The Untold Truth Of SweeetTails
Streaming is an incredibly competitive career field, and it's no secret that, from viewership to earnings, it's long been a male-dominated field. SweeetTails is one content creator who has bucked the trend and overcome the odds over the past four years, going from unknown amateur streamer to professional Twitch star. Her Twitch channel now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and it's not even her most popular social media platform.
Tails has achieved success not only by being an entertaining personality, but also by letting her creative energy take her all over the internet. On YouTube she posts stream highlights and wacky videos with her dad. Over on TikTok she's getting ahead of the platform's gaming push by pulling one viral clip after another out of her regular streams. All the while, Tails continues to connect with her audience through direct messages, gaming competitions, and a growing Discord server — all while also tackling newer projects like a podcast and an animated comic.
SweeetTails might not be bringing in Pokimane numbers just yet, but she's showing that it's still possible to create an active and vibrant gaming community from the ground up. Before you tune into her next stream, here's her story.
She's been gaming her whole life
Like most streamers, Tails' love of gaming goes back a long way. Tails has said that she was a huge fan of games like "Zoo Tycoon" and "RollerCoaster Tycoon" when she was a kid, though she didn't necessarily play the games the way they were intended to be played. As she explained to viewers, "I used to love, like, sabotaging the rides and letting them die, or, like, picking them up and drowning them." Tails certainly wasn't alone in turning her amusement parks into elaborate torture machines for her virtual guests, but eventually she graduated from finding ways to insert violence in her games to playing games that provided those means by default.
According to Tails, making the jump from early PC gaming to console gaming introduced her to a whole new genre. She became a true fan of the "Call of Duty" franchise, and that passion carried through into her streaming days. Some of her earliest YouTube videos center on "Call of Duty" conflict, and though she's got some serious skills, Tails hasn't been shy about posting her less-than-spectacular moments, too. One of her popular clips hilariously shows the time she lost a game to a six year old. Tails' transformation from casual gamer to pro streamer isn't a unique story, but it's always gratifying to see someone finding a way to make their childhood joy into their career.
She went to college for radiology
SweeetTails is far from the only internet personality who's opted for a non-traditional path through higher education and into a new career. MrBeast famously admitted that he dropped out of college after three years so he could focus on content creation full time. Tails made a similar decision, but it didn't take her nearly as long to decide that college wasn't right for her.
On her podcast, Tails opened up about her college history, saying that she spent years without having any real idea what she wanted to do with her life, outside of the vague idea that she wanted to work for herself and be an entrepreneur. Tails was taking courses online at Southern New Hampshire University and considering becoming a radiologist or an x-ray tech, but she almost immediately realized that school was actually making her miserable.
"It was so expensive. It was stupid. It just wasn't... I didn't like it," Tails said. She left college without a solid plan of what she would do next, but it wasn't long before she found her way to Twitch and content creation. "I thank my lucky stars every single day that this happened for me," she said. That good luck, combined with her incredible work ethic, has brought SweeetTails to where she is today.
She started streaming just a few years ago
After leaving college, Tails didn't immediately find herself in front of the camera working to build an online community. Streaming only truly became an option for her after she went through a rough breakup and needed to move home to live with her parents. "I was playing 'Call of Duty' every night, and I was posting it on my Instagram," Tails said. This was back in 2018, as Twitch was becoming an increasingly powerful force in the content creation arena, and when Tails got some encouragement to try streaming, she decided to give it a go.
Tails launched her Twitch channel and joined YouTube in late 2018. Her early content grew from her own gaming interests and her desire to entertain an audience in equal measure. She got in on the trend of playing horror games to scare herself for laughs, but she also tried to stream games that were massively popular at the time, like "Red Dead Redemption 2." As she grew more comfortable with streaming and chatting with an audience, Tails started showing off her "Call of Duty" skills.
In a video immortalized on her YouTube channel, Tails manages to silence any doubters by taking a rough opening and turning it into an impressive chopper run that ends the game with her racking up 65 kills. Since those early days, Tails has grown much more comfortable playing what she wants, when she wants, and her fans love her for it.
Gaming isn't as much of a focus for her anymore
As SweeetTails has grown her following, she's started to branch out with the types of content she makes for her fans. Even in the early days, Tails was breaking up her gaming time with things like unboxing segments or playing around with a green screen on stream, all to try and mix up the typical gaming streamer formula. As more and more people have started tuning into Tails' streams, she's found more opportunities to set games to the side in favor of engaging with her viewers. These days, when SweeetTails isn't working her way toward another amazing killstreak, she's adding in other segments like "try not to laugh" challenges and "true or false" games that she can play alongside whoever is in chat.
Tails often lets her community dictate how her segments unfold or the kinds of content she's creating for Twitch and YouTube. In her "unban request" series, she frequenly takes input from the people in Twitch chat to decide how to respond to banned users who want to get back onto her channel. Now that her fan community has its own Discord server, Tails likes to highlight some of what they're up to in segments like her "Meme-Me" contests, which are frequently seen as some of her funniest clips. Rather than turning people away who might not enjoy watching "Call of Duty" all the time, Tails' approach to diversifying her content has grown a following that tunes in to see her for more than whatever her favorite game might be at the moment.
She sometimes streams with her dad
A streaming career is usually a solitary endeavor, but SweeetTails' channel has a regular guest star who is happy to help mix things up. Tails has been featuring her dad on stream for years, and he's been there to help her create some of her funniest moments on camera. SweeetTails fans first met her dad when he did her makeup on camera — and yes, it ended up almost exactly like you'd expect it to.
Since then, SweeetTails' dad has proven that he might just have what it takes to become a streamer himself. He's always game for a round of trivia or some not-so-savory food challenges, like trying every kind of Lunchable or sampling an extensive (and disgusting) baby food tasting menu.
Watching Tails stream with her dad, most fans would get the impression that he'd always encouraged her to make a go at streaming rather than following a more typical career path. According to Tails, however, both of her parents were initially a bit hesitant when she wanted to become a streamer. "In the beginning my parents did not embrace my streaming," Tails said in an appearance on "Field of View." She and podcast host Autumn Rhodes both acknowledged that their families didn't really take the job seriously until brand deals and money started rolling in — that's when they realized that this was a lucrative and serious career path.
Luckily now, Tails' parents don't just support her streaming, they actually love getting involved, and SweeetTails' audience is always looking forward to her dad's next appearance.
She blew up on TikTok
Tails got her start on YouTube and Twitch, but those arguably aren't the platforms that skyrocketed her into internet fame. She has hundreds of thousands of followers between those two platforms, but those figures pale in comparison to the more than two million followers she has on TikTok.
"I definitely wouldn't be where I am without TikTok, for sure, hands down" Tails has said. She describes TikTok as a sort of equalizer among social media platforms where even anybody can rise to prominence by making a video that goes viral, all thanks to the platform's inscrutable algorithm. It takes one successful video on TikTok for someone to gain a whole new audience, and Tails has successful videos in spades.
Tails' TikTok videos are unsurprisingly just as varied as her other content, and like what she posts on YouTube, a good amount of what makes its way to TikTok comes from her Twitch streams. Sometimes she posts "scary" moments, like when she was hilariously attacked by a stray piece of glitter. Other times she shares truly emotional moments, like when fans tell her how much of an impact her streams have had on their lives. Her most popular posts include dance videos and flirting fails that fit in perfectly with other viral TikTok content, but it's always Tails'spersonality that stands out and keeps people coming back for more.
She knows how to handle trolls
Every streamer is going to encounter trolls and negative comments from time to time, but SweeetTails gets more than her fair share. On the "Bears and Tails" podcast, she opened up about how frequently she has to deal with all kinds of nasty comments. Tails explained that she's in a similar boat to other female content creators in that the worst sides of the internet seem to flock to her videos to vent their negative feelings. She said that on TikTok, commenters can be "just so brutal" on her videos, especially when compared to the comments sections for male content creators with similarly-sized followings.
Tails manages to approach even the worst commenters with her trademark sense of humor. These days, she also knows that she has the support of an entire community that is willing to laugh alongside her and help bury comments from trolls. Tails has even managed to find a way to turn her worst commenters into content. In 2021 she started making Twitch bans entertaining. Tails regularly goes through her unban requests and allows her chat to decide how she should respond. The whole process gets uploaded YouTube, and Tails' community really sees it all. From shameless self-promoters to uncomfortably gross and suggestive comments, they turn everything into a reason to laugh as they shoot down one unban request after another.
If you can't get rid of the trolls, you might as well convert them into views.
Her community is still growing
Community building is an area in which SweeetTails is particularly skilled. Tails and Bad Bear Gamer discussed how fundamental a community is to a streaming career on their podcast, and Tails admitted that focusing on her community has become harder as it has grown. "You're just not gonna have as much time as you used to have," she remarked. Tails explained that finding a balance between community time and personal time is essential to avoiding burning out on work.
Tails' community began on Twitch, and over the years it's expanded not just to other social media platforms and Tails' dedicated Discord server. Her streams now regularly pull in tens of thousands of viewers, but Tails still finds new ways to connect with the individuals who come to see her. Some of her most popular segments are her "1v1s," during which Tails faces off against her fans, usually in a game of "Call of Duty."
Tails has also been seen to reach out to fans on a much more personal level. On another episode of the "Bear and Tails" podcast, she explained that one of her favorite things to do is read some of the super long direct messages fans send her online and then send them a detailed response. "I spend at least five minutes, if not more, on each of those people," Tails said. That level of commitment to her fans is what has allowed Tails to grow her following so quickly.
She wrote a comic book
As a content creator, SweeetTails isn't easily sorted into one particular category. She's always stretching her limits and trying out new creative avenues, whether that's starting a podcast or diving headfirst into TikTok content. Part of what makes Tails such a powerful creator is that she's not afraid to work with collaborators, and that's exactly what she did for one of her most ambitious projects to date.
Tails wrote her own comic, "The SweeetTails Saga," and released the first chapter in March 2021. The story is set in Cygon City, a futuristic locale that's obviously inspired by classic cyberpunk stories. Within the world of the comic, SweeetTails is a high tech assassin with a robotic dog sidekick. The two of them investigate a mysterious VR-related plague that is rampaging through the city and leaving dozens of people dead with their headsets still strapped to their faces.
By partnering with illustrator UncleConconz and musician Adam Marcos, Tails was also able to bring her story to life as a semi-animated experience on YouTube. According to the video's description, the first chapter took the team five months to create, and though Tails has promised more to come, there hasn't been any solid announcement made about chapter two just yet. Even as a standalone story, it makes for a fun watch and a perfect example of what Tails can accomplish when she follows her creative impulses.