as a gorilla.”
Reekid’s gaming profile has seen him recognised on the street, something that sits slightly uncomfortably with him but he is getting used to. On a recent trip to Sydney to meet with his management, he did an impromptu meet and greet with fans who joined him at the Pitt Street Mall shopping strip for photographs.
He will soon release a series of non-fungible digital token trading cards, which will provide further opportunities to interact with fans via trading and collecting the cards.
Reekid is also active with a strong following across Instagram (274,000 followers) and TikTok (55,000 followers). He is tracking to hit one million subscribers on YouTube over the next few months.
But he has already learnt that fame comes at a cost.
“It is a weird grey area,” he says. “This is an incredible experience but what am I missing out on? What are the things that I’m not going to learn that every other kid is learning? Am I missing out on the experiences of school because I got recognised to a point so bad of constant bullying and constant harassment that I had to leave and do homeschooling. That takes a toll on you when you’re trying to just do something you enjoy and you constantly get into fights because of it.
“It ended up with me coming home bruised and bloody over something that I enjoy doing. There is no reason I should be getting into fights because I like to play computer games.”
The name Reekid came from his screaming in YouTube videos “and being loud, funny, humorous and whatnot”.
“The reeeeee is a scream. Reekid literally means scream kid,” he says. “I don’t want my real name to be public. I’m doing the Reekid thing in my videos but I still want to have a real life I guess. I just don’t want strangers knowing my name, that’s the best way I can put it.
“I like the anonymity and I like the idea that people don’t know too much about me but they still relate to the video content I create.”
The end goal for Reekid is not fame or fortune. He wants to continue studying and one day become a full time game developer, creating the very kind of games he earns a living off of playing today.
“That has always been my passion,” he said.
“I like to do coding classes, game development and design, that’s what I like to do in my spare time.”