The account was suspended by Twitter due to "violating spam policies". The investigation linked to the practice of "Tweetdecking", or using multiple accounts in collaboration to artificially make certain tweets go viral. In 2017, this account gained attention for its flash fiction-style interactive "scenario threads" popularized on Twitter using dashboard app TweetDeck. ĭuring this period, he reportedly created and ran Nicki Minaj fan accounts on Twitter, including one called according to a New York Magazine investigation. That was the first place where I could go viral." He also posted short-format comedy videos on Facebook and Vine. In a Rolling Stone interview he stated, "I was doing Facebook comedy videos, then I moved over to Instagram, and then I hopped on Twitter. He spent large amounts of time online in hopes of building a following as an internet personality to promote his work, but was unsure what to focus on creatively. Hill said he began to isolate himself from "outside-of-class activities" during his teenage years. In September 2019 he revisited his high school to perform a surprise concert. During this time, he stayed with his sister and supported himself with jobs at Zaxby's restaurants and the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park. He then enrolled at the University of West Georgia, where he majored in computer science, but later dropped out after one year to pursue a musical career. Hill attended Lithia Springs High School, from which he graduated in 2017. He began playing trumpet in the fourth grade and was first chair by his junior high years, but quit out of fear of looking uncool. He spent much of his teenage years alone, and turned to the Internet, "particularly Twitter, creating memes that showed his disarming wit and pop-culture savvy." His teenage years also saw him struggling with his coming out to himself as being gay he prayed that it was just a phase, but around 16 or 17 he came to accept it.
Although initially reluctant to leave, he later regarded it as an important decision, "There's so much shit going on in Atlanta-if I would have stayed there, I would have fallen in with the wrong crowd." He started "using the Internet heavily right around the time when memes started to become their own form of entertainment" about when he was 13.
Three years later, he moved in with his father, a gospel singer, north of the city in Austell, Georgia. His parents divorced when he was six, and he settled in the Bankhead Courts housing project with his mother and grandmother. He was named after the Mitsubishi Montero. Montero Lamar Hill was born in Lithia Springs, Georgia, a small city outside Atlanta, on April 9, 1999.