When 12-year-old Luke Thoresen left a comment on a YouTube video by user AdventureGamingHQ, he put his best foot forward.
Or feet, actually.
If the gamer behind the popular YouTube channel would grant a rare reply to Luke’s comment on one of his videos, the Tucson sixth-grader promised to post a video of himself solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube … with his feet.
The gamer replied.
“At first, I reloaded the page to see if it was actually him, and then I was just amazed,” Luke says.
The only catch? He had never actually solved a Rubik’s Cube with his feet.
His hands, yes. His feet, no.
Luke discovered Rubik’s Cubes this summer at camp. Over the course of about three days, he got faster and faster at solving the cube.
His personal best is 37 seconds. On average, it takes him about 50 seconds to solve the cube.
“It’s just really fun with all of the different possible combinations, and figuring out new ways and experimenting is really fun,” Luke says.
His older sister, 14-year-old Amelia Thoresen, chimes in: “You like math, too, and solving patterns.”
Amelia and Luke’s 8-year-old brother, Nate Thoresen, estimate that their brother spends time solving Rubik’s Cubes every day.
That is, until mom steps in and because her son needs to work on other things.
Luke calls it a hobby. Lisa Thoresen, his mom, calls it an addiction.
But she laughs when she says it.
“This has been really good for his morale because he has been sick for the last year and missed a lot of school,” Lisa says. “He started football but hasn’t been able to play because of chronic fatigue.”
Luke also counts bike riding, baseball and piano among his hobbies. Oh, and Minecraft, the video game that AdventureGamingHQ strategizes about in the videos that Luke so loves.
Usually, he gets the spotlight for piano recitals or baseball triumphs.
But that was before Rubik’s Cubes.
On a Minecraft video posted in September, Luke wrote “If AGHQ replies to me, I will solve a 3X3 Rubik’s cube WITH MY TOES and post it tomorrow!! Btw I’m a big fan.”
He added a few emojis for good measure.
And it worked.
“LukeThor 7 that’ll be interesting …” AdventureGamingHQ, or 15-year-old Alexander Pugh, replied, prompting an all caps response from Luke.
“OMG YOU ACTUALLY REPLIED OMG OMG I WILL SOOO POST IT TOMORROW!!!!! OMG YOURE MY FAV YOUTUBER!!!”
Luke got to work practicing and recruited Nate to film his fancy footwork.
And by the end of six minutes, Luke had a viral video on his hands, er, feet.
On Sept. 28, he posted his first video to his personal YouTube channel.
Alexander noticed and commented: “Bro! I can’t believe you just solved a cube with your feet. … I can’t do anything with my feet XD Well done Luke! Also, thanks for all of the nice comments! The things you said are truly inspiring. Keep making videos man!”
Alexander, who has been making videos for this Minecraft channel for about a year, says he can receive more than 1,200 comments on a video he posts. He responds to comments that snag his interest. Luke’s did.
“I wanted to see how he could possibly do this, and I was impressed with originality,” Alexander writes in an email. Although he lives in California now, he says he lived in Tucson for a while and still has family here.
A few days after Luke’s post, he checked the younger boy’s channel to see if he had followed through.
And that was only the beginning. Alexander, who has more than 227,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 18,000 Twitter followers, shared the video, and Luke began receiving requests from online publications such as the Daily Mirror and Rumble.com to host his video on their sites.
“Rumble Viral my dad emailed you if you could reply to him that would be great,” Luke responded to one request.
Luke himself now has about 195 subscribers and his video has more than 6,700 views.
The Daily Mirror’s story on the video has been translated into other languages, Lisa Thoresen says.
His dexterous toes are even making Luke some money. Rumble.com paid the family $150 to host the video, in addition to pocket change for each view.
He put some of the money aside for savings, but used the rest to invest in three new cubes of different dimensions and a pyramid-shaped Pyraminx.
“I have never heard of any of this,” says Lisa, who didn’t know about her son’s video until it went viral. “I didn’t know that people could make money off of YouTube.”
Amelia is quick to remind the family that some people make millions on YouTube.
And, hey, Luke did promise his new viewers a second video if he got more than 500 views on his channel. He surpassed that weeks ago.
His feet are tied.
Maybe he’ll try solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded, he muses. A commenter on his video suggested he try his toes at something new such as playing piano or video games.
“I was just amazed,” Luke says of his video’s success. “It was sort of surreal.”
