Introduction
With the rise of social media, there are more and more young people who choose to live their life on camera; some of them even manage to make live-streaming their career. One of those people is Twitch streamer and YouTube personality known as LilyPichu, who gained popularity due to her gaming and singing skills. What is LilyPichu’s true name? And what happened between her and her boyfriend, Albert Chang?
Early life and Interest in Video Games
Lily Ki was born on 20 November 1991 in California USA, and is of Korean descent. She grew up with her parents and a younger brother called Daniel. The family moved around a lot, so young Lily grew-up without a lot of friends, and was a victim of bullying, but things finally calmed down near the end of her middle school, as then her family settled down for a while.
She attended piano classes from the early age of five, and this helped her future creativity and musical skills. This was also the period when she got her first Nintendo console, which started her love of playing online games.
However, during high school, things went south again as the bullying returned. To make the situation even worse, she kept fighting with her parents, who always expected her to have the highest grades – an expectation she wasn’t able to always fulfill. All of this combined stress caused Lily to lose her confidence, and also to go to a number of counselors. She was put on anti-depressants, as therapists hoped this would help lift her spirit and self respect, but as the bullies didn’t stop harassing her, she didn’t improve for a while. In fact, it got so bad that she stopped going to school and caring about her class success overall, and found solace in the safety of her room, doing art, playing video games and being active on the cyberspace.
Her parents thought the video games were to blame for her bad grades, and the amount of time she would spend on her computer, which didn’t improve their relationship. However, Lily’s depression got better as she started talking over the internet with people who had similar interest to video games and anime as she did.
Career
Lily opened her YouTube channel in 2006 under the name LilyPichu – a mixture of her name and that of a character from the famous anime and video game series, Pokemon, called Pikachu. Her first upload was a short comedy skit she made, with ‘guest characters’ Rammus and Anne, characters from League of Legends. She gained several thousands of followers through her gameplay and singing videos, but gained true publicity in 2011 when her song entitled “I’ll Quit LoL” was released on YouTube, and quickly gained over 6.3 million views.
This brought a lot of traffic to her profile, on which she mostly uploads her vlogs, animations, songs, piano covers and art. She also opened a profile on the live streaming platform, Twitch, on which she regularly posts her skills in playing the famous online game League of Legends, live videos, as well as music and art. Her gaming videos aren’t the only ones which attract a lot of people, and she is really popular for both song covers and her original songs, such as “Sky”, “Shurelya” and “Consolation”. She released her debut EP in 2015, under the title “Lilies”.
She opened her second profile on YouTube, named LilyRaichu, on which she posted rarely, but the content was more private and warm, although still funny. She often posted song covers on her second channel as well, but as of 2019, the LilyRaichu channel went private but the reasons for that weren’t disclosed.
In the fall of 2018, she and her fellow YouTuber and Offline TV member, Sleightlymusical, became a part of the cast for League of Legends commercials that were launched on Riot Games. Unsurprisingly these ads soon got their name, “LilyPichu and Sleightlymusical: Duo”. As of April 2020, Lily has attracted well over two million subscribers to her main YouTube channel.
Offline TV
In 2017, Lily became a part of the YouTube entertainment channel, Offline TV. The channel was founded by William “Scarra” Li and Chris Chan, his former manager, and was soon joined by two other Los Angeles-based content creators, Pokimane and BasedYoona. Several weeks later, the group was joined by Disguised Toast, Fedmyster and LilyPichu. As of April 2019, other regular personalities on the channel are YouTubers Yvonne and Michael Reeves, while Chris Chan and BasedYoona have left the channel for both private and professional reasons.
Relationships
For a long time, Lily was dating former Offline TV member, Sleightlymusical, whose real name is Albert Chang. Apart from being another Korean YouTuber, Chang is also a musician, and a professional violinist. He graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Next to being a member of Offline TV, Chang also did video editing for Freelance Film Production located in Greater Los Angeles. They were loved by many Offline TV fans, and a lot of young people claimed that they were their relationship idols for being cute and a seemingly perfect couple.
However, rumors of their breakup started arising while the couple was on a trip to Japan in November of 2019, when Chang started hanging out with another Twitch streamer called Sarah Lee, also known as Avocado Peeled. The gossips only intensified few days later, when Lee, allegedly by accident, posted a coquettish Google Documents file that she had previously sent to Chang.
This caused other Offline TV members to start posting angry messages on their social media profiles – most notably Twitter. In middle of that same month, Lily disclosed the break-up on her Twitter profile, and Chang himself wrote a Tweet on 12th November that stated: ‘I chose to be unfaithful to Lily, and caused her an excruciating amount of pain. I’m incredibly sorry for my selfish behavior. I betrayed her trust and love for me.’ Sarah Lee also gave her apologies for her part in the breakup, and all three parties decided to take a short break from social media. Neither of them confirmed whether or not Chang cheated on Lily, or was there only flirting between him and Sarah Lee, however Chang stopped being an Offline TV member.
In February 2020, Lily announced that she and her Offline TV co-member, Michael Reeves are dating, in a live stream on which she told her viewers that her Valentine was Reeves.
The relationship was further confirmed in several other streams and videos, but the couple is yet to be seen together.
Personal Life
Before making YouTube her official career in 2015, Lily worked a plethora of part-time jobs so she could make a living. Despite holding American nationality and being born in California, Lily is really close to her Korean roots and a lot of her parodies are influenced by Asian culture. She is also a big fan of traditional Japanese cartoons called anime, and spends a lot of time sharing her favorite anime titles on Twitch.
Lily has stated a number of times that she and her brother were very close to their late grandmother, and loved spending time with her while she was still alive; she’s noted that none of her grandparents are alive. Lily now has her own clothing line, but she’s also taking voice-acting classes, as becoming a professional voice-actress is her dream.
One of her best friends is a professional Dota 2 player and streamer from Canada, Jacky Mao, whose online name is EternaLEnVy. She owns a dog called Temmie
Net Worth
LilyPichu has around 4,000 Twitch subscribers, which makes her monthly pay as much as $13,650. also makes a lot of income from merchandise sales, advertising, brand deals and sponsorships. According to Socialblade, her estimated monthly earnings on her main channel can be up to $18,800. As of April 2020, her net worth is estimated at around $800,000.
Physical characteristics
Lily is a natural black-haired woman, but often times changes her hair color and style, though she usually sports bangs and shoulder-length hair. Her eyes are black and she is somewhat short, standing at a height of 5ft 3ins (1.6m) tall. Her weight and vital statistics aren’t disclosed, but she seems to be rather slim and tiny.