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Draft:Call Me Kevin

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Kevin O'Reilly, better known by his username Call Me Kevin (or CallMeKevin, without the spaces), zXNoRegretzzXz in the early days of his career, or simply Kevin, is an Irish YouTuber who is known for his comical gameplay commentaries and other lifestyle type videos. Kevin has described his channel as a variety gaming channel, though he will occasionally branch out and upload skits, music covers, or videos of him discussing the goings-on in his life. The lion's share of Kevin's videos involve specific moments of comedy during gameplay. These usually include him breaking his game, causing havoc, annoying people, or reluctantly completing certain tasks to progress.

During his time on YouTube, he has uploaded many series, such as Garry's Mod, Minecraft, The Sims 4, Comedy Night, Harry Potter, Bitlife, Among Us, and Grand Theft Auto RP. Kevin also plays all sorts of other games, though they are usually one-offs. Kevin created many characters, such as Jim Pickens, Grognak The Destroyer, Turg, JOG MANSEN (sic), as well as several others that usually make one-time appearances.

Personal Life

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Kevin was born on November 10th, 1993, and currently lives in Spain. He also previously lived in Midleton, Ireland, and once lived in Scotland for a year.

In his Draw My Life video, Kevin described his childhood as him "doing what [he] does now, except [he] talked less", and joked that everyone probably found it nice because of the peace and quiet. He has a scar under his eye, which he says he got from falling over and hitting his head on a couch leg while spinning in circles with his sister. In a separate video on his old channel, he said it wasn't all bad because he missed out on going to church, since the accident occurred on a Sunday. He has also told various tales of how he got the scar, quipping that subscribers never got the same story and that the truth would be open to interpretation. In the video "I googled myself," he says that on a serious note, he got the scar while trying to let someone inside an elevator at 14 years old.

During primary school, he suffered from stomach pains and was vomiting blood at one point, which caused him to miss a lot of school. While dealing with his stomach issues, he also experienced pain in his ear canal, noting that loud noises would upset him. These two problems combined meant that he missed almost a year of school. Kevin moved to high school eventually, and described himself as a "B to C student", adding that he didn't really apply much effort into his work. Following some exams during his third year, his stomach problems amplified and became much worse, causing him to miss more time from school.

During his absence from school, he played a lot of Xbox and discovered the gameplay side of YouTube around 2008, when gameplay channels weren't as common as they are these days. He bought a capture card and created his first YouTube video on the channel called "zXNoRegretzzXz", which has since been renamed "The Old CallMeKevin Channel". He recalled the video being a simple clip of a trickshot in a game like Call of Duty. He moved on to making skits, and eventually received an offer from Machinima to make videos for them, which he accepted. The promise of payment for his videos caused Kevin's parents to think he was being scammed, though he got his way after he apparently whined quite a bit. During his time making videos for Machinima, he created the "How to Annoy" series, which gave him a lot of money and recognition online, even in the present day.

After considerable time away from school, Kevin tried to go back, though his stomach issues persisted and he had to return home that same day. Doctors eventually discovered that Kevin had ulcers forming in his stomach due to stress and anxiety, which was the chief cause of the pain. After talking to his parents, he decided for the sake of his health to drop out of school in 2009 when he was 16, where he began focusing on content creation full-time. He moved to Scotland when he was 18 and lived there for a year, which he described as "an unhappy year" because he became a shut-in and didn't socialize much. He returned to Ireland, after which his work ethic fell apart and he quit YouTube for a period of time. But someone (maybe Kevin) was still uploading to the old channel while Kevin was owning a CeX store.

During his hiatus from YouTube, Kevin became the franchise owner of a retail store called CeX, a company that specializes in second-hand electronic goods, and owned it for about 3 years. In 2016, Kevin was hit by a vehicle after seeing Batman vs Superman at his local cinema. His awkward landing after being struck caused injuries to his shoulders and upper arms, which still affect him to this day. He returned to work after the accident, but found his injuries were preventing his ability to do his job. The increased staff costs at the shop to compensate for Kevin's inability to work, his medical bills, and the assailant not admitting fault for the accident led to the shop not being profitable for himself. He came to the decision to sell the store, since his injuries were causing problems at work and he had opted not to get surgery for his shoulder upon receiving conflicting advice about it.

Kevin returned to YouTube for fun in late 2016 with his new channel, "CallMeKevin", bringing over almost 8,000 subscribers from his old channel. He experienced slow, erratic growth on his channel for a while (for example, he'd get 30 subs one day and 6 subs the next), though his channel skyrocketed after an Ouya video he made went viral. He soon began doing YouTube full time, as he is now, and hit a million subscribers in 2018. This led to him getting recommended by YouTube and his growth on the platform becoming more steady. In March 2019, Kevin hit a substantial number of 2 million subscribers.

2021 was an eventful year for Kevin. During the month of May, he underwent a minor surgery on his foot and would be inconsistent with his uploads while he recovered. He uploaded a video during July, announcing that he would be leaving Ireland and moving to Spain. Towards the end of 2021, Kevin had contracted a throat infection that caused him to slow down on his weekly uploads, as he tried to get better. During this time, he announced that he would only upload six days a week and would take Wednesdays as his days off. In June or July of 2022, Kevin hit 3 million subscribers. On November 5, 2022, Kevin created the music channel Kevo uploading his first video on the channel two weeks after titled ‘Anti-Hero - Taylor Swift (Acoustic Cover) - CallMeKevin’, before subsequently announcing the channel on his main channel in a community post.

In "they finally figured out what's wrong with me", it was revealed that Kevin has ADHD.

Twitch Career

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In 2019, Kevin created a Twitch channel, though he used it sparingly and mainly had it there for Twitch Sings videos to be uploaded to his YouTube channel. The following year, Kevin began streaming regularly and eventually came up with a schedule to stream four times a week, in addition to his daily uploads. While organising his move to Spain, Kevin made the decision to stop streaming for the foreseeable future. Kevin still streams, though his sessions are far more sporadic than before his move from Ireland.

He also created two new YouTube channels that were dedicated to his Twitch content. "CallMeKevin Stream Archives" holds his full length streams for those that missed him live, while "Call Me Kevin Clips" showcase 10-15 minutes worth of highlights of his streams that are edited in a similar style to his regular YouTube videos. However Call Me Kevin Clips has since been replaced by "DoNOTCallMeKevin" where he now posts stream highlights instead.

After uploading a handful of videos on his clips channel, he seemingly abandoned it and chose to upload his stream highlights on his main channel, or uploaded them in full on the stream archives channel. In 2021, however, Kevin uploaded some short clips and two episodes of an interview/podcast called "Call Me", where he interviewed both RTGame and Anna. His interview with Anna was the last video uploaded to the clips channel.

References

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https://www.youtube.com/c/callmekevin/playlists

https://twitter.com/Anna_Chess/status/1249386807336329217

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4esbMQ_X_U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulrT8It5mFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZAWc6bGs3E