An Eastern-inspired mix of OSTs (original soundtracks) plays in the background as she takes viewers on a journey through her “family-friendly” streams playing games and chatting with her audience. She’s cultivated a large following due in no small part to her unique marketability and congenial constitution. In a year and a half, girl_dm_ has made an impact on the VTuber Twitch community. She’s garnered over 100,000 followers on Twitch, while boasting an even larger audience on TikTok, upwards of 180,000, and a sizeable reach on YouTube. She exemplifies how positivity, passion, and purpose can be the foundation to success if you work hard. While it may seem like an overnight success, it was a lot of labor and the woman behind that digital persona, Luna, is a well-educated marketer who was willing to put in the effort. “I was growing a lot faster than I was expecting. I began to put more interest into how I presented my stream. It’s something I call the Disneyland approach,” she said in a phone interview with Lifewire detailing her success. “Everything goes together and presents this experience…[i]t helps grab people’s attention and maintain. It became my approach.”
Love, Family, and Nerdom
Born in a rural town on the West Coast, Luna recalls her childhood with adoration and a strong sense of family ties. While the family didn’t have a lot on paper, they had a lot of love and support. “We’re all very, very nerdy,” she said, describing her family. Naturally, she built her first computer in middle school with the help of her father. It wasn’t his only gift to the young streamer. His comic book collection and passion for written stories with artistic complements trickled down to her. Comic book writer Stan Sakai’s episodic samurai bunny epic, Usagi Yojimbo, was one of her biggest influences growing up. “It was probably one of the first things I read as a child, and as it continued, I continued to enjoy comics and manga,” she said. “It’s what got me interested in Japan.” That interest continues. From comics to anime and manga, her love for the artistry of Eastern art fed her eventual education. She graduated from university with dual degrees in business administration and Japanese. The hard work was nothing new for the VTuber, who recounts an independent streak since her paper route in middle school. The experiences fostered a self-sufficient, business-minded disposition she boasts to this day. A disposition that is integral to her success as a streamer.
Girl, Uninterrupted
An interest in technology and experiential content creation is what drew Luna to VTube, specifically. The sophisticated yet simple technological reality of VTubing drew her attention. It started as a passion project. Before her foray into VTube, Luna would stream games she played with her friends and family. It always interested her as a digital citizen: citing YouTuber Foo The Flowerhorn as silent inspiration. “I really enjoyed watching his videos, and I thought if I’m so interested in watching him clean fish tanks, then maybe I could do something, too,” she said. “If I’m sharing what I’m doing, then maybe it’s going to influence someone to watch.” Stardom doesn’t come easy on Twitch. With an oversaturated market, getting noticed can be difficult. That’s where cross-platform promotion comes in, and Luna just so happened to know a thing or two about business strategy. It turns out, her day job before going full-time on Twitch was social media marketing. Her TikTok presence garnered massive support. The VTuber combined informative tech talk via her virtual avatar with trendy TikTok sounds and stream clips to dip her foot into a few markets simultaneously. Luna said she garnered 50,000 Twitch followers between May and August due to her growing TikTok and a few semi-viral YouTube clips. Through her success, she hopes viewers realize the independent creativeness behind the Twitch streamer persona, both real and virtual. “We’re just people behind here. I never had any expectation of success starting out on this stuff,” she said. “Streaming is like a performance. And some performances it’s okay to have hecklers, but also some performances it’s also good to just enjoy what’s going on in front of you.”
