Over the past few days, fans of YouTube channel “Lofi Girl” have been frantic over a mystery taking place on the popular relaxing music stream. This morning, the mystery was solved: Lofi Girl has introduced us to a new friend and a new stream, which fans are dubbing “Synthwave Boy.”
The mystery began late last week, when the official Lofi Girl Twitter account began teasing something outside Lofi Girl’s window. At first, this was easily dismissable as just another whimsical tweet, as the stream itself — which usually plays “lofi hip hop radio” non-stop over a repetitive animation of a young woman writing in a notebook — continued as normal.
But then, a few days later, something changed. In the window behind Lofi Girl, fans could see a distant building light up with blue light. And that blue light was blinking. It was morse code, directing people to a non-existent website called lofiworld.com. The mystery was left hanging for a few more days until yesterday, Lofi Girl and her cat vanished entirely, sending fans of the channel into a frenzy.
Meanwhile, a second stream cropped up on the same channel of a different room — presumably the blue-lit room — where a calendar hung with April 11 circled and a countdown clock slowly ticked down, leading up to this morning.
At 10am PT today, we heard the sound of a door opening in the blue room, and a purple-clad boy we’d never seen before entered the room with an adorable puppy, put on some headphones, and sat at a desk to work on a computer to the sound of synthwave music, occasionally taking cozy sips from a mug. Minutes later, Lofi Girl returned to her desk and resumed her writing with her cat. Now there are two streams, two cute pets napping, two genres of music, and two studious young people working away.
Today marks a very exciting day for the channel, as we release a brand new 24/7 livestream on YouTube! ?
Introducing a brand new character in the Lofi universe, we bring to you the genre of Synthwave – beats to chill/game to! ? pic.twitter.com/wlG9Awc4S2
— Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) April 11, 2023
This might all sound fairly mundane if you’re not clued into Lofi Girl, but for fans of the stream’s relaxing vibes, this was probably the best possible outcome. Plenty of speculation was flying over the last few days as to what Lofi Girl was teasing, but the final reveal was so perfectly within the scope of what Lofi Girl has always been that the fan response is largely positive. Anything grander would have been, well, distinctively not something to “relax/study/chill/game to”.
Congrats, Lofi Girl and Synthwave Boy. We’re glad you found each other.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
