Streaming is the site where young audiences learn about products, discuss current events, and increasingly, engage in their politics. In Trinidad and Tobago, Syphifted is a content creator who began growing audiences in the thousands in her house as a gamer. She is one of millions of youth globally who have constructed their futures online – an aspiration that was concretised in the COVID-19 pandemic during the national lockdown. She, like others, would have observed the rise of IShowSpeed over the years and cultivated digital communities for parasocial interactions.
IShowSpeed is a twenty-one-year-old African American online streamer who has cultivated a massive global following exceeding 50 million people. While he may not command the sheer scale of engagement of contemporaries like Kai Cenat or MrBeast, Speed has distinguished himself through a chaotic, high-energy brand of “touring.” His visits to regions outside of North America are marked by a specific type of fanfare: crowds chasing his vehicle, his signature “barking” at bystanders, and his willingness to dive headfirst into local life.
Notably, during his tour of Africa, he was widely praised for introducing his audience to the diversity of the landscape. In the process, he challenged historical stereotypes about the continent. By dispelling notions of social and economic backwardness through a lens of curiosity and raw energy, he proved that streaming could perhaps unintentionally, serve as a tool to partially challenge the coloniality of the gaze for young viewers. The streaming channels of IShowSpeed is a ‘public hub’ in a long history of celebrity promotion mediated by technology, evolving from 19th century photography and journalism to contemporary developments of social media fame (Huggan 2025, 468).
On April 25, 2026, IShowSpeed kicked off his 15-stop Caribbean tour in Trinidad and Tobago. Since the tour’s announcement, the reaction has been a polarised mix of excitement and anxiety. Cultural workers and advocates expressed concern about the curation of this engagement, while others had well-intentioned, if misguided, hopes for a “celebrity stimulus” to the tourism sector. However, we must be realistic about the economics of “hype.” I do not believe there is a direct, sustained monetary investment that will manifest simply because one celebrity visited our shores. This is the same reality we face when R&B singer Ciara flies in from the USA to play mas in Port-of-Spain for Carnival Monday and Tuesday, or when Machel Montano hosts international superstars at his annual mega-concerts. Without question, these high-profile visits cumulatively build the brand visibility of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. Yet, jet-settter visibility is not a strategy. It certainly takes more than 48 hours of American celebrity tourism to truly catalyse a sustainable industry.
What interests me far more than the “stimulus” is the question of cultural representation. What exactly did we portray to the world? Whose voices and bodies acted as the vehicle through which our culture was articulated? These questions are influenced by Rex Nettleford’s framing of “cultural presence.” For Nettleford (1999, 5), “[i]n building new nationals many have understood the significance of the artistic cultural presence not as a manifestation of our capacity to ‘be happy’ in a state of primitive innocence but as a source of energy for sustaining civilisation and our humanity.”
Speed’s visit sparked an immediate “fuss” regarding “communication,” hosting, and the appropriateness of local gatekeepers. We must ask: whose cultural groups were staged, and whose were excluded? Some gaps were glaring. For example, Port-of-Spain is not the singular site of cultural production in Trinidad and Tobago, yet the stream remained in that urban centre. For the hours that speed was here, the main traffic of Trinidad and Tobago culture was the culture of carnival. Furthermore, Tobago was largely absent from the narrative, rendering a “Trinidad-focused” reproduction rather than an inclusive national one. Then, multi-ethnic and multicultural picture of the society could have been stretched much further than what was presented. How do we position groups such as our First Peoples? Indigenous people are not an “ethnic minority” in our landscape, they constitute the society’s foundation. How did their presence register in this global broadcast? While these questions persist, there were generative features of the tour because cultural practitioners and leaders in our context made an effort to curate a “This is who we are” moment for a global audience.
While the tour was restricted to the urban grid of ‘Town’, it began with a historical anchor: St. James. Opening with tassa highlighted the deep-seated presence of Indo-Trinidadian culture in urban Trinidad. As the energy ramped up, a young girl proclaimed, “I love you, IShowSpeed,” and handed him a snack. It was kurma. He asked, “Karma?” No, brother. It was kurma. He enjoyed the sweet, and in that small exchange, the world saw a nuanced take on mainstream representations of Caribbean life.
Another spectacular moment occurred at an urban radio station. Initially, Speed seemed visibly uncomfortable, perhaps wary of his platform being used for corporation promotion. However, this segment highlighted the relationship between Trinidad and Tobago’s media landscape and the platforming of culture nationally. Amidst confetti and smoke, the sounds of Machel Montano, Skinny Fabulous and Bunji Garlin’s “Famalay” filled the studio. This foreshadowed the scope of the tour while registering a perspective that Tirnidad and Tobago people are proud nationals and proud Caribbean family members. This was also evident when Jr Lee was explaining the value of Tobago’s natural landscape to Speed as he was eating pelau, fried fish and callaloo, and Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” played in the background.
I could care less about the barking, the jumping on restaurant tables, or Speed’s insistence on narrating landscapes through a single, busy, chaotic focus rather than a collaborative exchange of learning. He is a content creator, not a cultural ambassador or official representative.
For those who were vocal about not knowing who he was, it is worth noting that the penchant to question his significance often mirrors the skepticism shown toward our own local creators. Practitioners like Atillah Springer, Chef Brigette Joseph, Gerelle Forbes, Gervail “Jr Lee” Lemo, Certified Sampson, Kyle Boss, Valmiki Maharaj, and Keegan “Tendaji” Taylor, among others, are the ones firmly holding the line. These cultural workers, between their thirties and forties…(I’m being kind here…)…are the ones preserving and evolving our cultural traditions. For those who watched the stream, there was an intellectualism at play where young cultural practitioners and leaders took the time to explain Trinidad and Tobago history, even when the streamer was not fully attentive. It speaks to a culture that sees itself as more than entertainment, but one connected to longer traditions of collective self-knowledge.
As Speed moved through Trinidad, Machel Montano was flying the flag at a Caribbean-style carnival in Ghana, and Kes the Band was printing itineraries for their European campaign in the “Roots, Rock, Soca” tour. These are strategic movements by artists who have navigated “island pop,” reggae aesthetics and carnival ‘franchises’ to find a foothold in the global market. They understand that advancing soca music and Tirnidad and Tobago is a marathon. Allyuh, take it easy. Streaming is just a sprint.
There were moments that gave me pause. Speed initially called the Blue Devils ‘Avatar’ and the Midnight Robber ‘Batman,’ using familiar US-based cultural shorthand to process things that were new to him. While deeper listening and observation would create more room for these cultural expressions to be understood on their own terms, his “authentic,” if uniformed, reactions are what drive streaming entertainment and connect him to an audience that is equally unfamiliar with these encounters. Some scenes, more seriously, require unpacking. Why was the pool session necessary? What does it say about our tourism tropes that masculinity often translates to access to “hot gyal” in a pool? Would we invite a male celebrity into a pool with other men, or a female celebrity into a pool with other men or women? Or, is there a fixation on heterosexual male desires as part of the cultural “product”? Che Kothari of the Monk Music Group, who had spent years platforming Caribbean culture in MANIFESTO, impressed on Speed that he “bless the elder,” guiding him to Eintou Pearl Springer in the Savannah. Springer’s work has sustained the Canboulay productions annually. Speed obliged. We slowed the Speed down in moments.
In the end, we were part of a global stream to understand ourselves. Several Caribbean countries will be undergoing the same. I think Jr Lee, the Trinbagonian comedian and content creator, was well-suited for the role of cultural mediator. Despite the critical responses he received online, he will likely take notes on how to balance the expectations of a home-based audience with those of a global, fast-paced one. Managing a celebrity visit of this scale involves navigating “hype” while managing the weight of how small countries desire to be seen and ‘known’ (perceived) globally.
There is something quintessentially Trinbagonian about a host who, when being clowned for his baldness by a global star, can simply look the celebrity in the eye and say, “Doh do dat, because your hairline receding too, horse.” In that moment, that “celebrity power” was leveled. None of this was about a ‘stream’. This was about a generation and culture talking back.
Note
- Cultural activities included in the tour: Tassa Drumming, Steelpan at Invaders Steel Orchestra, Radio segment on OJO World, Myron B extempo, Convois with Peter Minshall, Moko Jumbies, Lost Tribe Mas Camp, a Lady Lava wine, Kalinda, Whip Jab, Fancy Sailor, Midnight Robber, Pierrot Grenade, Baby Doll, Indian Dancing, Cricket, Small Goal Sweat, Blue Devils, and Limbo
- Foods included in the tour: Kurma, Big Foot snacks, Saheena, Sour sop and sea moss punch, [franchise] Fried Chicken, Bake and Shark, Doubles, Pelau, Fried fish, Callaloo, and Goat Roti
References
Huggan, Graham. 2025. “Re-evaluating the Postcolonial Exotic.” In The Postcolonial Studies Reader (Third Edition), edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 467-472. London and New York: Routledge
Nettleford, Rex. 1999. “Keynote Address: The Caribbean Artist’s Presence and Education for the Third Millenium.” Caribbean Quarterly 45 (2-3): 1-29
