The Journey of Lauri: Laurianna

Who are you and tell us about yourself?

Haiyo Haiyo my name is Lauri c: and I am a hella scuffed streamer on Twitch! I mainly stream Just Chatting or art, but I also play games like Valorant or TFT. For those who are in astrology, my star sign is asparagus. I can't ride a bike but a party trick I can do is say the alphabet backwards. 

How did you get into Twitch?

I would usually watch Twitch for gameplay(Before I got really into league, I would watch big-league streamers but I never understand the point of "chat" and interacting with the streamer.) Around December or January of last year; I got into watching Offline TV and loved their content which led me to find Fuslie through their videos. Fuslie was the first Just Chatting streamer that I found myself staying for and clicking the notification because of the crazy amount of energy she gives off to her stream. She's also an inspirational role model to me that would be amazing to meet in person. Even though, it always felt so daunting to type in her chat because of the sheer amount of people there. From this point, I never really talked in Twitch chat. Then, Fuslie started doing streamer camp, and I was watching just to watch and she explained more about what Streamer camp is all about. I got to see more streamers, especially smaller streamers that they thought deserve a wider audience to help them grow. I found RoshCha(Sabs) through streamer camp and became a big influence on why I decided to stream. RosaCha(Sabs) stream was the first stream that I decided to chat in. Furthermore, it was her incredible energy and positivity that even brought me to think "I want to answer whatever she just said," and that was life-changing. It showed me the full meaning behind "community" on Twitch, and I was hooked. It was kind of mind-blowing seeing all of these connections and interactions happening between people that have just met online and that's when I decided to try streaming out for myself. 

What are your biggest struggles when it comes to streaming? 

Initially starting with growth, dealing with trolls, and overall learning and accepting everyone is not going to like you. As someone that's a huge people pleaser, it's a pretty huge pill to swallow that people will just despise you for no reason. Another big thing that I've grasped is that streaming is huge outside of going live; there's your discord to keep up with, other people discords you want to be apart of, and many DM"S that you attend to because you want to keep up the connections you establish, and all of that can be overwhelming. ( sorry if I don't respond sometimes, or if I have gone missing on discord)

What are your accomplishments and achievements as a streamer?

An accomplishment as a streamer is that I built a community!! I remember starting out with my discord having six people in it, and five of them were my IRL friends for the longest time. My confidence was taking a toll and thoughts like maybe I wasn't cut out for streaming myself, maybe I was better off just being a viewer in other people's communities. Although, I remember some people joined the stream and discord, and I thought it wasn't fair to them if I stopped streaming. Therefore, I kept going and interacted with the new viewers and here we are. It still blows my mind that there are people that see me as someone special that they want to stay and watch even if it just me screaming at a video game.  

As a streamer, there are often good days and bad days, how do you deal with it and what's your mindset? 

Always maintain your mental health first, don't think streaming comes before that. It's okay to take a day off, a hiatus, a break; I get that sometimes it can feel like you let your community down if you don't stream, but I believe that the real ones will stay and support you through thick and thin. Listen to yourself when you feel the need to end the stream and lean on your community or support group when you're feeling down. 

What are your goals as a streamer? 

One of my goals as a streamer is to make as many friends and meaningful connections as possible. It would be amazing to hit partner one day, but it's not exactly what I'm gunning for. Secondly, another thing I've been wanting to do is run something similar to a subathon, but instead of subs increasing the timer, it would be donations that would increase the timer which all of the funds would go to a charity organization to help the less fortunate. 

As a streamer, what advice would you give to people that just started streaming? 

A piece of advice I would give is to visit other streamer's chats because growing on twitch doesn't happen on your own and a lot of communities are intertwined. One way to meet more people is by joining a community of people you enjoy(whether it be Twitch or Discord) and making genuine connections, the viewer part comes naturally. A big thing to realize is that the number of hours streamed does not correlate to how many followers/viewers you have; you need to give people a reason to stay for your stream. 

How do you feel about individuals assuming that oh "you are a girl streamer" so it will be easy for you to be successful and famous? 

This statement kind of confuses me because if it was easy to become successful and famous due to my gender, why aren't the top streamers all female? There is a list of most followed streamers ranking up to 63 and two female streamers such as Pokimane who is 8th while Amouranth is 63rd. This means that out of 61 out of 63 most followed are male streamers. 

Success and fame can come in different forms, but it depends on how you perceive them. Maybe it's not the number of followers, but the number of concurrent viewers. It may not be all convincing, but I checked the top live channels, and to my knowledge, there's only one female streamer in the top 20. 

A lot of what I've seen on Twitch is that girls have an initial start that male streamers don't; a higher probability of being clicked on to watch. A zero viewer girl is more likely to get clicked on rather than a zero viewer boy. What I've also seen is that growing on twitch requires more than long hours of streaming or grinding away at a game for an enormous amount of hours. To grow on twitch, it is through social media, networking, growing yourself beyond just Twitch. I tend to see more girls active on social media or in other chats, which can help grow your community. I don't think it's fair to anyone discrediting a streamer's effort into building a community by amounting it to their gender. 

Thank you Lauri for the interview, is there anyone you would like to give a shoutout to?

- Thank you Fuslie for showing me what entertainment on Twitch is like. 

- Thank you RosaCha(Sabs) for what small communities on twitch are capable of. 

- Thank you to my mods(Basti, Kevin, Alex, and Danny) for keeping me sane during streams and there to help me out in a pinch. 

- Thank you Belinda for being an amazing friend that I made and showing me what hard work and dedication can do. 

- Thank you Raubel for placing faith in me that streaming is something that I can do. 

- Thank you to Valorant Baes for being some of the first girlfriends I knew that would play video games with me. 

- Thank you Rob for keeping me sane and being patient, while also teaching me it's okay to put myself first. 

- Thank you Aqua for joining me along in this streaming journey, and being an amazing best friend. 

And lastly, thank you everyone in my discord that says good morning, checks up on me and reminds me that I can do great things if I put my mind to it.