We’re looking forward to introducing you to Julie Universe. Check out our conversation below.
Julie, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What are you most proud of building — that nobody sees?
I feel incredibly proud of my online presence I feel I don’t get a lot of credit and maybe people aren’t fully aware of who I am and what I do but it makes me feel amazing when strangers I’ve never meant find me through my social media posts and will follow me just because they like me or find my content interesting. It feels great knowing that all the hard work I’ve done has really come forward and has built me no matter how small a following of people who just like what I’m doing and want to support it whatever the contribution maybe whether it’s a like or follow or just sharing the things I make it makes me immensely proud.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi! My name is Julie Dominguez aka Julie Universe aka Gunkie! I am a model/influencer/streamer originally from Los Angeles, CA and I have been modeling as Julie Universe since I was 23 just a few things here and there I’ve walked for fashion shows in Los Angeles and am planning to attend another show this fall in New York for NYFW known as The Model Experience. I’ve walked for this brand before as someone who was relatively unknown but was picked to walk for them from a previous experience walking for a competition known as Model Hunt where I got to speak about who I was and what I felt I stood for. It was an amazing opportunity and now I’m so excited to be walking for NYFW as a VIP model hoping to push my modeling career to new heights and eventually going to Paris or Milan or Both or wherever the world may take me. I started streaming on twitch back in 2017 making a name for myself playing some of my favorite games and building my brand as a streamer/influencer. I’ve had a few sponsorships but they never took me as far as I wanted to go so I’ve dedicated more of my time modeling and focusing on my main instagram @julie_universe building a following on there and learning the ropes of content creation. In 2021 I started a tiktok channel and have started posting more on there but while i post as often as I can I would still like to reach a bigger audience and slowly but surely my dreams have become a reality. A lot of the content I post has to do with my personal journey documenting my life and where it’s taken me as well as amazing foods i’ve tried all along the way. I’m currently touring through different states and showing up in random locations all over the US and I can’t wait to try all the different foods there are here in the US and all around the world. So far I’ve visited AZ, NM, GA, AK and I currently stay in Austin, TX and I can’t wait to go to NY this year in September to see Manhattan The Big Apple and Times Square try all the unique and interesting foods along the way and document my journey to all my followers bit by bit!
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
I had a mentor sometime in 2017 I was lost looking for myself and who I truly was where my life was going and none of it was clear to me. over time I had grown a bit hesitant to try new things and anxiety took the best of me but I always managed to take steps in the right direction. Eventually I landed a job that I really like and felt was really cool at the time I decided I could play video games as a day job and get paid for it. I always loved video games growing up I felt entranced by the different worlds and wanted nothing more than to escape from time to time. I felt that this was certainly one of the many career paths I could take without losing that sense of wonder I had grown attached to since I was a child. Although it sounded cool and interesting at first I soon learned that the role of a game tester was difficult and full of many boring things that had very little to do with video games as a whole. A lot of what we did was incredibly boring, tedious and monotonous. Pacing up and down levels looking for ways that someone might accidentally break the game but we had to do it on purpose. Playing the same levels over and over again. Writing long and rather exhaustive bug reports on how to reproduce every little action that we had done to try and convince the staff of the validity of said bugs. It was not as fun as I had envisioned it and I sought out a different form of entertainment something where I didn’t have to stare at a screen all day. My coworkers played a trading card game known as Magic: The Gathering and I watched and learned rules about how to play and what decks are good against what other kinds of decks and I much like my coworkers found solace in it. I met a friend who introduced me to his play group of friends and they would all meet from time to time playing and trading and just having fun. The psuedo leader of the group Brandon was a stoic man who was very commanding and loved to play quick decks that would destroy you only a few turns into the game. All of them would joke about how he was rich and had tons of money and could buy whatever he wanted, I assumed most of them were joking because why would he stay around these guys if he had money? Why not be in Cancun or surfing in Bali or visiting far away places, but this was his element and these were his people. The closer i became to this friend group the closer I became to him and the more I wanted to get to know him. How had he become rich? Why did he like this game so much? Was he dating someone? I would ask him more and more and he offered to teach me what he knew, he lived a hard life growing up being poor and homeless at an early age and having to fend for himself working several jobs at once and teaching himself all he could about computers with the little resources he had and one day after so much heartache and struggle he landed a job as a systems administrator. Making about 70K a year but he kept learning and growing and eventually he moved to LA having been originally from Wisconsin and started making the big bucks about 90K plus bonuses. He did meet someone and they had been together since he moved to LA a beautiful lawyer who went on a date with him to get tacos. I envied him and her I wanted nothing more than to learn more about what he did and make a name for myself and if I could learn more from him maybe whatever he knew and whatever greatness he had would rub off on me if only a little. I asked him to teach me everything he knew so that I too could lead a better life. The more he got to know me the more interested he became in me. He would say that I was fascinating to him and I couldn’t understand why? What did he see in me that I couldn’t see in myself? He would teach me something and I wouldn’t understand we would go in circles till we were both exhausted and he would tell me to come back another time. The next time I saw him I could almost perfectly recite what he taught me the previous night. He would joke that I was a sponge and that even if I didn’t know what he spoke of or what he was teaching me that It didn’t matter my subconscious would pick up the pieces while I slept. We met more and more on different occasions and we would make jokes and laugh and talk about anything and everything; the stars, neurology, sociology, the heat death of the universe, it all fascinated us and nothing was off the table. I found myself clinging to his every word fascinated by his fascination in me and I found myself yearning to be in his presence just to hear him speak he was stern but not uncaring, firm but kind and he saw something in me that I could never see and something I still struggle with to this day. He was the first man to be utterly fascinated with me for my brain and that made him special. We still talk from time to time and I never forgot everything he taught me. One of the most important things he taught me was to not doubt my abilities and that I had the potential to achieve greatness and anything I could want. I believe him even now, he wanted nothing from me not my body or my brain, not money or to invest on anything I worked on. He only wanted to help me and a bit of my attention and he left a longing in me that no one could ever fill. It’s not just because of who I am but also because of what those who have the clarity to see who I can truly be that I have yet given up on achieving my dreams even now.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
I would tell my younger self not to doubt herself so much. There were a lot of times I doubted myself whether I was doing something I felt would benefit me or hinder me. Times I felt if I did something it would be dumb, foolish or useless. That self doubt stopped me from doing many things that could’ve been great or wonderful but I stopped myself dead in my tracks from self doubt. I went around many things that I felt were not achievable for me and I achieved them later in life but I could’ve achieved them much sooner had I just took the plunge and tried it. I opted the easy route for many things growing up for fear of falling straight on my face. I was too scared of standing back up after falling for fear of falling all over not knowing that falling was just a part of life, a huge part of life that was really unavoidable. All I did was save myself a few years when I was older and felt those falls much later, much harder. Had I chosen to go through with my ambitions and faced my fears I believe I would’ve been a much happier child and I would be in a much better place in life but I would want my younger self to know it’s not my fault and these things take time and effort to not fear change because change is what pushes us to the next day. Little by little we find the courage to face what fears we may have and that leads to a better life overall.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
I believe that every version of me is the real me I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not. There are more things I’m willing to divulge the longer I get to know someone but no part of me is fabricated. I think it’s more difficult to create a persona than to just limit your essence. Most people have a version of themselves they show to the public and I don’t believe anyone is exactly their unfiltered version of themselves in public space because it can be exhausting having to explain yourself to the world. The world takes you apart piece by piece the more you give them of yourself and over analyze every meeting every interview and every single time you show your face. Is that one bad picture what you really look like? Is that one bad interview who you really are? or that fan meet and greet what you’re like? Everyone has had a bad day at one point in their life and that bad day shouldn’t define you as a person but the world can take a single bad day and make that your personality. There’s only so much bad publicity that can be good publicity before all you are to everyone else is your bad publicity. As we all know the media can ruin a life. People know who I am to an extent but my loved ones know all of who I am and even then it may only be a fraction for not even you can know who you truly are.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What pain do you resist facing directly?
The pain of loss. I have experienced loss in many ways and I try to avoid it like the plague. You love someone and then they’re gone either moved on or passed on. Some pain hurts much more than the others but it always hurts. The pain is prolonged and of course inevitable. It’s one of the hardest pains to get over and for good reason. When you love someone you give them a tiny piece of your soul, and when you lose that person you can never truly get back what you lost. So you’re not just grieving the person you lost you are also grieving that piece of yourself that is lost to time forever. It is truly a pain I try to avoid but it’s the most unavoidable and it’s one of the only pains that last until you are gone. For that reason I feel it hurts the most.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @julie_universe
- Other: Tik-Tok: @julie_universe
