Alia Marie Shelesh was born on October 22, 1992, to parents of Iraqi, Greek, and Turkish backgrounds[2] in Liverpool, England, United Kingdom. She has two younger brothers, Bakir and Paul, and one younger sister, Ranya. Her family spoke both English and Arabic while she was growing up. Her family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, United States, when she was six years old.
Lia graduated from high school early, got a head start in college, and studied both pharmacy and nursing. She soon dropped out of college early. Lia started working in Hollister, where she was paid minimum wage and had a rude manager. Later, she quit. She first met Evan John Young, also known as Sausage on YouTube, at Comic-Con in person.
Lia originally started her YouTube career in early 2011 on a channel called sexysexysniper, making short vlogs. The channel accumulated 50,000 subscribers. However, two years later, on January 19, 2013, she made a new channel and deleted the old one around mid-2013[3], most likely because of the name. Her new channel was called SSSniperWolf, which comes from Sniper Wolf, who is one of the main antagonists and bosses of Metal Gear Solid, her favorite childhood game. Lia claims that the 'SS' in her name does not mean anything.
Since 2017, the majority of Lia's videos have been reactions and TikTok videos, along with occasional gaming and challenges. From 2020 on, she regularly made it to the Trending Page, gaining intense popularity.
Partnership With Dhar Mann
Lia is also known to appear in Dhar Mann's videos as herself. Prior to their first collab, Lia would regularly react to his videos. This eventually led to Dhar inviting her to collab with him, and since then she’s become an official associate/partner. In the videos she is the idol of Sam/Psycho Mantis (played by Sofia Chicorelli Serna), a girl who wants to be a gamer just like her, despite her sexist mother not allowing her.
However, after Lia gives her a PS5, she becomes a professional gamer and earns a lot of fame and money, and her mother discards her sexist beliefs. This in itself brings more issues such as a bully targeting her due to her fame, but she earns his friendship by paying for his rent and car. "Sam" and SSSniperWolf appear in more miscellaneous videos,[4][5] though they typically have minor roles.
Ever since Lia enters a partnership with Dhar Mann, she officially started a segment known as "Dhar Mann Mondays" where every Monday she reacts to his videos in order to keep promoting his content.