Early life, family, educational background
American gaming YouTuber and streamer known as LuluLuvely online, was born Lindsey – surname unknown – on 10 October 1993 in Texas, US, and grew up with a sister and a brother. After matriculating, she attended the Abilene Christian University and graduated with a degree in Marketing, which has helped her promote her Twitch and YouTube accounts.
Career
Lulu stayed home for six months after graduating from university as she was looking for work, and meantime played Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). She eventually began working for an insurance company as an underwriter; after work, she streamed ESO – most of her viewers were fellow ESO players, and part of the online community.
When she first began streaming, Lulu didn’t have a webcam, and so streamed from her Xbox, eventually buying a webcam. Game Nation News interviewed Lulu, and she recalled, ‘When I started streaming with a webcam, I got so awkward… I didn’t want to look at the camera, and I was so worried about how I was sitting.’
She quit working as an underwriter once she began earning the same amount of money from streaming. She then moved to Los Angeles to work as a house manager for eSports organization’s Fortnite team – she felt that even though her streaming career on Twitch was growing, she was afraid to only stream full-time, and wanted another job.
Lulu worked for the eSports organization for about seven months, later saying that although it is the same industry, eSports tournaments have their own world – ‘It was fun, and it felt like working at a startup where everyone is really young; all the bosses are young.’ Lulu explained that nobody has a defined job; instead, everyone does their own job and anything that needs to be done outside of their main job roles.
An ESO streamer, Cypher PK was her first host, and she reached 200 viewers – at the time, this was a lot of viewers for her. In 2019, one of her largest hosts was with 15,000 people by Dr. Lupo.
Shortly after Twitch brought out the Twitch Affiliate program, Lulu became one of the first members, and a year later she also became a Twitch Partner, after applying five times. Lulu said that her application was difficult as Twitch changed the partner requirements several times. After finishing a 24-hour stream, Lulu said ‘It was awful… I drank so much caffeine and Red Bull… It wasn’t fun.’
Lulu did her best to stream six days a week, explaining ‘This whole industry is very difficult because the people who are grinding every day will be rewarded more than those who are only streaming five days a week.’ So that in order to become successful as a streamer, you have to be willing to give up a lot of your time.
She also said that she often suffers from burn-out, so she always makes sure to take one day off a week; even if she still streams on her off-day, she doesn’t stream her main game.
When Lulu was asked if she dreams of being a pro- player, she responded by saying that people say she is good enough to become a pro- player, but she thinks it is rather challenging to be both a content creator and a pro, although there are people who do it, adding that many of them quit being pros due to the pressure – ‘The pro scene, I don’t think I personally would want to be a contracted pro.’
On 22 November 2019, Lulu signed a contract with NRG eSports to be a prominent gamer, alongside Justin Morales and Benjy Fish. She has more than half a million followers on Twitch, and her streams garner around 3,000 views each.
Lulu was asked about how she forms friendships with fellow streamers – ‘It’s difficult because it’s a fine line between leeching and actually wanting to make network connections.’ She added that a lot of people ruin the possibility of friendships between streamers because they use each other to gain more viewers and followers.
‘It’s nerve-wracking, especially reaching out to bigger streamers because you don’t want to come off as a leech.’ Because of this, Lulu tries to play with smaller channels when she can, and doesn’t stream with people purely based on how many subscribers they have, because she remembers when she was still a small streamer trying to network. That doesn’t mean that Lulu is not picky about who she streams with though, choosing people based on how appropriate they are for her audience and channel, and if they can have a good, entertaining conversation. Lulu usually plays with someone once, only rarely bringing a streamer back to her channel a second time.
She sometimes earns a bit of extra money when representing and endorsing brands online.
Issues with Hackers in Apex Legends
Along with her NRG eSports teammates, Lulu was hacked and wiped out of Apex Legends by Gibraltar – a hacker’s online name.
Respawn banned him and his Bloodhound teammate, KongoBoom, and Lulu reported the issue – including video evidence – to the security team at Apex Legends. Although KongoBoom was also seen in the video, many believe that Lulu received special treatment as a popular streamer, because KongoBoom was also banned but wasn’t involved in the hacking. Lulu cleared up the situation, saying that she hadn’t directly contacted a member of the security team as many speculated, but had actually reported the issue on a public Discord channel, made for reporting in-game problematic behavior.
Shortly after the ban, Bloodhound posted under u/KongoBoom on 20 October 2020 to Apex Legend’s subreddit, claiming that Respawn incorrectly banned him after he was randomly paired with a hacker, and pleaded that he was innocent. He stated that the hack was purely Gibraltar’s doing, and he was not involved or aware in any way.
On 21 October 2020, Apex Legends tweeted that Bloodhound has several other accounts that have been banned, was previously partied with Gibraltar, and has a history of evading bans (or attempts of) – Apex Legends concluded the tweet by saying that they stand with the ban.
Lulu then took to Twitter to share that since Bloodhound’s Reddit post, she had been receiving death threats, ‘Shame on those who sent borderline death threats to me because of a Reddit post from the guy claiming he was innocent. I hope you find peace in your life and stay off the internet.’
Lulu decided to apologize to the Bloodhound player, and he responded by removing his original Reddit post and reprimanding users for sending death threats and hate to the popular streamer. He added that he never thought that the situation would escalate to the extent of someone’s life being threatened over a game, ‘This is just a game, and we get upset sometimes, but it’s still a game I don’t want my account to get unbanned anymore if this will cause murder.
For those who were sending death threats to LuLu! You sick people need some counseling. I’m sorry LuLu. You don’t deserve that. I stand by you.’
Personal life
As far as the public knows, Lulu currently lives in New York. In September 2020, she tweeted that she isn’t in a relationship.
Appearance
She has blonde hair, brown eyes, is 5ft 8ins (1.73m) tall, and weighs around 120lbs (55kgs).
Net worth and salary
As of early 2021, Lulu’s net worth is estimated at over $300,000.