On Tuesday, December 11, we welcomed Twitch streamer Fuslie, aka Leslie Fu, to Digital Trends Live. Fuslie, who has almost 200,000 followers on her Twitch channel, almost had an entirely different career path. She initially went to college at the University of Irvine to become a veterinarian but after a vet asked her if she really wanted to be one, she started to rethink her entire life plan.
“That really hit me, and that was something that I held with me, if a vet of 20 years is telling me that I shouldn’t be a vet, maybe I shouldn’t be a vet. So, I was thinking about this a lot more, and I was in a program that had me working with students and I really enjoyed it, so I went home one day and said this path is not for me, I am going into teaching, so last minute I switched into a teaching program it was my last quarter at UCI and I switched into teaching.”
During this life-changing career choice and applying to grad school, Fuslie also started streaming.
“I lived with three guys who all played League of Legends a bunch, and because I wanted to hang with the guys, I downloaded it and started playing a ton of it and I got hooked on it … then one day my roommate Alex suggested that I start streaming and then from there I tried streaming … and I started to love it.”
Fast-forward six months and Fuslie has just started grad school at UCLA and has just become a partner on Twitch. She tried juggling both graduate school and streaming for two weeks and decided it was not going to work, “I felt like my worlds were not lining up.” She dropped out of grad school and pursued streaming full-time. Most of her early followers know her as the League of Legends expert, but she has also slowly introduced new games into her repertoire.
“The first taste of a different game was Counter-Strike, and that introduced me to shooters, I wasn’t great at them, but I was never great at League either, I just really loved it. …Then from there, H1Z1 came around and that was the first battle royal game I have ever touched … and sprinkled throughout all those games were PS4 games like The Last of Us, Detroit, there were a lot of single player games I dabbled in.”
A typical day for a streamer, specifically Fuslie, is always different.
“I spend a good chunk of my day planning what my stream is going to be later that day, and … anyone who is familiar with my content will know, that no one knows what I am going to be doing that day, like there is not a game that I am going to be playing … I don’t have a set schedule of what I am going to be doing.”
Since Fuslie has been streaming for three years, her content has evolved and changed. She mentions that she was first known as the Leauge of Legends streamer, but is now happy being known as someone who is involved with her community on Twitch.
“My content has completely changed since I first started, I think right now I am the happiest I have ever been with my content. … The biggest change for me is the shift in community, my number one priority now is my community and the relationship I have with Twitch chat, I never really thought Twitch would become that for me, they are the reason I stream, it feels like we have this back and forth friendship … I didn’t have that three years ago, it slowly developed through time, it took a lot of time and back then it was that gaming was the focus and now the community is the focus.”
Fuslie can now be seen at huge events like TwitchCon and she talked about how surreal it is to finally meet her community in person.
“When I do get to go to meetups it’s incredible, it’s a surreal thing to have people jump out of their computer screen and they will say their name and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve seen you in my chat every day for a year and now you are here in the flesh.'”
With meeting fans, sometimes they give her gifts and we wondered what was the strangest gift she has ever received.
“The weirdest one I have gotten was a bed, like a mattress, it was shipped to me. It’s a very comfortable bed that my old roommate uses, so it’s gotten really good use, but it is a bed … that person also got me a chair and my other old roommate uses that.”
As for Fuslie’s future, she hopes that she can stream forever, but “even if streaming is something that fizzles out, later I would love to work from behind the scenes, maybe streamer management.”
Follow Fuslie on her Twitch channel, Twitter, and Instagram.
Digital Trends Live airs at 9 a.m. PT from Monday through Friday, with highlights available on demand after the stream ends. For more information, check out the Digital Trends Live homepage.
