SweeetTails: Unhinged and Unstoppable

SweeetTails is a Twitch superstar at the top of her game with all of the sage advice when it comes to climbing the live-streaming ladder. 

Success is never overnight for anyone in the streaming world. For every sudden ascent into Twitch stardom, there are a hundred creators desperately fighting for a chance. SweeetTails' climb started with humble beginnings, born of a love for gaming that is still evident in every stream. But over half a decade of rigid dedication to her craft, video games have simply become a vehicle for her magnetic personality. Now, she’s an unstoppable force in the streaming landscape. Very few people on Twitch stack up to her level of success, and none of that privilege has been lost on her at any step of the way. 

Finding a calling

“Honestly, six years ago, I had no idea what Twitch was. I had no idea what streaming was. All I was doing was taking Instagram Stories of myself playing Call of Duty, getting Play of the Game, 40 kills, and dying five times,” she said. “Could I do that today? No. But back then, I was like, ‘I’m so cool!’. So I would post it on my Instagram story. Then someone said "you should stream on Twitch…and it went from there.”

“When I started streaming, I was like ‘this is what I was meant to do.’ I never went to college. I worked a job right out of high school. I was lost. I knew I wanted to work for myself…This fell in my lap. I’ve worked very hard to be where I am, but I think a big contributing factor to it is luck and timing…I’ve always had the personality, and people seem to gravitate towards that, and then I started making money, and I said, ‘Wow, this is serious, holy s**t.”

SweeetTails streaming a game

Learning from her peers

A quick look over Tails’ past VODs or YouTube uploads paints a picture of experimentation and discovery. Variety gaming and assorted IRL experiences are mainstays all the way down, but her commitment to elevating the content has only skyrocketed. Her earliest videos show all the same hallmarks, but the finer details have been ironed out over years of repetition and learning. It’s all a part of the process. She’s also not afraid to take inspiration from her peers. 

“I will say, we all look up to the larger streamers in the space at the time, and the women larger streamers, I’ve always wanted to be at that size. But I really focused on the smaller community, because that was more realistic to what I had, and the one person that really helped to inspire me and helped me to transition to posting clips on TikTok, was a streamer and still is, Kruzadar.

“She was the first person to ever post on TikTok in the format you see today. With the video on the top, and the gameplay at the bottom. She was the first person to do that. And then she took off and everyone started copying her …I copied her, because she’s amazing. She hit that market and it blew up. We actually became friends, and I’m still friends with her to this day. I love her to death. She was one of my biggest inspirations. I looked up to her because of her ingenuity in this space and what she created.”

Building Team Tails

Now, with digital sea legs underneath her, Tails’ brand is bold, funny, and fast. Jokes fly a mile a minute. Loyal viewers fling inside jokes into chat at frightening speeds. A first-time chatter might feel like they’re dipping a toe into a pool that’s all deep-end, but even just a few minutes spent getting to know Tails and her community will show the truth. Seats are continually added to her metaphorical table, making sure everyone who sticks around feels included on the journey. 

Sometimes that means watching her practically jump out of her skin playing the next flavor-of-the-week horror game, and sometimes it means laughing in concert with the rest of chat when a viewer sends in a WD-40 scented candle, the physical manifestation of one of those aforementioned inside jokes. 

WD-40 YouTube-video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ykj0UNEb8

Of course, it’s not easy to manage a high-octane chat at such a personal level when dealing with 542,000 followers, but forming personal bonds with her viewers is just one reason for Tails’ mega-success in the streaming world; she never shies away from engaging with chatters on a human level.

“You want to go into a stream and you want to feel seen and feel heard,” said Tails. “It’s harder when you get bigger. Your chat starts to move faster. But I always take the time out of every single stream. I try to thank every resub, and if I miss it, I apologize. I try to thank as many people as I can, because I’m grateful and humble. They’re the ones who gave me this opportunity, and I will forever be grateful for that. Team Tails, I love you.” 

“I was crying the other day on stream. People gifted me over a thousand subs in twenty minutes the other day, it was f****ng insane.  I was really crying. Even in my bed after I’m done streaming, because people believing in me that much is the most surreal feeling.” 

Her attention to detail, combined with an electric blend of energy and humor, makes her community feel at home. Every little detail adds up to a mix of sincerity and hilarity that keeps people locked in for the long haul. 

Team Tails is curated around the values on display in her content. Most chatters respond to her over-the-top energy in kind, creating an engagement loop where she can be her self-described “unhinged” self by making content that reaches the type of viewer she hopes makes it to the stream. “That’s what gives me my content. I want them to be unhinged in chat. Give me more content, but I’m also very unhinged, and that’s why it works. Whatever you’re putting out there, that’s the community you’re going to have.” 

Confronting burnout

It’s that same authenticity that shields her from the pitfalls of streaming, too. There are no bumpers in the content industry. Where many other jobs have the traditional guard rails of allotted working hours, mandatory breaks, and general wellness policies, those guidelines don’t exist for streamers. It’s a grind that can totally consume anyone willing to take it on, and Tails knows that all too well. She had her own bout with burnout in the not-so-distant past. Keeping that at bay is now at the heart of every decision she makes for herself and her audience. 

“That rocked my world,” she said. “I’ve never been through anything like that in my life, but it makes sense when I look back at how hard I was pushing. We were pushing out like six sponsorships a month. It was insane. It was showing results with how fast I was growing, but I wasn’t listening to my body, and it all came crashing down. That was terrifying for me. I was at the peak of my career, and it all went away like that.”

“That’s what this rebrand is, to really go at this again and give it my all, but do it in a healthy way so it doesn’t happen again. It’s a learning process…But most of the time when I’m not streaming, I’m in bed reading a good smut book. I’ll be honest. All day—I’m reading or I’m outside. You need to learn to turn it on and off. The hardest part is turning it off and not getting on your phone.”

Sometimes ‘turning it off’ manifests in a canceled stream or a rain check on an energy-intensive idea. Still, it’s all in the name of achieving a healthy work-life balance that often gets seen as an afterthought in the content industry. It’s a testament to the loyalty of Team Tails that none of it scares people away. 

“I tell my viewers, ‘I’ve got to choose me first this time’, and they understand, because a lot of people have been through what I’ve been through, and that’s why I’ve been so open about it.”

Beyond the Stream 

Cultivating that kind of respect from her audience is the key to everything Tails does, and while she’s all in on her current content right now, she expects that will remain true no matter what the future brings. “I don’t have an endgame. Everyone wants to grow. I want to grow…do I plan on doing this forever? No. I’m only getting older. I’ve got other plans I have with my life, but I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon… Maybe one day my content might flip around to me doing farm chores, because I want a barn with horses, with a Monster in my right hand. 

“I feel like I’ve done my part and have changed thousands of people’s lives, because they tell me on a day-to-day basis, and that to me is fulfilling enough,” she said. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RV45LZl6zs