Neekolul is an American Twitch streamer and TikTok personality. Her popularity online rose when she uploaded a TikTok featuring her lip syncing to the song "Oki Doki Boomer" while wearing a Bernie 2020 t-shirt; this TikTok was a direct reference to the OK boomerInternet meme that was popularized in late 2019.
On her YouTube account's about page, Neekolul mentions that she is Mexican and Portuguese. Her family immigrated to California from Mexico, and in an interview, Neekolul mentioned that she was born and raised in San Bruno, California. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas. In addition to being a full-time streamer, Neekolul also attends college part-time. She formerly studied business and marketing in college.
Online career
Neekolul is primarily a Twitch streamer and partner, having created her "neeko" Twitch account in October 2017. As she is bilingual, Neekolul streams in both English and Spanish. According to social media analytics firm Social Blade, her account has received over 200,000 followers and over 1.6 million views, as of July 26, 2020. She decided to become a Twitch streamer due to it fitting in with her college schedule; as opposed to making content on the YouTube platform, Neekolul did not have to worry about editing her content on Twitch. She streamed Call of Duty early in her career, but eventually switched over to streaming Fortnite. On March 2, 2020, Neekolul went viral online after she posted a TikTok video lip syncing and dancing to the Senzawa song "Oki Doki Boomer" while wearing a Bernie 2020 shirt. The caption of the video read "Like to trigger the BOOMERS #bernie2020." The video and its caption were referencing the OK boomer Internet meme that was popularized by Gen Z individuals, and used to criticize the Baby boomer generation. It received over 6 million views in 4 days on the TikTok platform, before being removed due to a copyright takedown, although the song's artist stated he was not responsible for the copyright strike. On Twitter, the video has received over 30 million views. The video was met with mixed reactions, with users divided over whether the video was cute and charming, or "cringeworthy". YouTube personalityPewDiePie covered Neekolul's video in one of his own videos. Kotaku commented that "the video is mesmerizing in a way that makes you feel a small amount of secondhand embarrassment. In it, Neekolul performs a hyper-feminine and cutesy series of dance movements, with the results bordering on cloying. It's a subtle balancing act between irony and sincerity that TikTok's most popular video makers have mastered." In April, The Daily Dot ranked "'Oki Doki Boomer' TikTok memes" at 12th on their list of "the best memes of 2020". It has since been noted by various media publications that Neekolul is a supporter of Bernie Sanders and his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. The official TikTok account for Sanders' campaign also commented on the video, and Neekolul stated that the campaign's head of social media reached out to her to collaborate. Uploaded a day prior to the Democratic Party presidential primaries on Super Tuesday, many online users claimed that Neekolul's video had an adverse effect on Sanders' performance in primary voting. Neekolul stated, however, "I don't think I'm a huge driver of votes or anything, but I think the content creators and Internet culture as a whole can bring awareness to things like this." She also conveyed that the video had more of an effect on building her online brand than turning her into a Sanders campaigner. After her viral TikTok video, many online users were noted to post messages online describing their physical attraction to her. This garnered Neekolul the nickname, "Queen of Simps", in reference to the slang term that describes an individual who gives an excessive amount of submissive attention to women. After revealing she has a boyfriend, she lost over 65,000 Twitter followers within 48 hours. She has since stated she has said this to be entertaining to her viewers; Kotaku wrote that "like many of her fans, she's constantly dancing on the impossibly blurry line between irony and sincerity." She has since continued to upload content online. Her Twitter account was briefly suspended as a result of her content being tagged by false copyright claims. One of her subsequent TikTok videos featured her dancing along to the song "Mia Khalifa", which drew several comparisons to Belle Delphine's similar 2019 video. Her streaming content has also drawn her comparisons to Pokimane. In April, Kotaku commented on her streams, stating that "even as she's blown up, in her streams she continues to behave in a way that feels accessible and inviting, verging on bubbly. That is not to say, however, that she doesn't know what she's doing." The outlet added that she began to increasingly be known as a personality, rather than as "just as a meme." Later in the month, she signed with Night Media, a content management company. After signing with Night Media, Tubefilter reported that she began planning to branch out on YouTube and had a product line in development. In June 2020, she signed to American esports organization 100 Thieves as a content creator.
Media reception
Nathan Grayson of Kotaku wrote on Neekolul, stating that "the cutesiness of Neekolul's recent videos and her relative proximity to so-called "egirls" like Delphine has given rise to accusations that the fans who find her attractive are people who want women to behave in ways that are child-like, naive, or foolish." Gita Jackson of Vice similarly wrote on Neekolul's appeal, stating that "like so many objects of male attention before her, her mere presence as a human being will either cause you to simp or to shun. But she's just followed a formula that's been thrust upon young, attractive women since men have been able to gawk at them." Jackson added that, "Some of critics say that by wearing a cosplay school uniform, dancing, and talking like a sexy baby, she is reinforcing negative stereotypes about women and encouraging men attracted to women to indulge in a fetish for seeing them infantilized."
