It’s not easy to stream on Twitch. To make a livable salary doing it, you’ll need a lot of devotion, effort, and a little bit of luck. SquidGame, whose real name is Lydia Ellery, a streamer from the United Kingdom, has been doing it for years. She’s been steadily growing a following and has now earned the title of Twitch partner. She’s also been uploading gaming content to her YouTube channel under the aliases “SquidGaming” and “SquidGame” for the past ten years.
In light of Netflix’s successful show Squid Game, many people who have never heard of Ellery have been harassing her online as of late due of her nickname. Ellery recently spoke to BBC News about how the sudden success of Squid Game has resulted in harassment, the banning of her Instagram account, and the loss of career possibilities.
“I’ve received a lot of hate from the fans and I’ve been turned down for work because of it [the name],” she told the BBC.
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“I started getting abusive messages from people. People were getting angry with me because they were mega fans… and thought I took the account from the show.
“I had to turn off notifications on my Instagram because it was just constant. My phone has been flooded.”
Ellery’s account name situation has gotten so terrible that she’s thinking about changing her username across all of her social media platforms, partly because it’s making her job more difficult. When someone typed “SquidGame” into a search engine, they were directed to her Twitch channel. They’ve been pointed to the TV show now. Building a community on Twitch is difficult enough, but trying to compete for attention with an incredibly popular Netflix TV show is too much for anyone who isn’t in the class of Ninja or TimTheTatman.
