Ninja is a “Pioneer” in TIME’s “100 Most Influential People”.

As of 2019, popular Fortnite streamer Ninja is on the list of “100 Most Influential People” in the world, according to TIME.

Every year, American news magazine TIME assembles and releases a listicle named as TIME 100 which contains a list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. The list includes people from all over the world with varying backgrounds such as business, politics, music, art, sports, etc. According to TIME, the list’s entrants are recognized for “changing the world, regardless of the consequences of their actions”.

Richard Tyler Blevins, known to the world by his gamer tag Ninja, is a Twitch streamer, professional gamer, and philanthropist. He was born on June 5, 1991 in Detroit, USA to American parents of Welsh decent. He was one year old when his parents moved with him to Chicago. As a student, he went to Grayslake Central High School where he participated in sports such as soccer along with video gaming.

After graduating, Ninja decided to take up gaming as a profession, live streaming his games and participating in esports tournaments. He has worked with some of the world’s famous esports companies such as Cloud9, Renegades, and Team Liquid, and is presently with Luminosity Gaming. Ninja’s streaming career began in 2011. Over the past years, he has streamed games like H1Z1 and PlayerUnknown’s Battleground.

Ninja started playing Fortnite upon its launch and streamed it regularly as the game became popular among gamers all over the world. He broke several Twitch records and at one of his events named Ninja Vegas 2018, he broke his own record with his stream having an audience of about 667,000 live viewers. In September 2018, Ninja became the first professional esports player to be featured on the cover of ESPN The Magazine. Throughout 2018, Ninja has been the recipient of several awards such as “Creator of the Year” by the 8th Streamy Awards, “Esports Personality of the Year” by the Esports Awards, and “Content Creator of the Year” by The Game Awards.

Apart from being a streamer and an influencer, Ninja is a philanthropist and has helped raise over a million dollars for charitable work. His most notable donation was at E3 2018 where he and Marshmello won the Fortnite Pro-Am event which resulted in the donation of $1 million prize to charity. Apart from that, he has donated considerable amounts of prize money at other events and helped raise money which would be used to help the sick and under-privileged.

Ninja is now the most followed streamer on Twitch with over 13.7 million followers and an average of over 30000 viewers per week. He earns over $500,000 per month from streaming Fortnite. Making it to TIME 100’s “Most Influential People” list is not at all an easy task, yet this 27 year old American made it to the list by streaming Fortnite.

“I play in the NFL, so you’d think I wouldn’t be star-struck much. But last March, when I—along with Drake and Travis Scott—got in a Fortnite game with Ninja for the first time, I was at a complete loss for words! I was among the millions of people all across the world who had been watching Ninja play Fortnite, the popular video game, every day for months. He was the unquestioned best in the world at his craft, something I had so much respect for both as an athlete and as a fan. Now, he was single-handedly blending gaming and pop culture. I’ve been a huge video-game fanatic my whole life. But people have seen it as childish and a waste of time. Ninja was huge in building up the credibility of e-sports. At the end of the day, Ninja is an absolute legend, and someone to whom we owe a lot for making gaming what it is today.” – said John Sherman ‘JuJu’ Smith-Schuster, an American football wide receiver.

Ninja’s achievement should be really a proud moment for gamers all over the world and we hope that Richard Tyler Blevins a.k.a Ninja continues to receive record breaking accolades throughout his life.