Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.
There are few things KandidlyKayla loves more than watching little tiny people going about their lives: bustling around in their painstakingly furnished homes, going to their jobs, taking care of their ever-growing families, setting things on fire, and trying to woohoo the Grim Reaper.
We are referring, of course, to The Sims.
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“I love The Sims. I’ve loved it since I was 11,” Kayla says. It’s always been the game for her. But when a friend she was playing it with during COVID suggested she parlay her passion into a Twitch presence, she was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of downloading yet another social media app.
“I was like, “I don’t really want to do that.’ He’s like, ‘Kayla, you’d be good!’ I was just like, ‘No, I don’t really like downloading apps,'” she laughs.
Still, it was 2020, and she was one of many people finding new things to do during lockdowns. Eventually, in November that year–thanks to some more wheedling from her friend–she gave in and made a Twitch account.
She had no intentions of easing in slowly. She’d watched a few streamers and had a rough idea of how things usually went, but she’s the sort of person who, when she commits, she commits, so when she hit “Go Live” for the first time, it really was go. She was full-time from her very first stream.
Within the month, she’d made Affiliate. Five months later, she was a Partner.
Now, she has nearly 40,000 followers, and streams every weekday. She still mostly focuses on The Sims, but is proud of having built the kind of community where she can come to viewers sometimes and say she’s not feeling Sim-ish and wants to try something else for the night. Sometimes, she says, she ends up not gaming at all, and spends entire four-hour streams just chatting with her viewers. She says it’s important for her to emphasize that every member of her community–people who follow but don’t subscribe, people who just lurk in chat–is welcome, so she does things like offer follower emotes and shouts out people who are new to watching.
And that community has given back to her: Along with one of her mods, it banded together to adopt an elephant in Kayla’s name, and now her viewers can contribute to that elephant’s stash of treats and toys at her sanctuary in Thailand.
For 2024, Kayla says she wants to focus on staying “positive” and “grounded” while continuing to do what she loves–and continuing to expand into bigger things like launching merch collections.
Check out our chat with her below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Hi there! I’d like to start with some background about you. Imagine somebody is reading this and they’ve never seen your stuff. They don’t know who you are. Tell me about where you’re from, what your early life was like, and how you ended up on Twitch.
KandidlyKayla: I’m from Michigan. I actually grew up in the city that makes your cereal. I always tell people that and they’re like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yes, it smells just like Fruity Pebbles there.” It’s funny. I have actually not been a gamer all of my life. I danced for most of my life and played sports and I would dabble in playing The Sims when I had time, but I didn’t really have a lot of time until I got older and I could make my own schedule. I was like, “I really want to have more time to play.”
I love The Sims. I’ve loved it since I was 11. One day my best friend and I were playing The Sims together, but on FaceTime, during COVID. He was like, “Have you ever heard of Twitch?” I was like, “No, what’s that?” It’s so embarrassing to say because this was the end of 2020. He’s like, “It’s a platform and people play The Sims there.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” He’s like, “You should do that.” I was like, “I do not want to download another app.”
Tubefilter: Understandably.
KandidlyKayla: I was like, “I don’t really want to do that.” He’s like, “Kayla, you’d be good!” I was just like, “No, I don’t really like downloading apps.” Then finally in November, he convinced me and I started streaming, and I have been a full-time streamer since I started. Literally, the first month that I started, I was able to grow an audience and become a full-time streamer immediately, which is so cool.
Tubefilter: Yeah, you got affiliated that month, right?
KandidlyKayla: Yes, I got affiliated, and then I got partner at five and a half.
Tubefilter: Not very long later!
KandidlyKayla: It all happened really quickly.
Tubefilter: How did you manage to build an audience that fast?
KandidlyKayla: I would like to be like, “Oh, it was just luck.” No, I’m just really funny. [laughs] I would love to be able to be like it was like, no, I do think that it’s a time and a place to be able to do when people find you, it’s just genuinely, you just have to be in the right place. KandidlyKandidlyKayla isn’t my name just because I wanted the two K’s mostly because I wanted the two K’s, but I pride myself on being a really candid person. When people come around to my community, they’re always like, “You’re funny because you’re yourself.” I don’t give people different versions of me.
Obviously, I’m more professional when I’m doing a sponsored stream than I am when I’m just hanging out with my community, but I pride myself on just being fun and inviting to everybody that comes around. There are so many people who come into my stream and they’re like, “You don’t get this anywhere else.” I’m like, “Yes, we’re a little crazy,” but I have a great community–and something that, when I was just a viewer on Twitch for the week that I was figuring out how to use the app, something that I noticed that there are people who didn’t speak to people that followed them. They only spoke to people that were subscribed to them. I was like, “That’s not cool.”
Something that I’ve prided myself on doing since the very beginning is speaking to every single person that follows me and every single person that comes into my chat. I never want them to feel how I felt. I was like, “You will only speak to me if I have a sub badge next to my name?”
Many people in my community tell me the day, “I followed you and you said hi to me individually.” I try to read every username, but some of them I mess up. They tell me, “That’s what made me stay, because you were like, ‘Hi, welcome in. How are you doing?'” I always ask people how they’re doing, because sometimes you’re the only person that asks someone that day. Plus I’m really funny. Can’t forget. I’m hilarious.
Tubefilter: That’s very important. I did notice that you have follower emotes, which is unusual. Most people have sub-only emotes.
KandidlyKayla: A lot of people are like, “Well, it’s just $5.” I’m like, “Yes, but that’s just $5 to somebody else.” I don’t want people to feel like they can’t participate when people are spamming emotes, when something exciting is happening, or just being able to use an emote without having to pay. I don’t want people to feel excluded ever when they’re in my chat. I have the follower-only emotes and then some of the sub-only emotes, you don’t actually have to be subscribed to use. You can just use a command and then a bot will type it for you.
Tubefilter: That’s very cool. Going back to The Sims, I know on YouTube, it’s still a really major niche. What is it like on Twitch?
KandidlyKayla: It can be a little bit harder because most people that are on Twitch that watch The Sims come from YouTube. They already have who they want to watch. They’re like, “I’m only here because I want to watch this person.” They just have to find you, because in the midst of maybe waiting for their favorite YouTuber to go live, you’re live, or their favorite YouTuber may raid you. It can be a lot harder when people are dead set on their favorite YouTuber being a streamer as well on Twitch. That’s where your personality comes in, though. If you do get someone that shares their community with you, you can be like, “I’m great. I’m funny. I’ve got great Sims and great storylines and I’ve got this great community.”
I pride myself on, when I do get the opportunity to have people that come from YouTube, I’m like, “Come and hang out with us just for five minutes! You’ll love it here!” Usually, my chat bullies them to stay.
Tubefilter: How do you structure your Sims content?
KandidlyKayla: I don’t like to get burnt out playing the game, because it’s my main game. It is super easy to get burnt out playing something over and over again. I like to stagger it from The Sims 4, which is like the current version, to The Sims 3. In the middle of the week, I’ll play a completely different game that’s not Sims-related to just give myself a break. Then Thursday and Friday, I turn right back around to playing The Sims 4 because I do love The Sims 4 more than the other ones. I might get canceled for that because everybody else loves The Sims 3 and Sims 2 more.
I love The Sims 4. I think that she’s great. But a lot of people don’t really care for The Sims 4 as much as I do. I try to stagger it to give myself a break so I don’t get burnt out.
I’m also blessed to have a community, for me to be able to say like, “Hey guys, is it okay if we play something else? Because I’m just not really feeling The Sims today,” because when you play The Sims, you have to give a lot of energy playing it. Some days I’m like, “I don’t really have that to give to you guys. I apologize, because I know that’s what you expect from me.”
I’ll just ask them, like, “Hey, is it okay if we do something else? If we just change up the schedule this week? I’ll squeeze in an extra Sim day later.” They usually say yes because they also like to torture me with horror games that I’m not good at.
Tubefilter: Which games?
KandidlyKayla: The Walking Dead. I just recently played The Walking Dead, and there was a lot of screaming and a lot of tears and a lot of, “I’m a big brave dog. I can do this. I’m not scared of this game.” There was a lot of it, and at no point was I a big brave dog.
Tubefilter: I know that you play The Walking Dead on Wednesdays right now. Do you plan to cycle in other variety games on Wednesdays?
KandidlyKayla: We just started The Walking Dead. Well, we actually just finished it too. We just started it a couple of weeks ago. Before then we were playing, ohmy gosh. What was I playing? I know I play Stardew.
Sometimes what happens far too often with me is I’ll load up a game, we’ll start talking, and we won’t actually play the game. I don’t know how I got so lucky that I have a community where sometimes they just want to talk to me. I’m so blessed to be able to say that was the content I did today. It’s just, I got to hang out with them and have fun talking about things. Sometimes we’ll just talk about life stuff or culture because we love celebrity gossip. We can’t help ourselves. Next thing I know, it’s been four hours and I’m like, “I need to go eat dinner,” because I eat a lot throughout the day. Because I work out a lot and I get hangry. I’m like, “I got to go.”
Tubefilter: That is a special kind of vibe. I wanted to mention–I promise this is relevant–that you do a lot of vlog content on YouTube that ties really well into your Just Chatting on Twitch.
KandidlyKayla: Yes. Because I like to consider myself a very serious gamer. The most serious gamer that has ever gamed. (That’s a joke.) A lot of people that watch me on Twitch love my vlog content because I used to do Sims content on YouTube, but people prefer me to make vlogs. I was like, “Really?” I think it also just shows the other side of being a content creator. It is easy to see content creators and see them living these really lavish lives. They’re outside and they’re taking trips and they’re doing all of the great things. Me? I love being at home.
They get to see you can do these things where you decide to follow your dreams and you take that leap of faith. Also, you can stay at home and enjoy being at home and you don’t have to be an outside person, because the outside scares me. I love it indoors with my cats.
Tubefilter: Same. Also, look, okay, I’ve got to hear the story. What is the elephant? Please, I’ve got to know.
KandidlyKayla: [laughs] One of my mods is also one of my really good friends. I love elephants. As you can see, I have an elephant right there. There’s also elephants on this show. There’s an elephant sitting on my desk. I have an elephant tattoo. I love elephants. I always have and if you don’t know if their trunks are up, that’s good luck. There’s a lot of I just love elephants and I love what they symbolize. For Christmas, my mod who, she’s also a jokester. I didn’t fully believe her until she sent me everything. She adopted an elephant in my name for me in Thailand. I was like, “Is this real?”
It’s real. I technically own an elephant! I adopted an elephant. I don’t want people to think that I’m snatching up elephants like a poacher or anything. She adopted an elephant for me in my name, and people from the community will donate just to send money so she can have extra food and snacks. They get her toys and everything.
Tubefilter: That’s so cool. What a cool community. I love that you turned it into a cool community thing.
KandidlyKayla: Yes, so they can donate. We don’t suggest people go visit her, because she’s still really aggressive because of how she was treated before she got to the reservation that she’s on now. You can donate to her and so she gets treats, and she gets toys, and just a little special treatment from the community. Nobody ever believes us when we tell them that I have an elephant.
Tubefilter: Yes. It is one of those things that’s very out of left field. That is such a cool community endeavor, though. Your community sounds very tight-knit.
KandidlyKayla: Yes, they’re like my family. I tell them that–now they’re probably going to read this, and they’re going to be so happy. I thought, because you do see some communities where the streamer is just the streamer, the community is the community, and they’re not as tight-knit, especially the bigger communities, because you just have to be careful. I am always asked, “Do you want your community to grow?” Of course, it’s a blessing for your community to grow. I also get nervous that I’ll lose how close we all are and how much we take care of each other, because not only do they take care of me, but if something happens with someone else, they all rally together to take care of each other.
I always get…I’m very emotional when I speak about them, because I had cancer and they were there for me when I had cancer. A lot of them were just giving me so much love because it was during COVID.
KandidlyKayla: Oh my god.
Tubefilter: I went through it with my community.
Tubefilter: Did you do chemo during COVID?
KandidlyKayla: Yes.
Tubefilter: What a nightmare.
KandidlyKayla: Yes. It was not a fun time.
Tubefilter: No, I can imagine. I’m assuming you’re in remission now?
KandidlyKayla: Yes, I am. They were great. They’ve seen me literally through that being doxxed, being swatted.
Tubefilter: You were swatted too?
KandidlyKayla: Yes.
Tubefilter: Did you actually have people come to your house?
KandidlyKayla: There was over 32 police cars surrounding my home.
Tubefilter: Oh, I am so sorry.
KandidlyKayla: It was terrifying.
Tubefilter: We don’t have to talk about it if this is not something you want to talk about. If you are comfortable talking about it, what was the debrief afterward, with the cops? Did they work with you on preventing this in the future?
KandidlyKayla: At the time, when I still lived in Michigan, yes, because someone else tried to swat me a couple of months later again. What happened was, thankfully, there was a younger officer that was there that was able to tell them what Twitch was, because they didn’t believe me. They’re like, “What video game do you play where someone would do this?” I’m like, “I play The Sims, trust me.” They’re like, “This doesn’t make sense why someone would do that.” Then, this younger officer explained.
Tubefilter: Do they not know what swatting is? Like, come on now. It’s not that difficult.
KandidlyKayla: It was such a frustrating experience. It’s like they wanted me to say, “Well, I made this person mad enough to do this. I promise you I did it.” The younger officer was able to explain it to them. They finally were like, “Oh, okay.” I’m like, “I literally said the same thing, but whatever.” It was terrifying, though, because I was actually on a call with Twitch when the police were calling my phone. I’m like, “I don’t know this number. Send a voicemail. If it’s important, they’ll leave a voicemail.” I’m finishing a meeting with Twitch. I’m just constantly looking over like, “God, they are just calling a lot.”
I had a dog at the time, I had a French bulldog. Usually, I would take him out around the time that it all happened. He was with my sister. I go and I look at the phone. I’m like, “Oh, they left a voicemail.” I listened to it. It’s like, “I’m a police officer. Call me back immediately.” I call him back. He’s just like, “Hi, I need you to step outside. Someone called and said you have your brother–” He asked me first about a brother named Tyler. I’m like, “I don’t. All of my brother’s names start with K.” He’s like, “So do you know a Tyler?” I was like, “I went to high school with a Tyler?” At the time I was 28. That Tyler does not matter to me anymore. “I don’t know anything else about a Tyler.”
He’s just like, “Someone called and said you have your brother Tyler held hostage. You’re going to unalive him, unalive yourself.” I’m like, “Hello? No.” I step outside. At first, there were six officers that walked up on me very aggressively. I’m just like, “You could pat me down. I don’t have anything.” Once they went through my apartment and seen that there was literally no one there, they gave the all-clear. There were so many that came out of nowhere. I was like, “Imagine if I had my dog and I didn’t look at my phone. I just walked outside.” I would have never known. It would have been way worse.
Tubefilter: It would have been much worse.
KandidlyKayla: Yes, it was the most terrifying thing for me, because I knew a week before it happened that it was going to happen. I got doxxed a week before.
Tubefilter: What was the deal? Why were people targeting you?
KandidlyKayla: At the time, Twitch was dealing with what was called hate raids.
Tubefilter: Oh, no, it was the hate raids. Oh shit.
KandidlyKayla: I was the reason why Color of Change got involved because one of my mods, their sister was on the board. Color of Change had an interview with the Washington Post and the Washington Post put my first and last name in it. As soon as I seen it, I was like, “Oh, no, I’m going to get doxxed.” Two days later, I got doxxed on stream. Somebody made an account and their entire account was my full address. They just were spamming my chat with my address. We had scrubbed the VOD. At the time, I was dating someone that worked in law enforcement. I was able to call him and he was like, “You need to call the police station and tell them, because you may get swatted.” I called and she was like, “Well, there’s nothing that we can do.” I was like, “Great, thanks.” I literally was like, “Thank you.” A week later, I was sitting there, and then I got swatted. I was like, “This could have been prevented.”
Tubefilter: What year is this?
KandidlyKayla: September 2021. The first person had called the Veterans Emergency hotline from a fake number. They couldn’t find them. Then they ended up finding the person that doxxed me.
Tubefilter: Oh, amazing. Is there any legal recourse, or?
KandidlyKayla: It’s one of those like cyberbullying-type things. They don’t really take it seriously.
Tubefilter: They can’t tie them directly to the swatting?
KandidlyKayla: No, they couldn’t tie it to the swatting. That’s the part that sucked.
Tubefilter: That’s incredibly stressful. I’m really sorry that that’s happened to you.
KandidlyKayla: It’s okay. I learned to just keep going. That’s all you can do. I‘m very blessed to have my job and this be my job, but sometimes I’m like, “Why do the weirdos have to come with it? What is your end goal?” I feel like they just wanted to scare me. I’m like, “Congratulations, but now what, what was the reason?”
Whenever people find out, they’re like, “How do you do this still?” I had somebody actually say to me today, she was like, “How are you still so nice?” I was like, “I don’t know. It’s just who I am.”
Tubefilter: It’s true. You’re very positive, considering.
KandidlyKayla: It’s one of those things, you just have to keep going.
Tubefilter: I know you’re dealing with all this, but to wrap up, I was going to ask if you have any projects you’re working on, or any cool plans over the next year or so? Things you’re looking forward to?
KandidlyKayla: Honestly, I am hoping to continue to grow on Twitch. I love streaming on Twitch. I tell people that all the time. I just recently dropped my merch for mental health season. Our next one is going to be an anime drop. Me and my creator, Tay, she and I have the best partnership. I love working with her and people have been asking for anime-inspired, designs, so I’m super excited to work on that. I love coming up with new designs, my community can feel like, You made this just for me. I’m excited about that. Let me think. Honestly, no, my birthday is coming up in a couple of months, but honestly, I’m just hoping to continue to remain positive in this space, because it can be hard.
Especially with the state of the economy, it can be hard to feel grounded and be like, “This is something that I can continue to do long-term,” and try to make those plans to do something like this long-term, especially on Twitch, when your income is based on the generosity of others. That’s just what my plans are to continue to be successful in the realm that I am successful in, and to grow in those areas as well.
