Early Alia Shelesh was born on October 22, 1992, in
Liverpool, England. Her family moved to the United States when she was six, at which age she started playing video games. Shelesh started uploading videos to her YouTube channel "sexysexysniper", consisting of
Let's Plays of games such as
Call of Duty. She moved to the SSSniperWolf channel in 2013, She derived her handle from
Sniper Wolf, a character from the
Metal Gear video game series. In 2017, she hosted the show
Clickbait in which social media influencers competed in unusual challenges. The show aired on the subscription service
Fullscreen. She also made an appearance on
FANtasies, an anthology series. In early 2017, the genre of her content changed from entirely gaming-oriented to primarily
reaction videos. That year, her channel grew to over five million subscribers, and she was among the ten entrants in
Forbes' "Top Influencers" list in the "Gaming" category for 2017. In 2018, she appeared on an episode of
Fear Factor In 2019, she was nominated in the
2019 Teen Choice Awards in the category "Choice Gamer" and won the "Favorite Esports Star" award in the
2019 Kids' Choice Sports. In 2019 and 2020, she won the
Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in the category "favorite gamer". In 2021, YouTube ranked Shelesh third on its "US Top Creators" list. In the same year, she won the Gaming Influencer of the Year Award at the American Influencer Awards. In 2021, Chinese video game publisher
HoYoverse, paid Shelesh $100,000 for reaction videos promoting the
gacha video game Genshin Impact; the videos, according to the
US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), "depict a fake
loot box prize win, in a way that would have been impossible in the Genshin Impact game". The FTC alleged that these videos were one of the instances of
HoYoverse's
deceptive microtransaction practices targeting children, and the company settled the FTC case against it by paying a $20 million settlement fine to the
US Department of the Treasury in 2025.
Legal dispute with Evan Young On August 1, 2023, it was reported that Shelesh was one of the highest-paid YouTubers with a net worth of US$16 million. Young also claimed he curated and scripted her content for years.
Conflict with jacksfilms in 2019 YouTuber
Jack Douglass, known as jacksfilms, accused Shelesh of profiting from other creators' work through monetizing her reaction videos, while frequently not providing proper credit, and characterized her content as rudimentary and not
transformative enough for
fair use. In response, she made several social media posts accusing him of
sexism and
plagiarism. captioned "let's talk like adults", which was quickly removed, but her followers shared screenshots. Douglass responded by accusing Shelesh of
doxing him, and asked YouTube to
demonetize her. and the pair contemplated moving. Shelesh said that she had found the Douglasses' address on
Google, that she "had no idea how to dox", that Douglass was "creating drama to pay (the pair's) bills", and that he was a "creep". Shelesh discussed seeking a
restraining order against Douglass, whom she called "obsessed" over the matter. On October 18, YouTube's Twitter account posted "would it be too meta to do a reaction video to a reaction video", which multiple users interpreted as an offhand comment on the situation, causing a backlash. By October 19, a
Change.org petition to remove SSSniperWolf from YouTube gathered 13,000 signatures. The next day, YouTube temporarily demonetized her channel, while expressing disapproval of "
both sides'" behavior. Shelesh subsequently apologized to Douglass in a tweet, saying that her actions were "inexcusable" and that she respects YouTube's decision. She continued to upload videos on her "SSSniperWolf Top Videos" channel, but it was later also demonetized. == Personal life ==