Pokimane
Other Interests
Family
She has a brother, and a cat called Mimi.
Name Origins
A play on ‘Pokémon’, combined with her real name. 'Imane' is Moroccan and is closer to 'mon' than 'mane' in pronunciation.
Gaming Origins
Pokimane started playing video games when she was very young, thanks largely to her older brother who was also very into gaming. She mainly played the The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon franchises until she moved on to PC games. The first onine PC game that she really got into was Endless Online. She went to a French elementary school and then an English high school.
As she got older, she began connecting with her friends on social media, and would play video games with them while chatting on Skype. Her friends started sending her links to female Twitch streamers. Pokimane became enthralled and was inspired to begin streaming her own content. She began streaming as a hobby in 2012, which is also around the time that she started playing League of Legends. However, she only started streaming her LoL gameplay when she reached platinum elo. She began streaming more regularly when she was going through a hard time IRL and found that it helped her to cope with the situation and also somethin that she found to be very enjoyable. Her channel did well and she was soon earning enough money for her to get by without a part-time job.
Prior to streaming fulltime, she was studying engineering, but dropped out to pursue her career.
Professional Gaming
During her second year of her Chemical Engineering course in college, she began receiving sponsorships in addition to the regular subscriptions and donations. This consistent income made her realize that she could pursue streaming as a career, and so in 2016, she dropped out of University and moved to LA to focus on her streaming career.
Although her parents weren't thrilled about Pokimane dropping out of school, they are supportive of her career choice because she juggled university and streaming to build up her channel before making any drastic decisions. In October 2021, Pokimane announced that she would be officially leaving OfflineTV in September 2022.
Income
Pokimane is estimated to have ~6,050 subscribers, with an average viewership of ~9,430. This should earn her at least $21,175 USD per month, excluding additional income from sponsorships, tiered subscriptions, tips, Twitch cheer bit donations, merchandise sales and advertisements.
Streaming Hours
No set hours. Usually streams for between 3 – 9 hours, starting between 19:00 – 00:00 UTC
Interesting Facts
Her favorite Pokemon is Eevee.
Quotes
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When you’re feeling troubled, it’s good to just take time for yourself and focus on how you can make bad situations into life lessons and just grow from everything, because a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.
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The large majority of people who do make any money from it, started off just as a hobby. You have to put in a lot of hours before you see anything come out of it, and you only really put in hours if you’re enjoying what you do. So, before anything else, just have fun.
Sources
Gaming Setup
Streaming Setup
