The grown-up world is still not sure what to do with YouTubers. Theirs is a starkly divided sort of superstardom: in a recent video charting a week in his unusual life, 22-year-old Olajide Olatunji, better known as KSI, leans out of a taxi as it passes a group of young teenage boys in school uniform. Their panicked, elated reaction calls to mind the crowds magnetised to The Beatles at the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night – the boys chase the car, driven frantic by an urge to connect with or be near to Olatunji, who presumably knows that if they were ten years older they might not recognise him at all.
This is because despite his 10 million YouTube subscribers, despite a Variety survey earlier this year naming him the number one celebrity among American teens, KSI is not a household name. His enormous online success (he’s currently approaching 2 billion views on his main YouTube channel) is confined to a young internet audience, and has been gained at the cost of mainstream controversy (sexist content in his early videos in particular has lead to Olatunji being dropped from promotional campaigns by Microsoft). And so, for now, the grown-up world has tried putting him in a book: I Am A Bellend.
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