甲亢哥

What does 甲亢哥 mean?

Shanghai, March 2025: a rickshaw threads through traffic with an American yelling from the back seat, and every comment is the same three characters, 甲亢哥. That is what Chinese netizens call the streamer Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins Jr., on the working theory that only a hormone disorder could account for the non-stop screaming, sprinting and backflipping. Nobody means it as an insult. He ended up one of the most beloved foreign faces on the Chinese internet, radiating pure 抽象 chaos. The March–April 2025 tour through Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Chongqing turned the nickname into a national event: tens of millions watched the livestreams while he lost arguments with hotpot spice levels and got lovingly mobbed in every city. Fans settled on a description: the only person alive whose indoor voice is still a shout.

Where does 甲亢哥 come from?

Bilibili is where it started. Around 2022–2023, when Speed's clips flooded the site, commenters began “diagnosing” his volume as hyperthyroidism, and 甲亢哥 stuck as a niche joke. It went fully mainstream during the March 2025 China tour, which landed in the middle of the “TikTok refugee” wave: Chinese and global audiences were reacting to the same meltdowns in real time, and he became an accidental ambassador of people-to-people diplomacy. He embraced the name completely and calls himself 甲亢哥 on Chinese platforms.

How to use 甲亢哥

• 甲亢哥在上海被粉丝围得水泄不通。
  Jiǎkànggē zài Shànghǎi bèi fěnsī wéi de shuǐ xiè bù tōng.
  Speed got mobbed by fans the second he hit Shanghai.
• 看完甲亢哥的直播，我耳朵嗡嗡响了一晚上。
  Kànwán Jiǎkànggē de zhíbō, wǒ ěrduo wēngwēng xiǎng le yī wǎnshang.
  After an IShowSpeed livestream, my ears were ringing all night.