Ryerson student accidentally becomes world’s fastest typist

By Zachary Roman

A Ryerson student has just become the world’s fastest typist after almost a full semester’s worth of watching and taking notes on their pre-recorded lectures at two times speed.

The student, Ty Pinfasta, said they didn’t realize how incredible their keyboard skills have become. But with four three-hour lectures to take notes on each week—and only six hours to type notes for all of them due to their rigorous gaming schedule—Pinfasta was inadvertently training to become the world’s fastest typist. 

A happy coincidence is that Pinfasta has also improved their Mario Kart skills—they even set a world record time on Maple Treeway as Waluigi in the Standard Kart. What they hadn’t realized before was that all the speed-typing they were doing while taking notes for class would improve their reflexes, hand strength and finger dexterity to superhuman levels.

“To be honest with you I’ve been watching my lectures at two times speed because I’m up all night, every night, playing Among Us with my friends,” said Pinfasta. “I’m not really sure if I retain any information doing things this way, but now that I can type so fast I always have the best alibi for when I’m looking sus.”

One day, Pinfasta saw an ad for the Guinness World Records speed-typing competition and decided to sign up because their friends weren’t free to game that day.

They said it was one of the best decisions they ever made. At the Guinness World Records’ World’s Fastest Typist event, held virtually via Zoom last week, Pinfasta hit a peak words-per-minute of 420.69. This almost doubled the previous world record of 212 which was held by Barbara Blackburn.

All three judges at the event, Con Trol, Al T. and Dee Lete were flabbergasted—commentator and event host Jace Bar fainted, woke up, fainted again, woke up, then threw his chair across the room before running out of the camera frame yelling “SWEET JESUS LORD HAVE MERCY ON MY SLOW-TYPIN’ SOUL!”

The judges all agreed that Pinfasta’s record was unprecedented and probably unbeatable too.

“It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” said Trol, a 119-year-old typist from the Yukon. “And I’ve been judging typing competitions since God, whom Ariana Grande correctly predicted is a woman, came down from the heavens and blessed me with the first typewriter ever.”

During the record-setting type session, Pinfasta was up against Sloan Itdown. Itdown started off with an early lead, but when Pinfasta came from behind and overtook Itdown, commentator Bar came through with the legendary play-by-play: “By God…IT’S TY PINFASTA WITH A STEEL KEYBOARD! THEY ON TEXT GAMES MOOOOOOOOOOODE!!!”

Pinfasta said it was the most exhilarating moment of their life, besides the time they beat legendary Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton at go-karting IRL. The fact that they got a cool $10,000 reward and a dope plaque to show off in their apartment was a nice bonus, too.

“Now I have the perfect excuse to spend more time gaming than watching my lectures,” said Pinfasta. “And don’t even bother hating on my successes. I can type a two-page reply dunking on your rude Twitter mention so fast you’d think I was legendary Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton.”

“But as you well know, I’m even faster than that.”