Digital Social Hour - Inside the Life of an E-Girl with Lauren Burch | Digital Social Hour #74

Starting point is 00:00:00 I feel like it's definitely about consistency because there is no algorithm for growth on Twitch and I think it's important to follow the people in your niche that are successful because then you can take inspiration and learn from them too. So a lot of it is connections, just knowing the right people. I hear a lot of successful actors and actresses saying that it's about being at the right place at the right time. if you look the part then oftentimes you could just host sean kelly i'm here with my guest today lauren birch hello how's it going i'm good how are you i'm good so you're the first e-girl we've had on yeah yeah i was looking on your socials and i saw that there weren't many e-girls so i was really intimidated to go on the podcast

Starting point is 00:01:05 no it's all good I like having new people from different industries on all the time yeah but could you describe what exactly an e-girl is people that don't know um I feel like an e-girl is definitely a sort of aesthetic it's definitely a combination of multiple aesthetics and I feel like it was really popularized when TikTok really rose to popularity just from like the little dance trends I feel like that popularized the aesthetic so I feel like it's a lot of dyed hair eyeliner usually interests in like video games and anime that's kind of how I would describe it nice so were you big into anime and video games growing up yeah um I had an older brother so I was always into video games because of him I would play Halo with him all the time and some Call of Duty zombies and I also loved

Starting point is 00:01:55 Nintendo games and Pokemon nice and yeah I recently got into anime I had watched Ghibli films growing up and like Naruto a bit but i got really into it when covid hit right and when i got into tiktok too i feel like tiktok really influenced my aesthetic a lot nice yeah i had a weird anime phase where oh my gosh i was watching like 10 hours a day in college really it was bad no i feel like a lot of people go through that too because it's always that one show where you're just hooked and with anime it's like hundreds of episodes like especially one piece oh my god people are always telling me to start one piece it's too late now i know

Starting point is 00:02:35 and then they're like it gets good at like episode 400 yeah it's like why do you want to wait that long i tried it for like five episodes it was too slow for me yeah because it came out so long ago so things have definitely advanced a lot since then 100 but i like a lot of the newer animes that are only 12 episodes those ones are fun to get yeah those i could deal with like samurai shampoo is a classic yeah there's some good ones did you see they just did the one piece real life uh show yeah i saw the trailer for it it looks interesting i feel like i've seen a lot of mixed mixed feelings about it for sure a lot of anime adaptations kind of flopped so i'd say almost all of them i can't think of any because avatar flopped yeah did they try naruto i don't even

Starting point is 00:03:16 know they did death note i think they did death note twice i tried to watch it and i bailed like five minutes it was really weird anime is too hard to like act in real life, I think. Because all the superpowers and stuff. And I feel like people don't want adaptations. Like people aren't wanting more from the animation. I feel like the animation does it well. Yeah, 100%. So you grew up in Canada, right?

Starting point is 00:03:36 Yes. And now you're in Cali? Yes. What do you like more? I really love Canada. I love the different seasons in Canada. I think winter lasts a little too long for my liking, but winter activities are really fun. And it's a beautiful place. And my family's there and my friends, but I do like California because I love summer weather.

Starting point is 00:03:58 So I like that a lot about it and the opportunities. It's just really, it's the place to be when you're in a career in social media, I feel. 100%. You can't really beat it in terms of social media influence out there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what did, what was your family support like when you said you were going to start doing this? Because it's sort of hard to explain, right? Yeah. I mean, my mom is the most supportive person ever. She doesn't care what i do you know as long as i'm happy she was always telling me to just follow my dreams and she doesn't care that i'm like an e-girl online or whatever she's super supportive and i'm not super duper close with my dad so we haven't really talked about what i do but he's like supportive I guess I think your parents got

Starting point is 00:04:46 divorced yeah yeah they got uh separated when I was like a baby so yeah they've always been separated yeah my parents got divorced I was like eight so I had a similar situation one of them really supported one of them didn't yeah interesting dynamic so did you go to college at all no I didn't okay that wasn't like part of your plan at all? I initially wanted to go to Ryerson University for acting, but then I kind of got, I had some mental health struggles after high school, so I didn't end up going, which is good because it probably wouldn't have gone well with where my mental state was. And then I kind of just followed my sister's footsteps in becoming an influencer and then it just kind of took off from there

Starting point is 00:05:29 yeah I had some weird mental health stuff in college too was that due to the pressure of school you think like trying to do well yeah I mean and also just the transition from being a high school student to becoming an adult kind of just thrown in and i feel like school doesn't really prepare you in all the ways for becoming an adult and figuring out what you're going to do for the rest of your life and what a mortgage even is not at all it's actually it's actually terrible at doing that it doesn't do yeah literally anything to be honest it's really a shame when you think about how much time you spent in school and, like, what you actually got out of it. Yeah, I feel like a lot more of the mandatory courses should definitely be geared towards making you an adult rather than, like, learning science.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Yeah, for real. Like, a lot of the classes are fun and cool and interesting, but I feel like they should definitely be switched around a little bit. Yeah, like taxes taxes real estate like something actually useful yeah even how to change a tire how to cook yeah you know not everyone has parents that can teach them like basic uh cooking skills cleaning skills i feel like even just one mandatory cooking class could be good we actually had those in jersey where i grew up really and i was so bad yeah i remember burning the banana nut bread yeah i was the only kid in the whole school that did that oh wow yeah i wasn't the best cook at least that's something

Starting point is 00:06:49 you could hire you know exactly you don't really have to be good it is useful but yeah i just like ramen noodles you just put hot water ramen i could do i lived off that in college i love ramen it's hard not to ramen's just really good comfort's comfort food it really is and there's so many different ways you could make it yeah so talk to me about your business gloomy girl what what is that and how did it start yeah so it started off as just the name for mine and my sister's merch we just wanted a cute name for our merchandise and then our team recommended that we kind of get girls to rep the merch and then we realized that the girls we were reaching out to like all had twitch and stuff like that so we kind of just

Starting point is 00:07:31 all agreed amongst ourselves that we wanted to start a twitch team and kind of become a content group so that's what gloomy girl is now we are a team of e-girls and gamers and content creators and our goal is to just kind of represent females in the gaming space, especially, and just spread positivity and entertain people. Nice. There's some big female gamers, man. It's crazy.

Starting point is 00:07:54 Yeah. How many views they get. And growing on Twitch isn't easy. So talk to me about how you, both of you guys were able to do that. I feel like it's definitely about consistency because there is no algorithm for growth on twitch well not really good like there's no like for you page yeah

Starting point is 00:08:13 exactly so i feel like the best way to do it is to focus on your other social medias and then drive that traffic towards your twitch got it so grow the ig grow the tiktok then funnel it to twitch yeah yeah twitch i think is still my smallest platform but it's definitely grown a lot because of my other platforms right and the streaming platforms i heard pay the most yeah like kick is you saw that deal with xpc the other day yeah i'm waiting for one of those deals yeah i mean it's coming they're signing a lot of streamers i know that's crazy super exciting i think live streaming and podcasting are gonna blow up yeah i agree because the content it's all about content these days like

Starting point is 00:08:56 how often are you releasing content um i release content daily on multiple social platforms. So I usually post a TikTok a day, an Instagram post a day, a YouTube video once a week. I try to stream once or twice a week and interacting. It's all just about posting as much as you can everywhere. Posting on Twitter, posting on YouTube shorts every day. Right. And where do you come up with content ideas? Because I've seen you wear some crazy outfits that I've never seen before.

Starting point is 00:09:29 It's actually really impressive. So I feel like a lot of my inspiration comes from anime and video games. I do cosplaying quite a bit, which is really good. And I think it's important to follow the people in your niche that are successful because then you can take inspiration and learn from them too so right you know if i see like someone wearing a cool aesthetic outfit i'll be like okay that's cool how can i recreate that in my own way and so i feel like just taking inspiration and learning from people is really good and then also

Starting point is 00:09:59 just from like fun games nice which social media platform are you most excited about moving forward? I started off really loving TikTok at first, but I think now my favorite platform is definitely YouTube. I feel like you can do a lot on YouTube and because you can do both short form and long form content, you can really, you can play around a lot with that so i have my main channel which is like fashion and try on hauls and then i have a channel with my sister where we do gaming and lifestyle content so i like the the like the duality you know you can kind of do whatever you want to there agreed yeah i'm all in on youtube this year it used to be ig but ig is kind of dead honestly yeah i feel like both instagram and tiktok are kind of kind of yeah IG is kind of dead honestly yeah I feel like both Instagram and TikTok are kind of

Starting point is 00:10:45 kind of yeah they're kind of going down right yeah it's taking over and OF yeah I can't do that I mean good I could but I feel like all the top OF accounts are girls right yeah I think so yeah why do girls like you have an OF right yes I do and what type of content is on there is it similar to IG and stuff yeah so I usually stick to um bikini lingerie and cosplay content on there so a little bit of an upgrade from IG yeah got it so where do you see this going like what are your future goals is there a plan are you just kind of just on day by day yeah I definitely want to grow and branch out as many ways as possible I would love to get into acting I did a little bit of acting on one show and it was really fun so I think it'd be awesome to branch out into that I'd love to do

Starting point is 00:11:37 commercials and music videos nice so that is my goal right now, I think. Okay, those are some big goals. So can you sing or you just want to be like a dancer in them? I did dance growing up, so I can kind of dance and I can't really sing, but I am willing to learn. There's AI that could probably enhance your voice somehow. Exactly. Make you look good. Exactly. And now there's AI even copying your voice and your image and stuff, too. I know. It's pretty scary, actually. It's freaking me out. Like deep fakesakes are gonna be of us like on the internet i've already seen fake joe rogan clips really like people run paid ads to them to promote their products oh my god it's like

Starting point is 00:12:15 that looks so real it's crazy what people could do yeah with the acting stuff i heard it's super competitive so like how are you gonna go about that um i feel like a lot of it is connections just knowing the right people i hear a lot of successful actors and actresses saying that it's about being at the right place at the right time so if you look the part then oftentimes you could just get the role so i'm just gonna take any audition i can meet as many people as i can and hope for the best feel that have any celebrities dm'd you um little pump was in my dms called out like three weeks ago he messaged me were you in miami no i wasn't oh he just randomly yeah and he messaged my sister too oh same message or yeah

Starting point is 00:13:05 it was literally like the same amount of like he said like hey with like three wives or something yeah you gotta switch it up at least right yeah i was like oh he messaged me and she's like wait he wants to read the same thing bro so you guys probably get the same guys hitting you up though right yeah yeah that must be annoying like what's that like when you see that happen you just know he's like yeah yeah um what about like just growing up with a twin sister what was that like your whole life it's been awesome i feel really lucky to have a twin sister it's like having a built-in best friend and she's my biggest supporter and also my biggest inspiration. I feel like we really work off of each other. Nice.

Starting point is 00:13:47 So if one of us is slacking off, we'll kind of work off of that and be like, well, no, you can't be slacking off because I'm not slacking off, and it really helps us to work towards our goals because we have each other. Do you guys have the same interests or is there different personalities? Same interests. Oh, gosh. You're much like identical in everything. Like you can't think of any difference? Um, not really.

Starting point is 00:14:13 Wow, that's crazy. Because there was a pair of twins where I grew up and they were different. Like they like different things. Yeah, I know some twins that just don't get along. That's weird to me. And it's sad. That makes no sense, actually. Because if you're twins, you should be pretty similar, right?

Starting point is 00:14:29 Right. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like some people don't like having someone so similar to them. Like, often people will just, like, instead of being like, oh, hey, Lauren, hey, Julia, they'll be like, hey, the twins, and we'll kind of be grouped as, like, one. I love that. But I feel like some people want to, like, have their own kind of set. I don't know. I don that, but I feel like some people want to like have their own kind of set. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:14:47 I don't know. I feel like that could definitely cause some conflict. For sure. Do people ever mistake you guys? Not much anymore, though surprisingly it still does happen, even though like we have different hair and different makeup styles.

Starting point is 00:14:58 It still happens and we just go along with it. But when we were in high school and all before, we looked really similar. So it was like a daily occurrence where people would mess up people would yeah I would have to go like face to face and one of them had like a freckle and then I would know Yeah, it was tough. That's how people used to tell me apart. I have a freckle right here It's like a little little bumpy freckle and that's how people would tell me apart from Do you have any other siblings or just twin sister uh older brother and what was that like did he look after you guys yeah he was always really protective and super kind yeah nice is

Starting point is 00:15:30 he still in canada yeah okay but he wants to move to the u.s he's trying to escape the cold weather i remember during covid you weren't allowed to leave there right yeah that must have been scary i remember i was trying to go there i think and i couldn't even go there because you needed the vaccine or whatever yeah covid was a really scary time but it definitely allowed me to focus all of my time and energy on social media that was kind of when i started growing a lot it was 2020 and it's definitely because i had no other distractions right your numbers probably skyrocketed because everyone's home yeah yeah definitely on tikt especially, my numbers were going crazy because everyone was on TikTok because there was nothing else to do. How many followers do you have on TikTok?

Starting point is 00:16:11 8.8 right now. That's got to be like top thousand in the world. That's crazy. Because I just hit 10 on IG and I'm ranked 1600 in the world. Yeah, congrats. That's insane. Especially for Instagram. I feel like it's hard to grab it.

Starting point is 00:16:24 Yeah, it's all timing because I was in it early. I feel like now it's so hard to grow. It's like... It is. I find when I first started on Instagram in 2019, I could grow a lot easier just from one picture, whereas now you can't gain as many followers from a picture, I feel like.

Starting point is 00:16:42 For sure. So were you buying shout-outs on other pages to grow at the very beginning what i think i i paid like ten dollars for one shout out once but what i would do because i didn't have a lot of money so i would message like aesthetically grunge pages or like you know like hot chicks pages and i dm them like hours on end just dming pages and sending them my photos and i'd'd be like, please repost this. And eventually it just people would repost it. And then other people would see that page posting it and then they'd repost it. And it really helped me grow in the very beginning when I only had like 5K followers.

Starting point is 00:17:15 Yeah. Yeah. I remember those days. I would be in my DMs. Yo, can you repost me? Yeah. The desperate days. But it works.

Starting point is 00:17:23 Yeah. We all got to start somewhere. Exactly. And then eventually once you have like 10K, I started doing S4S. You remember that? Yeah, yeah. Shout out for shout out. Man, those were the days. But that stuff doesn't work that well anymore.

Starting point is 00:17:33 It doesn't. Yeah. On OF though, like that must have been life changing money for you, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely was. It was crazy. So what was that shift like in your life? Like, wow, I just made that much this month yeah it was definitely really crazy and really inspired me to work harder towards my goals as well and I don't know I just I grew up my mom was like a single mother mother of three so we didn't

Starting point is 00:17:57 have lots of money so it was weird like seeing money for the first time right right yeah for a lot of people that's it's a life changing moment like what are some of your goals now that you've seen this type of money come into your life i like goals regarding money just goals in general like life could be money it could be i definitely want to make my money work for me now right um so i hired a financial advisor recently to just help me figure out what to do with my money because i'm nice you're stacking yeah well you don't want you don't want money sitting in the bank right it's you actually lose money if you have it in the bank exactly

Starting point is 00:18:36 exactly so i feel like anyone who stumbles upon a good amount of money definitely hire a financial advisor because they'll be able to tell you where to put it what will make you money open a retirement savings plan all that all that technical stuff so where did you find your advisor just online yeah i just googled a few i interviewed a few and then i just went with the one that seemed the most genuine and nice and what were some of the investments she or she recommended um definitely the retirement saving plan um i don't remember like all the specific words uh like a ira oh i think if there was a roth ira yeah roth ira yeah that's tax-free money yeah i think 12k a year

Starting point is 00:19:20 or something you put it yeah and when i was in canada there was the the tsfa okay so i have money in there too and yeah oh so you have canadian banks and us yeah i'm trying to convert everything to just us now but i do still have stuff in canada okay so you're you're going full time us now are you a citizen i am not a citizen i'm here on a visa but my goal is to work towards citizenship right what's that process like i'm curious um so the process to get the o1 visa wasn't that complicated you just need to have a good like immigration lawyer we had one and he wasn't used to dealing with influencers he dealt he dealt with like actors so he was like you don't have enough evidence to like submit to your case.

Starting point is 00:20:07 Really? Yeah. So he wanted us to like star in a movie or something. And we did that for like about a year, just trying to build up evidence. And he didn't want to submit anything. So then we found a different lawyer that actually works with like e-sports people and influencers. And he was like, you have way more than enough evidence. Yeah. You got 8 million followers. Yeah. sports people and influencers and he was like you have way more than enough evidence yeah you got

Starting point is 00:20:25 eight million followers yeah so within a month he just gathered all of this stuff and submitted it and then we got approved and then from there we can convert we can get a green card and then we can get full citizenship that process will probably take a few years but hopefully we can do it interesting yeah i hear people in other not can, but other countries have to wait years or something. So I was just curious. Yeah, it all depends on like the specific visa you go for. Right. I feel like if you have a good team

Starting point is 00:20:52 and a good social media presence, then the O-1 visa isn't too hard to obtain. Yeah. People always ask me to write like a letter of recommendation. I'm like, I don't even know you. Like, what if you get arrested? Like, I might get screwed. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:04 You know what I mean? Did you have to get a letter written? Yeah. know you like what if you get arrested like i might get screwed yeah you know what i mean did you have to get a letter written yeah uh our management team messaged all of their their team and was like write letters for them so yeah they kind of took care of that man that was good i think i asked everything i needed to what what are you working on now um we're working on stuff for gloomy girls specifically merchandise we do have merchandise, but we want to expand the kind of products that we're releasing and maybe get into like wine or something fun. Gamer Girl wine.

Starting point is 00:21:31 So we're working on that behind the scenes right now. I feel like that's our biggest project. Nice. What are the top selling products right now? Right now it is our devil t-shirt. Our devil girl t-shirt. There's a devil on it? Yeah, she's like a devil-yshirt. Our devil girl t-shirt. There's a devil on it? Yeah, she's like a devil e-girl.

Starting point is 00:21:47 Okay. Wow, people have some interesting interests, I guess. People go crazy for her. Really? Devil? Okay. Where can people find out more about you? So all of my socials are LaurenXBirch. And yeah. So yeah, you can find my socials there.

Starting point is 00:22:05 You can check out Gloomy Girl, which is just Gloom and then E-Girl. It's kind of like a play on words. Okay. Well, thanks so much for coming on. That was a blast. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:15 Thanks for watching, guys. Digital Social Hour. I'll see you next time.

Digital Social Hour - Inside the Life of an E-Girl with Lauren Burch | Digital Social Hour #74

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