If you’ve spent any amount of time on YouTube at all, you probably know about Lofi Girl. The “lofi hip-hop” streaming channel has become ubiquitous, even inspiring Halloween costumes. The Lofi Girl stream even has its own lore, which unfolds in mysterious, days-long events that introduce new characters and events that’ll shake up the life of the animated, forever studio titular character (one’s going on right now; you can check it out above). Even if you know all this, you may not know exactly who is behind the stream and its growing popularity.
Although the Lofi Girl creator chooses to remain mostly anonymous, there are some details out there in the world. The YouTube stream was originally started as ChilledCow in 2017 by a lo-fi hip-hop fan who called himself Dimitri (no last name) in a New York Times interview. Dimitri initially used footage of the character Shizuku Tsukishima from the Studio Ghibli film Whisper Of The Heart but the stream was taken down for copyright infringement. The stream was pulled down again in 2020 and in 2022 for copyright strikes against the music used, although Dimitri said he always got permission and the strikes were of dubious origin.
In March 2021, the name was changed to Lofi Girl in honor of the now-familiar character (whose name is Jade, by the way). Jade was created by a Colombian artist named Juan Pablo Machado in response to Dimitri’s call for artists to replace the former character. Machado later decided to set the character’s iconic room in La Croix-Rousse in Lyon, France, which can be seen through her window. And across the way is Synthwave Boy.
Now, if only we knew what that snowflake is all about…