The internet and the rise of social media have made nearly everything possible online. Today, individuals can build brands and monetize their content as influencers. YouTube has catapulted many people to such fame, Dezmen Thomas Horne being one of the latest additions to that list.
Known to his followers as @Dez2fly, this New Jersey native has a lucrative career at just 23 years old. He graduated from Glassboro High School in 2016, and then attended the Eastern Michigan University. Dezmen dropped out after his second year, but he played in the college’s football team. He also played football in high school, a sport he has loved and participated in since he was 5 years old.
However, football and a college education were not the path Dezmen wanted to follow in his career. He wanted to make people laugh and help them lead better lives, so he turned to YouTube. Dezmen’s meme to Trippie Redd’s “Death” went viral after the artist reposted it on his Instagram account, and his first independent viral video came when he took the snow challenge.
Dezmen also aims to help his viewers grow mentally by posting motivational quotes on his Instagram and YouTube stories. He has gotten messages from followers thanking him for these quotes, as they have helped them overcome depression and sadness. It’s not just inspiration, but also humor which helps Dezmen’s viewers as laughter is considered to be an effective remedy to depression.
Thanks to his motivation through humor, Dezmen gained 300,000 followers on YouTube in less than a year. He encourages his fans to go to the gym for overall wellbeing and offers advice on living a healthy lifestyle. One of Dezmen’s videos was even sampled for an ad for the wildly popular Call of Duty franchise. His mission is quite straightforward: to motivate his followers to be their best selves. Dezmen, an aspiring comedy star, carries out this goal through humor.
He chose content creation as a career due to a lifelong passion for making videos. He began to seriously consider this when the app Vine was popular, but Dezmen was initially held back by the thought of what others might think of him. He was influenced by Vine personalities such as Melvin Gregg, King Bach, De Storm, and DC Youngfly to pursue a video career. He felt like this was his purpose, with financial freedom being an added bonus. Today, Dezmen uses his platform to give people the advice he wished he had received while starting out.
YouTube was just the beginning of Dezmen’s video career. Thanks to the exponential rise of TikTok, he has found a natural home on this platform. Dezmen has amassed over 3 million followers on TikTok and his videos have racked up over 90 million likes. He has a deep desire to help people, and this shines through in his content.
If laughter is the best medicine, then Dezmen can be given an honorary title of Dr. Dez2fly. He has stated he would love to put his personality on display in a movie, and being a larger-than-life motivational figure, seeing Dezmen on the big screen does not require a stretch of the imagination. In fact, it would be more surprising if this does not happen for the star social media comic.
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