The Amazing Race premiered this past Sunday, and this season pairs up another Asian American team – this time the Taiwanese American father-and-son team, Michael and Kevin. If you think you’ve seen Kevin before, you may have, because he is an YouTube sensation:
Twenty-year-old comedian Kevin Wu, a.k.a. Kevjumba, is a YouTube sensation with over one million subscribers and 25 channel million views. Collectively his hilarious videos poking fun at Asian American issues and stereotypes and things he finds amusing have garnered over 90 million views.
That’s pretty incredible! To be honest, prior to him being on The Amazing Race, I had not really heard much about Kevin. His most popular YouTube video (from a few years ago) has over 10 million views! And all that is of him answering some questions. His most highly rated video was a response to his question – what career should he choose next? Of course, one of the more popular responses was ‘porn star’ (this is the Internet after all).
According to one of his latest YouTube videos, Kevin will be the youngest person to ever participate in The Amazing Race. I’m wishing Michael and Kevin the best of luck! I just listened to their interview on NPR! Maybe if 8Asians is lucky, we can recruit Kevin as a blogger.
The Amazing Race has done a great job of recruiting strong Asian American teams, including last season’s husband and wife Jodie & Heidi, the winning brother-and-sister Victor & Tammy team, as well as the father-and-daughter Ronald & Christina runner-up team.
On a related note, I finally got the chance to meet Amazing Race winner Tammy at a fundraising event last week. As you can see, she’s pretty tall (though she was wearing high heels, but still!). And for those who watched the season, Tammy is now married to the boyfriend she mentioned on the show – she had a big fat wedding ring.
