Jiemba Sands Viral Sensation

We caught up with viral sensation Jiemba Sands to talk about his overnight rise to fame, which, as you can imagine, wasn’t easy! Multi-talented Jiemba is an old Youth ARC regular with skills as an athlete, gymnast, martial artist, stuntman and circus performer, and who loves making films. He’s been working towards going viral for years! What was it that flipped the switch on it all?! Was it a simple flip over a fence?! That video was taken up by over 200,000 followers in just one day!

How did your journey into going viral on the web begin?

I knew that entertaining was the thing I wanted to do with my career and I was doing a bit of filming, photography, gymnastics, martials arts, tricking, flipping, parkour and even breakdancing at Youth ARC! I guess the thing that worked out for me was the flipping!

One night at Youth ARC you were doing forward-flips off your hands, catapulting a basketball from your feet into the basketball hoop from the three point line. It took you about 200 attempts until you got it in! Did that one video go viral?

No, it’s really tricky; no matter how good your video is, when you’re unknown, you can post online and no one will really see it. A while back, I reposted a couple of my old videos which didn’t get noticed back then, but now that I have this big following, I reposted it and everyone was like ‘WOW!’ and I got the reaction I was hoping for!

So how did your video get noticed?

It’s kind of funny because since I was 15 I have been working super hard to get to where I am now. When I was 20 years old, I kind of gave up. Then I got a job in landscaping and was doing a few little videos on the side for fun. It was two weeks into my new job when I filmed a fence video where I was doing creative flips over a fence. I posted it that day, went to sleep and woke up the next morning to see I had 60,000 followers! It was the best thing because I had been waiting for this moment my whole life! So I then had to tell my boss I quit, so I could work on my craft.

How did you videos go viral?

It was probably a week after I posted that first video when it blew up. From there, other Facebook groups would share it and I think it was a massive Facebook page ‘9GAG’ who posted it. I think they had 50 million followers and most of my followers came from there. Then more pages would share it and it got bigger and bigger from there.

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What was the most viewed video?

I think the most viewed was on one page which got 130 million views. It’s crazy! One of my videos got me 200,000 followers in one day!

What is the secret to get your video viral?

I would say never give up! Although I kind of gave up and then it happened (haha)! So maybe sometimes give up (haha)! That probably doesn’t happen all the time really; I think I was just lucky.

“... since I was 15 I have been working super hard to get to where I am now.”

Have a listen to find out more about this amazing young Tasmanian, and be sure to check out his YouTube Channel: https:// youtu.be/EWe8lKOomEY.