Meet Randy Jimenez of RipItRandy in Marietta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Jimenez.

Randy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I moved from Coral Springs, Florida, to Marietta, Georgia in 2015, because my dad’s job relocated him. When I heard him tell me that we were moving, about two months before it happened, I was super devastated and instantly broke down in tears. I grew up in Coral Springs, and have lived there my whole life, making new friends, creating new memories and having the best time of my life. It was rough for me to tell my friends that I was moving because they all loved me and my family and never expected us to move. We would have neighborhood parties every weekend, have friends over, and have an amazing time, and it sucked to realize that this was all coming to an end. When I moved to Marietta, I was so bored for the first week living there. With no friends in the area, no wifi, no furniture, I had literally nothing to do except to play NBA 2K14 offline with my brother. That got boring after a while, and I wanted to find something else to do. I thought to myself, “if I’ve been playing video games my whole life, wouldn’t it be a smart idea to find some video games to watch on YouTube?” So that’s exactly what I did. I pulled out my phone and looked up videos from my favorite game series, NBA 2K. The first video I found was an NBA 2K15 video made by ThatKiddKuda.

After watching a few of his videos, I was addicted. I could not stop watching NBA 2K videos. A few days went by, and I started to watch other NBA 2K YouTubers, like CashNasty, NickTheBullsFan, Jesser, and StaxMontana. Their videos were super entertaining to me, and it gave me an idea. I thought to myself, “If I enjoy all of these videos and I enjoy playing video games, why don’t I try and start a YouTube channel?” So that’s exactly what I did. On January 21, 2016, I uploaded my first ever YouTube video. By no means was it any good, but it was a start to something amazing. From January to Christmas of 2016, I uploaded videos in my spare time, of NBA 2K gameplay. By Christmas time, I was at 700 subscribers, and this felt crazy to me. My birthday is on December 29, which was coming up, and I was in for the biggest surprise of my life. One of the YouTubers that inspired me to start a channel, StaxMontana, reached out to me and told me that he wanted to make a video with me. On December 28, we recorded the video and uploaded it on my birthday, which was December 29. On that day, I went from 700 subscribers to 1,200 subscribers, and hitting 1,000 subscribers on my birthday was the best surprise ever to me, at the time. From January of 2017 to August of 2017, I uploaded NBA 2K videos on a consistent basis and went from about 1,000 subscribers to around 4,000 subscribers. Over the summer of 2017, I was invited to join an NBA 2K gaming organization, called Team Witness.

All of the members combined have around 2,000,000 subscribers on YouTube, and I am still a part of this organization to this day. The members of it are some of my best friends that I’ve ever met on the internet, which led to us meeting in real life. One morning in August of 2017, my dad comes up to me and my brother, Josh, and starts crying. Once I saw him like this, I knew something was wrong because I’ve never seen him cry until that day. He took us downstairs and these were his exact words: “Your mother has cancer.” This made my heart drop because it was so unexpected. I started to cry, and I didn’t want to go upstairs where she was, because I didn’t want her to see that I knew something was going on. I tried my best to stay positive around her, and it worked a majority of the time. Every time I needed advice or someone to talk to, I would always go to one of my best friends, Sofia, who I met in Coral Springs. She would always give me super great advice in order to help me deal with the personal problems that I was going through, or if I just wanted to talk about anything at all. Ever since I moved to Georgia, she’s been one of my only friends to text/call me a lot to check on me and to always be there whenever I need something, or when I just want to talk.

A few months went by, and it is now February of 2018. I’ve still been uploading consistently to YouTube, and I’ve been spending a ton of time with my mom. She’s been going to chemotherapy and at this point, everything’s been going good which put me in high spirits. On the day before our February break of Junior year, I went to school and somehow there were a few kids that found out about my YouTube channel. They decided to make fun of it and spread it around to the whole school, which really frustrated me, on top of what I already was going through with my mom. I stopped talking to everybody at school, except for my best friend in Junior and senior year, named Blu. Blu ALWAYS supported my videos and he was there for me whenever I needed anything. Everybody would just play my videos out loud and make jokes about me which embarrassed me a lot. I went home and didn’t upload a video to YouTube for that entire week long break, just because I didn’t want to get made fun of when I returned to school. I went to the Bahamas with my family and I just enjoyed myself. It turned out that this was our last vacation as a full family of 4. In April of 2018, my mom’s cancer started to get worse. She didn’t drive anywhere, she rarely left the house, and her body was always in pain. I wasn’t aware what any of this symbolized, and I just thought that this pain was temporary and everything would get better.

Three weeks later, once May came around, I was told by my dad that about ten relatives were coming to visit our house. I just thought they were coming to hang out, and I was clueless as to what they were really coming for until I got a phone call. The house phone rang, and as soon as I picked it up, I heard the person on the other end say something about a “hospice bed”. I had never experienced anything like this, so I still had no idea what this meant, and I was super confused. I went on the computer and looked up the definition of “hospice” and that was probably the biggest mistake I have ever made in my whole entire life. All I saw on the screen was “end of life care”. And that scared me. I instantly turned off my computer and just cried in bed for hours. I realized that my mother didn’t have a lot longer to live, and everything made sense. Every night for the next two weeks, I went to sleep and went to school thinking, “is she gonna die before I get home?” “Will I ever get to speak to her again?” This was definitely the darkest time of my life. Whenever I went home I went straight to my room and just slept for basically the rest of the night. I took a long break from YouTube to focus on all of these real life problems that I was dealing with, but I never told anybody except for Sofia, and a few of my online friends about what was happening.

On May 20, 2018, my dad asked me if I wanted to go to a Braves game with him. I went with him, because I felt that I needed to get out of the house. The game really took my mind off everything that was going on at home, and this was definitely one of the better days that I’ve had… Until I returned back home. About 2 hours after I got home, I walked downstairs to get a snack and turned the corner to see my dad looking at me, crying. His exact words were: “She just took her last breath.” As soon as I heard that, I closed my eyes and I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t sure if I should cry, or if I should be angry. I surprisingly didn’t cry, because I let most of it out two weeks before when I realized what was going on. I began to text my closest friends and family and let them know what had just happened. They all sent their condolences and there was one sentence that was included in every message: “Make your mom proud.”

After reading all of those messages, I told myself that I should reminisce on all of the good times I had with my mom, and not to dwell on the fact that she isn’t here anymore, because being sad won’t change that. I knew that it was okay to cry here and there, but my mom wouldn’t want to see me like that so I tried my best not to. She was always a super positive person who was nice to everyone, and I want to carry on her legacy. Ever since the day she passed away, I’ve been uploading videos on YouTube consistently and it has been my passion to do so. During my senior year of high school, I worked super hard to get accepted into Florida State University, and I’m currently at 11,000 subscribers, hoping to increase that number a lot within the next four years that I’m in college, because I really want to turn my passion into a full-time job.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In August of 2017, my mother was diagnosed with cancer & passed away in May of 2018.

I’ve played baseball from age 4 to 15, and I had to sacrifice it in order to make YouTube videos because it was hard for me to do both at the same time.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success to me is being able to affect somebody else in a positive way and spreading a positive message through your work. Lots of people tend to believe that money equals success, but as long as you’re doing something that you love and are passionate about, money will come along with that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://youtube.com/ripitrandy
• Email: ripitrandybiz@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ripitrandyy/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ripitrandy_

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