Neekolul may have accidentally hit the aspiring streamers’ dream after being launched into Twitch stardom with a viral TikTok video, but according to the internet’s new star, her rise to fame hasn’t been all sunshine and roses.
For nearly three years, Nicole logged onto Twitch to play Fortnite and League of Legends, as well as a variety of small-time games. She streamed under the name Neekolul, and just over 100 dedicated fans tuned in irregularly.
On March 3, everything changed. A short TikTok clip of the streamer lip-syncing Senzawa’s “oki doki boomer” while wearing a Bernie 2020 crop top went viral. She soon had thousands tuning in. She hit 272,000 Twitter followers.
Neeko’s new fame “isn’t as nice” as she expected
For Nicole, her Neekolul personality had finally exploded. But now that she’s finally “someone interesting,” the streamer said on the Scuffed Podcast, everything seems to have changed, and not exactly for the better.
Where once she could say whatever she wanted to on-stream, and could go days without a post, now she had “pressure” for her fans. She was judged for every single word and photo. For Neeko, the internet has become “mentally draining.”
“You know, I still don’t fully understand it,” she explained. “I wanted attention, but when I got it I don’t think it’s as nice as I thought it was going to be. When I say something or post, people try to twist it, or oversexualize me.”
There have been upsides, of course, Neeko added. She’s finally found “a huge audience” for her regular streams. People “actually care.” The new Twitch star has even had brand offers. But the negative reaction has been “insane.”
“It’s ironic cause the Tiktok is like “okay boomer” but it triggered people, and it made them extremely angry at me, toxic comments on my tweet. It was weird, and I was a little scared and annoyed at the same time,” she said.
“I didn’t get the scope of the attention that I got. I’m a nobody. I would still consider myself something of a f**king nobody, so the fact anyone cared about stuff like that I had a boyfriend, made no sense to me.”
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Could Neeko leave Twitch for another platform?
Neeko’s explosion on Twitch, and everything that’s come with it, is ironic because she never really wanted to make it big on the Amazon-owned website. She’s always been drawn to the YouTube-style content creation instead, she revealed.
“My original goal was actually to be a YouTuber, but I was studying to be a doctor — doing biology, stem major — and it’s material-heavy stuff so I didn’t have time to edit videos, upload. It was just easier to stream,” she revealed.
“I got stuck with streaming. Twitch is good for interaction, but YouTube is where I want to go [in the future], 100 percent. I like being social and being outside. It’s not really my cup of tea. I can show more of what I can do on YouTube.”
Neeko isn’t the only rising content creator to have struggled with online problems in recent times either — TikTok queen Charli D’Amelio fell foul of the cosplay community earlier this week after doing an anime dance.
The 15-year-old was forced to apologize after the outcry reached fever pitch. D’Amelio said she was “not trying to bring down anyone.” She also added she was sorry the dance video had been “taken completely the wrong way.”
