Popular Streamers Who Still Haven't Revealed Their Faces
Streamers have a more personal connection with their fans than many other entertainers. Because they spend hours in front of the camera, usually in their own home, fans really come to feel like they know their favorite streamers on a personal level. That said, not everyone who's interested in streaming is all that thrilled by the prospect of letting millions of people on the internet know who they are in real life. Streamers like Dream and Jschlatt spent years hiding their faces from the camera before making some of the biggest face reveals of all time.
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons some streamers won't show their faces, ranging from general anxiety to specific fears about being stalked, but hiding from the camera can make it much harder to connect with an audience. Only a handful of streamers have been able to make a successful go at a faceless career. Even with the rise of VTubers creating a new avenue for people to stream while maintaining their privacy, a refusal to be on camera can still stifle a budding streaming career.
The pressure to drop the mask is always there, but there are still some hugely popular streamers who haven't revealed their faces.
Corpse Husband
Corpse Husband might be the most popular streamer who's built a career without ever showing his face. Instead, what viewers have to cling onto is a variety of masked avatars, many of which he's shown off on Instagram, and an instantly recognizable voice that manages to be soothing even when he's eciting horrific tales. Corpse Husband started telling the internet scary stories all the way back in 2015, and in the years since then he's amassed a following of millions. In a way, the horror element has helped support Corpse Husband's decision to hide his face for so long. Having his unnerving profile pictures as the only frame of reference for his voices makes the stories he tells even more chilling.
When he isn't finding the scariest stories on the internet, Corpse Husband has gained a following for playing games with his friends and fellow streamers. Some of his most-watched videos feature him playing "Among Us" against people like MrBeast, Valkyrae, and Dream. Of course, he's also a fan of horror games like "Friday the 13th." Recently Corpse has been spending more of his time away from gaming, horror stories, and streaming in general. He's been focused on making and releasing his own original music, and so far his audience is loving it. If anyone can prove that it's possible to become an internet sensation without ever revealing your identity, it's Corpse Husband.
SwaggerSouls
SwaggerSouls started his YouTube channel in 2015, and since then he's expanded to Twitch and picked up roughly 5 million fans. For the most part, SwaggerSouls' viewers watch him play games, but whenever the camera does pull back into his real life setup, fans are greeted by an ornate knight helmet that he says he wears "at all times for [his] personal safety." It's likely that SwaggerSouls is at least partly joking about his reason for wearing the helmet, but considering how dangerous streaming can be for people who do show their face, maybe he isn't exaggerating at all.
SwaggerSouls is a gamer who's open to playing almost anything. He's just as likely to struggle through a laggy game of "CS:GO" as he is to endure "Five Nights at Freddy's" in VR. He's also no stranger to "Minecraft" and plays on the SMP server with people like Dream and Jschlatt. No matter what game he's playing, SwaggerSouls always takes a comedic approach that's been entertaining his fans for the better part of a decade.
Even though his popularity is increasing, there's no reason to think that SwaggerSouls will reveal his face anytime soon. He almost made the reveal back in 2018 to celebrate hitting a million followers, but that tongue-in-cheek peek is likely all that fans are going to get.
Memeulous
While streamers like SwaggerSouls have elaborate masks to hide their faces, some prefer to keep things much simpler. Memeulous uses a bandana, a baseball cap, and a dark pair of glasses to keep his real face off camera, and the strategy has been working for him for a long time. Like most longtime internet personalities, Memeulous began his career on YouTube. He started his channel in 2014, and six years later he'd racked up over a billion views.
Memeulous is a content creator who's truly embraced the "variety" label. Some of his best clips come from watching bad reality TV and even worse movies, but he's not opposed to playing a hit video game from time to time. He's also not the most active Twitch user, but he's been known to bring attention to smaller channels with some light-hearted raids.
Back in 2020, fans actually got a partial face reveal from Memeulous. His YouTube channel had just hit 4 million subscribers, and he decided to celebrate with a video titled "THE BIG REVEAL." Memeulous dropped the shades long enough to give his viewers a wink, but then it was back to business as usual.
Code Bullet
Millions of subscribers tune into Code Bullet's YouTube channel to watch gameplay videos, but he isn't the one holding the controller. Instead, Code Bullet has garnered a passionate following by building AIs that can play games. His videos are equal parts entertaining and informative, and the combination has worked so well that he's gained nearly 3 million subscribers in just a handful of years. Like Corpse Husband, Code Bullet represents himself with a simple cartoon avatar: a hoodie-wearing robot with a TV for a head.
In his very first video, Code Bullet taught an AI how to play a simple snake game and explained how the entire process worked. Since then he's moved on to using artificial intelligence to completely dominate games like "Tetris" and "Clicker Heroes." While YouTube is his main base of operations, Code Bullet also occasionally streams on Twitch to show his fans how his AI creation process works in real time. He's one of the rare gaming streamers who's found success not only without showing his face, but also without actually playing any games himself.
Wadu
You don't need fancy masks or clever avatars to build a following on Twitch. Sometimes it can be enough just to be entertaining while playing games that people enjoy. Wadu streams without a camera, but he's still managed to gain hundreds of thousands of followers. The real secret to his success is being consistent and having some serious FPS talent.
In his early days, Wadu spent a majority of his time playing "PUBG" and posting his highlight reels on YouTube. His enthusiasm for competitive shooters hasn't faded over the years, though his choice of game has shifted. More recently, Wadu has been investing his time in "Super People," though he's broken away from his usual pattern to spend some time with friends on "Minecraft," too.
Wadu's musical talents might win him just as many fans as his gaming skills. The first video Wadu ever uploaded to YouTube was a new take on "Gucci Gang," and he's come back with similarly hilarious takes on popular songs more than a few times over the years. Whether covering "Old Town Road" or "Hallelujah," Wadu brings a consistent sense of humor and style to all his songs. His face may be a mystery, but his voice has been stuck in fans' heads for years.
Ironmouse
Some streamers have found a way to have a face-to-face connection with their viewers without actually revealing their own identity. The trend of "virtual YouTubers," or VTubers, originated in Japan and has now grown so popular that major brands worldwide are getting their mascots in on the trend. VTubers use elaborate avatars that let them emote and move around like a regular streamer while still hiding their real face. Some VTubers are rendered in 3D, but even the ones that appear as simpler cartoons are finding a stunning level of success.
Ironmouse is one of the most popular Vtubers on Twitch, and her success shows just how engaging VTubers can be. She has well over a million followers on Twitch and nearly a million on her YouTube channel. She's a big fan of horror games, but has a wide range of taste, often enjoying titles like "Devil May Cry" and "Genshin Impact." However, fans are really showing up to engage with Iron Mouse herself. One of her top streaming categories is "Just Chatting," which her avatar lets her pull off in a way that few other faceless streamers could.
Mori Calliope
Mori Calliope is another Ttuber who's proving that you don't need to reveal your identity to create a real connection with your audience. In just over two years, Calliope has gained over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, where she streams games, chats with fans, and shares her own original music.
Mori Calliope is a particular fan of FromSoftware games, and she's spent hours streaming "Bloodborne" and "Elden Ring." She's also plugged herself into popular games like "Rust" and fast-paced shooters like "Doom Eternal." Although she makes sure to play the hits, Calliope has also structured streams around smaller indie titles. While recreating the drinks from "VA-11 Hall-A," Calliope set up a camera inside her kitchen so fans could watch her mix drinks while wearing gloves. She carefully planned her angles so fans couldn't catch even a reflection of her body, but the video gave a tiny peek at her real life world.
Mori Calliope's fans know that she's more than just a gamer. She's been releasing her own songs, complete with music videos, on her channel. Sometimes she even features other VTubers like Gawr Gura on her tracks. Her musical style has led some fans to speculate that in real life she's the musician/streamer DEMONDICE. While she hasn't addressed that suspicion directly, Mori Calliope has acknowledged in an interview that she used to be an underground rap artist. Still, she says she'd prefer for people to ignore her past and appreciate the work that she'd doing in the present.
Gawr Gura
Gawr Gura started streaming on YouTube around the same time as Mori Calliope. In her channel description, Gura writes that she is "A descendant of the Lost City of Atlantis, who swam to Earth," and her design definitely reflects that backstory. Gura wears shark-themed clothing that sometimes includes a tail.
Though less focused on gaming than Mori Calliope, Gawr Gura is a big time "Minecraft" player, and that's where most of her gaming energy has gone. She's taken the occasional break to play "GTA 5," and like Mori Calliope she dove into "Rust" for a while, but she always comes back to "Minecraft."
Gura also spends time just chatting with her fans or trying to help them learn Japanese with Duolingo. Gura also creates her own music and has released some animated shorts about her life. The amount of work that Gura puts into her streams might even outmatch the most carefully constructed IRL stream out there. A recent stream even included a fully animated concert, showing how ambitious she's become. Being a VTuber might come with more privacy than regular streaming, but it definitely doesn't come with less work.
Nyanners
Nyanners has been on YouTube since before VTubing became more ubiquitous, but even then she never showed her face on camera. Now Nyanners is fully a part of the VTubing party, and her viewership is growing more than ever. Her Twitch channel has swelled to nearly a million followers, which means it's well on its way to catching up with her YouTube subscriber count.
Like other VTubers, Nyanners spends a good deal of her streaming time just chatting with her fans. At the same time, she's a diehard gamer and dedicates hours to playing her favorites, including "Metal Gear Solid." She's also partnered up with her VTubing friends for some games, like when she and Ironmouse took a run at "Elden Ring." By this point it shouldn't be surprising to learn that Nyanners also has a serious interest in music. She uploads her own covers of popular songs whenever she gets the chance.
Fans will likely never see Nyanners's face — that would defeat the whole purpose of having her avatar, after all — but they have gotten to see more of her than other VTubers. She once took a lie detector test for a video and gave fans a glimpse of her real hand in the process.