Aussie party boy goes pro

What happened

The Australian teenager who gained international media attention recently for throwing a raucous party—which drew over 500 guests, attracted the police and a dog squad, and caused $17,500 in damages—is using the ordeal to launch a professional career. Sixteen-year-old Corey Delaney (birth name, Corey Worthington) has given up plans to become a carpenter and has instead taken on celebrity agent Max Markson, who has already set up a party tour that Delaney will DJ and host. “Working on a building site was pretty hard. Now I’ve got a manager, life’s good,” Delaney told Australian television. (Reuters)

What the commentators said

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Can anyone really blame Delaney for cashing in on this? said CityNews.ca. “His agent, Max Markson, suggests his client could make nearly” $90,000 “from his party efforts” over the next few months, “and become a rich man—er—boy, within a few short years.” Maybe people are just jealous that “at such a tender age, he’s managed to figure out how to combine all work and all play.”

People seem to either love Delaney or hate him, said the BBC News. “He has become something of a hero for many young people, with some reports describing him as a Generation Z poster-boy.” But “other people have criticized him as an arrogant brat.” A website with a game that invites visitors “to ‘slap Corey down the street’ has had more than 700,000 hits.”

Actually, “according to Hitwise, the name Corey Delaney” is “Australia’s ‘fastest-moving search term’ on the Internet,” said Mark Hawthorne in The Age. So “in other words, no one searched for Corey Delaney until after he trashed the family home.” But with that said, Delaney certainly “has made his mark.”

And he’s having no problems adjusting to his newfound fame, said Kara Lawrence in News.com.au. His agent said that Delaney “had revamped his image and was taking lessons from a top Australian DJ in preparation” for his upcoming tour. He even “got a new $400 pair of sunglasses to replace his yellow ones, which he adamantly refused to be photographed without.”