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The first Hades was Mashable's choice for the best game of 2020. It blended entrancing roguelike gameplay with gorgeous character art, sharp writing, and a unique form of storytelling that inched forward bit by bit every time you died. It was a huge hit and everyone loved it, so naturally, the prospect of a sequel was incredibly tantalizing.

After spending a few dozen hours or so with the final launch version of Hades II on Nintendo Switch 2, I'm pleased to report that developer Supergiant Games hasn't lost its touch. This is every bit the sequel you wanted, with a larger scope than the original, more variety, and a whole new set of 2D illustrated Greek gods to thirst over.

However, even as I feverishly enjoyed basically every second I played of Hades II, I couldn't help but notice that I was never as enthusiastic about it as I was about the 2020 original. While Hades II might technically be better than the first in some key ways, it's hard to match the sheer novelty of a new, wholly original creation from Supergiant, one of my favorite developers.

Hades II builds on the original in smart ways SEE ALSO: Nintendo Direct September 2025 livestream: New Switch 2 games incoming

As with the first Hades, the sequel spent a good amount of time in Early Access on PC. That means most of its new tricks were gradually revealed over the course of the last year and a half or so, which certainly dampened the surprises to some degree as I played it. Still, if you haven't followed along with the pre-release build of the game, there's a lot of new stuff to chew on here.

Most of the first game's mainstays, including the protagonist Zagreus, are nowhere to be found, as the titan Chronos has somehow resurrected himself and put them all in time prison. This time, you step into the boots of Melinoë, a previously unknown daughter of Hades and Zag's little sister, as she fights through both the underworld and the surface above to save her family and restore order.

On a moment-to-moment basis, this is still Hades, through and through. You'll spend most of your time dying at some point in a randomly generated journey to defeat Chronos, but there will almost always be something new to unlock or some new dialogue to experience with one of the many excellent characters back at your home base before the next attempt to take down the titan. There's an expansive suite of new weapons, new forms for said weapons, keepsakes with passive effects, and other upgrades for Melinoë to gradually collect throughout her quest, and unlocking all of them is still just as addictive as it was last time.

I suspect people will like Nemesis. Credit: Supergiant Games/Nintendo

Melinoë also plays fairly differently from Zagreus, which is one of the better things about Hades II. She was trained in the ways of ancient Greek witchcraft, so combat is now reliant on managing a magic meter that can do a lot of different things.

By default, Melinoë can set down a binding circle that traps enemies within it for a few seconds, making her adept at crowd control in a way Zagreus wasn't until he got a few upgrades under his belt. Combat encounters are often built with this in mind, and it's just a tremendously fun thing to do to a group of unsuspecting satyrs. Naturally, boons from various gods can modify her magic spells in dozens of different ways. Adding an extra layer of meter management onto the gameplay of Hades was a smart move that definitely pays off here.

By far the biggest structural change to Hades II is that there are now two separate routes for Melinoë to take, each with its own set of levels, boss fights, and hidden areas to discover. One goes down to the house of Hades, while the other goes up to the surface world, ending at the summit of Mount Olympus. That means there's effectively twice as much game here as there was last time, and the added variety is hugely important to keeping Hades II fun for long stretches of time.

Credit: Supergiant

Several of the new zones in Hades II also have much more interesting things going on than the simple "enter room, defeat enemies, collect prize, go onto next room" routine of the first game. I'll let you discover those for yourself, but to put it simply, it makes each run feel substantially more distinct from the last.

Hades II's narrative is also something that's best seen for yourself, but if you liked the character work and writing from the first game, you'll feel right at home here. Melinoë is a great protagonist who is a little less brash and impulsive than her older brother, and her relationships with figures from Greek mythology like Hecate, Nemesis, and Eris evolve over the course of the game in compelling ways. I also still really like the unique workplace atmosphere of the world in Hades, in which existential matters of life, death, and the fabric of time itself are treated with about as much gravity as a jammed office printer.

It's a really smart way to write characters who don't have to worry about the limits of mortality the way we do.

But novelty is hard to beat The art is gorgeous all around. Credit: Supergiant Games/Nintendo

I don't really have any substantive criticisms of what Hades II is, but I want to talk a little bit about what it is not.

Every Supergiant game up to this point was wholly unique and original, with no ties to anything else. The progression from the twitchy action RPG Bastion to the melancholy tactics of Transistor and into the distinctive choose-your-own-adventure sports drama of Pyre was fun to follow as a fan of the studio from the very beginning. Every new Supergiant game promised something you hadn't really seen before, or at least a mix of familiar ingredients you hadn't seen put together in that way before.

As the studio's first direct sequel, it was always going to be next-to-impossible for Hades II to have as much inherent novelty to it as its predecessors. I wholeheartedly recommend Hades II to anyone who has even a passing interest in it, but I just can't do so with quite as much verve as I might for something that was truly new instead. I absolutely respect and appreciate that Supergiant felt compelled to make the first sequel in its portfolio, but I hope its next game is something original.

It's really a small gripe, though, in the grand scheme of things. This is still Hades, complete with a kick-ass soundtrack courtesy of composer Darren Korb and others, excellent voice acting, and a cast of characters who are sure to fill the pages of various fanfiction websites for years to come. I'm not going to complain about that.

Hades 2 will be officially released on Switch 2 on November 20. You can pre-order it now for $49.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Supergian Hades 2 $49.99 at Amazon
Pre-order Here

SAVE $100: As of Sept. 24, get the M4 Apple Mac mini for $499, down from its usual price of $599, at Amazon. That's a discount of 17%.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon M4 Apple Mac mini $499 at Amazn
$599 Save $100 Get Deal

Looking for a new desktop, but have very little space for a traditional tower? A Mac mini is the way to go. Not only is it small enough to put just about anywhere, it brings the kind of power you'd get in a much larger package, but in a smaller, more convenient form factor. And you can save big on one right now thanks to this Amazon deal.

As of Sept. 24, get the M4 Apple Mac mini for $499, down from its usual price of $599, at Amazon. That's $100 off and a discount of 17%.

SEE ALSO: Get Apple’s iconic M1 MacBook Air for under $400

The M4 Mac mini is just 5 x 5 inches overall, which Apple claims is less than half the size of its previous model, with a series of front-facing ports with two USB-C options and a headphone jack to make setup much easier than before.

The M4 chip makes it a speedy option no matter what it is you need to get done, and it's built to support Apple Intelligence from the start. That means that for less than $500, you get a small, zippy desktop option, and you can use Apple accessories you may already have (like a Magic Keyboard).

You can also use it to mirror what's on your iPhone and iPad, so if you're already in the iOS ecosystem, you can come straight to macOS and continue to use your photos, videos, and everything else that's important to you without having to transfer all your data.

If you're looking for simplicity, speed, and power in a compact size, this is an excellent option while it's still available on sale.

SAVE $1,400: The Jackery HomePower 3000 portable power station with two 200W solar panels is on sale at Amazon for $1,599, down from the normal price of $2,999. That works out to a 47% discount, which is the lowest we've seen at Amazon. Plus, today's deal includes a free renewed Jackery Explorer 550 portable power station.

Opens in a new window Credit: Jackery Jackery HomePower 3000 with two SolarSaga 200W solar panels $1,599
$2,999 Save $1,400 get a free renewed Jackery Explorer 550 Get Deal

Fall storms are coming. Try as we like to hang onto summer, eventually the autumn weather will arrive. In some parts of the country, that means wind and rainstorms. Other parts of the country will hunker down as hurricane season peaks. In either case, the power might go out. To combat that inconvenience, you might want to consider a portable power station. Thankfully, Amazon is making this an easy decision by offering an epic sale.

As of Sept. 24, the Jackery HomePower 3000 portable power station with two 200W solar panels is on sale for $1,599 at Amazon, marked down from the normal price of $2,999. That works out to a 47% discount and a savings of $1,400, which is the lowest we've seen at Amazon. Plus, today's deal includes a free renewed Jackery Explorer 500 portable power station, which has a standard list price of $250.

No one likes dealing with a power outage, but a portable power station can make life a whole lot smoother without grid power. For starters, the Jackery HomePower 3000 provides 3,072Wh of capacity. In real-world terms, that equals keeping the refrigerator cooling for a day or two, a light on for up to 10 days, a WiFi router powered on for 66 hours, or a fan for 60. Of course, you can also keep your phone charged via the USB-C ports.

SEE ALSO: The portable Jackery Explorer 1000 power station is $370 off and comes with a free solar panel

The portable power station weighs about 50 pounds, but it comes with built-in handles that make for easier transporting. When it comes time to recharge the Jackery HomePower 3000, the two SolarSaga solar panels will get it back to 80 percent capacity in about nine hours. A full charge with solar will take about 11 hours.

Today's deal also throws in a free renewed Jackery Explorer 550 portable power station. Jackery lists this coming with a typical price of $250, but it's totally free right now. The Jackery Explorer 550 is awesome for taking to the campground. The power station has three USB-A ports, one DC, and one AC. Jackery offers a six-month warranty on refurbished products.

Before major storms arrive, get prepared with the Jackery HomePower 3000 portable power station with two SolarSaga 200W solar panels. It's down to a record-low price at Amazon ahead of storm season.

SAVE 33%: As of Sept. 24, the Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) (Renewed Premium) are on sale for $139.99 at Amazon, down from a list price of $209.99. That's a discount of 33%, or a savings of $70.

Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) (Renewed Premium) $139.99 at Amazon
$209.99 Save $70 Get Deal

AirPods Pro are one of the best-sounding wireless earbuds available, but they're not exactly inexpensive. If you've been holding out for a deal, buying renewed is one of the smartest ways to save a significant amount of money without sacrificing quality.

As of Sept. 24, you can get a pair of "renewed premium" Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) for just $139.99. That's a 33% discount and $70 savings. (For comparison, a brand-new pair will set you back about $249).

SEE ALSO: The new Apple AirPods Pro 3 are already on sale — get the best-ever price at Amazon

Of course, the keyword here is "Renewed Premium." This is Amazon's guarantee that the earbuds are certified to be in "like-new" condition and have a battery that functions at over 90 percent of its original capacity. They're also backed by the same one-year satisfaction guarantee as a brand-new Apple product, so there's really nothing to lose with this deal.

You'll get all the features that brand-new AirPods Pro have: active noise cancellation, Adaptive Transparency for when you need to hear what's going on, and Personalized Spatial Audio for an immersive, 3D listening experience. The deal also includes the MagSafe Charging Case and four sizes of silicone tips for a comfortable fit.

Fall is officially here, and that means Black Friday and the holidays are right around the corner. If you're looking to get ahead on your shopping, we have you covered with a collection of the best tech deals and discounts available this week.

Are you looking for the perfect NAS operating system to run on your own hardware? There’s a number of options out there, including building your own NAS from scratch. However, you've also got several pre-built NAS-focused operating systems to choose from.

What if bringing nature back to our gray cities could help us contain urban flooding? When architect Kongjian Yu first pitched this concept, he was celebrated in the West, but ignored in his native China. Until a devastating flood in 2012 hit Beijing and forced policymakers to give his green idea a chance. Today, the so-called sponge cities have revolutionised landscape architecture in China and serve as inspiration to some Western architects. In this video, we explore the genesis of Kongjian Yu's sponge cities, some of the architects applying this model on a global scale, and how efficient sponge cities are in the face of climate change.

Wicked absolutely dominated 2024. Not only was it a box office smash, it also picked up 10 Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Achievement in Production Design and Best Achievement in Costume Design.

SEE ALSO: 2025 fall movie preview: Every upcoming film you ought to know about

Now, director Jon M. Chu and Oscar-nominated leading ladies Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande look to defy gravity once again in Wicked: For Good, based on the second act of the beloved Broadway musical. The film's trailer is downright spectacular, but be warned: It also gives away some major twists from the musical and Gregory Maguire's original novel. View with caution if you don't want any spoilers.

Wicked: For Good picks up in the wake of Elphaba's (Erivo) showdown with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). Now wanted for her "wickedness," she fights back against her foes from the shadows.

Meanwhile, Glinda (Grande), embracing her role as "Glinda the Good," has become the mouthpiece for the Wizard and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). But as the trailer shows, Glinda hasn't abandoned Elphaba. In fact, Glinda hopes to protect Elphaba from the Wizard's quite literal witch hunt. Can this spellbinding pairing find a happy ending for themselves, and for the land of Oz?

On top of focusing on the tight bond between Elphaba and Glinda, Wicked: For Good's latest trailer also highlights some of the songs that will be featured in the movie. The trailer kicks off with Grande's rendition of "Thank Goodness" before switching to Erivo's take on "No Good Deed." Finally, it closes out with the pair joining forces on "For Good," which is guaranteed to give Wicked fans chills. Check out the full trailer above to become as "obsessulated" with the film as Glinda is with her bubble.

Wicked: For Good also stars Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, and Marissa Bode.

Wicked: For Good hits theaters Nov. 21.

Widgets give you a quick look at important information, let you control apps easily, and generally make your Android home screen a much better place. Unfortunately, the reality of Android widgets doesn't always live up to that promise.

Netflix's Emmy-winning Stranger Things comes to a close this year, and in a new featurette, the show's cast and crew take a look back on the beloved series and tease what's to come from Season 5.

SEE ALSO: 'Stranger Things 5' teaser: We're in for a traumatic final season, aren't we?

The featurette kicks off with nostalgic remembrances of shooting the first season, from David Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper, reminiscing on reading the pilot to the child actors discussing building their bond on set. But what's really going to intrigue fans are the featurette's sneak peeks of Stranger Things' fifth and final season.

This season, which creators the Duffer Brothers call "the biggest season we've ever had," picks up in the fall of 1987, over a year after the end of Season 4. Hawkins is scarred by the rifts to the Upside Down that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) opened up, and the government has placed the town under military quarantine. They're also still searching for Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), forcing her into hiding as she and her friends prepare for their final battle against Vecna.

The Stranger Things 5 featurette hints at the epic scale of this battle, with footage of explosions, car chases, and roiling red Upside Down energy bearing down on the show's heroes.

"[Season 5] is more of an adventure and more of a mission, which I really like," Brown says in the featurette. "Everybody is really put into the thick of it. No one is sitting back on a walkie talkie."

To get a glimpse of the adventure that awaits in Stranger Things 5, check out the full featurette above. And brace yourself: We have a feeling not every beloved character is going to make it out of this one alive.

Volume 1 of Stranger Things 5 hits Netflix Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. ET. Volume 2 premieres Dec. 26, and the series finale premieres Dec. 31.

TL;DR: India vs. Bangladesh in the 2025 Asia Cup is available to live stream for free on Tamasha. Access this free streaming service from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

The 2025 Asia Cup has been absolutely electric from the first over, and we've still got a few fascinating matchups to come. India vs. Bangladesh is one such game, with both teams starting the Super Four stage of the competition with a win. With places in the final up for grabs, which talented team will come out on top? You can follow all the action without spending anything.

If you want to watch India vs. Bangladesh in the 2025 Asia Cup for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

When is India vs. Bangladesh?

India vs. Bangladesh in the 2025 Asia Cup starts at 10:30 a.m. ET on Sept. 24. This game takes place at the Dubai International Stadium.

How to watch India vs. Bangladesh for free

India vs. Bangladesh in the 2025 Asia Cup is available to live stream for free on Tamasha.

Tamasha is geo-restricted to Pakistan, but anyone can access this free streaming platform with a VPN. These handy tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in Pakistan, meaning you can unblock Tamasha from anywhere in the world.

Live stream India vs. Bangladesh in the 2025 Asia Cup for free by following these simple steps:

1. Subscribe to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in Pakistan

4. Visit Tamasha

5. Live stream India vs. Bangladesh for free from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Month Plan) $12.95 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee) Get Deal

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but most do offer free trials or money-back guarantees. By taking advantage of these offers, you can watch the 2025 Asia Cup without actually spending anything. This obviously isn't a long-term solution, but it does give you plenty of time to watch the tournament for free.

If you want to retain permanent access to free streaming services from around the world, you'll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for live streaming is on sale for a limited time.

What is the best VPN for Tamasha?

ExpressVPN is the top choice for live streaming on free sites like Tamasha, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries including Pakistan

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure

• Fast connection speeds free from throttling

• Up to eight simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $139 and includes an extra four months for free — 61% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.95 (with money-back guarantee).

Live stream the 2025 Asia Cup for free with ExpressVPN.

Apple's iPhone 17 Pro series marked the company's return to aluminum unibody builds on their phones after around 8 years of continuous glass sandwiches. But it's also a controversial one—it's scratching a little too easily. Thanks to iFixit, we might know the possible reason behind this.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may be new to the scene and still waiting for its first must-play exclusive RPG — but that wait might soon be over. That's because Pokémon Legends: Z-A launches on Oct. 16.

Yes, the game is technically coming to both the Switch 2 and its predecessor. But based on the hour I spent with it at a recent preview event, this could be the step forward the series has desperately needed. Longtime Pokémon developer Game Freak has made some admirable leaps in recent years, such as the open world-ification of Scarlet and Violet, but one thing remained stubbornly stuck in 1996: the combat.

The demo I played of Legends: Z-A included more than just combat, of course, but what stood out most were the changes to how fights work. As someone who has been begging for Game Freak to pick up the pace for years, the changes made to Legends: Z-A are exciting. Let's dig in.

SEE ALSO: 'Pokémon Legends: Z-A' preorder and Mega Evolution guide Pokémon Legends: Z-A hands-on preview: A seismic shake-up

There are plenty of things that distinguish Pokémon Legends: Z-A from other games in the immensely popular franchise. This is a spin-off, not the next big generational jump, which is likely coming next year. That gives Game Freak room to experiment — and based on my brief time with it so far, that seems to have paid off.

Like its predecessor, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, this is an open-world game where wild Pokémon not only attack your Pokémon, but they can also attack you. If you're not careful, they'll take you out, prompting a respawn at a previous checkpoint. Sneaking around and finding the right time to advantageously sic your Pokémon on wild ones is a big part of the game, but that's not necessarily new here.

What is new is how fights work. Combat in Arceus was still a take on the classic turn-based fights that go all the way back to the Game Boy. In Z-A, battles play out in real-time. If you just sit there and do nothing, you will lose because the opponent will just unleash all of its moves on you while you wait. Rather than choosing moves from a menu, you instead map four moves to the face buttons, and they operate on cooldowns, so you can use them as often as they're available.

Don't do it... Credit: Nintendo

This is a fundamental shift that has immediate effects on how you play the game compared to previous Pokémon titles. For instance, moves like Protect or Double Team that offer defensive or statistical benefits without doing any damage are now significantly more useful than they would be in a system where using one takes up an entire turn. Protect is especially interesting, as it essentially acts as a timed guard move; there were multiple fights where my opponent would use it right as I unleashed a powerful move, negating my attack entirely. That felt bad, sure, but it also lit up my eyes with the realization that I could pull that kind of BS on my enemies, too.

Positioning also becomes paramount in this new system. If you don't give it any commands, your Pokémon will follow you around during fights, and this is actually super important for dodging enemy attacks. Many moves now have areas of effect, with Flame Wheel bursting ahead in a straight line and Whirlpool leaving behind a destructive circle wherever you used it.

Ah, crap. Credit: Nintendo

It's a manifestly altered experience from something like Scarlet and Violet. Battles here play out incredibly quickly, so much so that it can be hard to keep track of everything that's going on, but I suspect that's part of the fun. There's a rolling log of combat updates on the right side of the UI (older games would make you manually button through an unskippable text box every time anyone did anything) that's genuinely kind of hard to follow, but in a cool way. As someone who has been yearning for a sped-up Pokémon experience for a long, long time, I got what I wanted here.

Probably the coolest example I can give of all these systems working together in harmony was in a boss fight against Mega Victreebel, a new, gigantic, and grotesque take on one of the original 151 Pokémon. During this fight, Victreebel would occasionally leave out circular pools of poison that I'd have to navigate around to avoid damage. One of the more fascinating bits of tactical nuance in this game is that, in situations like that, it actually pays off to withdraw your active Pokémon for a few seconds so they don't get hurt. That fight also gave me the ability to Mega Evolve a few of my guys, and while the mega meter steadily decreases during Mega Evolution, you can actually stall that by defensively pulling your Pokémon back into its ball and living to fight another day.

Sprinting and dodging while also juggling classic Pokémon mechanics like type advantages and stat boosts is a lot to process, and I only just started to get a handle on it by the end of my demo. We'll see how the combat meshes with everything else going on in Legends: Z-A when the game launches on Oct. 16, but for now, all I can do is applaud Game Freak for doing something truly new, even if it'll make some players uncomfortable.

Stephen King adaptations have always been popular, but it seems that, as of late, we’re seeing more of them grace our screens, and I'm totally cool with that. By the end of 2025, we’ll have seen four films and two shows based on the legendary horror master’s musings—one of those being the highly anticipated IT prequel series, coming soon to HBO Max.

I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people out there who have never installed or used the companion app that goes with their Bluetooth headphones. After all, you don't strictly need to use the app to use the headphones.

Seth Meyers' "Day Drinking" segment never fails to disappoint, but his latest episode with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers feels like it takes things to a whole new level.

In the 17-minute clip above, Meyers joins the Las Culturistas co-hosts for a variety of drinking-themed games, from testing how well they know each other to acting tearfully on cue.

The key takeaways? Matt Rogers has one hell of a singing voice, and Meyers can really rock a glittery vest.

It takes a surprising amount of calculation to become a goofy guy. 

You have to do stand-up for thirteen years, even if the response is lukewarm. You have to study acting, music, comedy, and theater. You need a measured belief in the mystical — manifestation plus hard work. You have to go viral and post on social media every other day. You have to be a student of the internet and play into the algorithm with tactical precision. You must tour frequently, do yoga, and eat low-acidity fruits and vegetables.

To be a goofy guy, you also have to be an incredibly dedicated person.

At least, that’s the truth for 38-year-old comedian and content creator Morgan Jay, who coined the term "goofy guy" to capture his mix of lighthearted crowdwork, musical performance, and playful irreverence. Clips from his live show, where he sings and interacts with his audience using a microphone and autotune, have helped him reach 5 million Instagram followers and 7.5 million TikTok followers. 

In one clip, he talks to a guy named Ethan and asks the crowd, "Do we fuckin’ love Ethan?" That clip received 140 million views. In another, more recent clip, he asks a couple who had never met before if they would "make love tonight." Nearly three million people have watched it on TikTok, and another 204 million have watched it on Instagram Reels. 

This isn’t a case of getting lucky. It’s success with intention.

Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay

Featured Video For You Morgan Jay knows exactly what he’s doing

To be clear, Jay isn't the only comedian who takes show preparation seriously — most comedians do. He follows a long line of comedians like Aziz Ansari (he records each of his performances, listens or watches them, takes notes, and makes changes immediately between sets), Todd Barry (he likes to go on stage hungry), and Jerrod Carmichael (he listens to jazz, to enjoy the "freedom within structure" also mirrored in standup comedy). But Jay has also done something unique: figured out not only how to make his comedy work online but also how to make a live show genuinely fun to watch on TikTok — so fun that people want to show up in person, too.

"Every song I write has a structure built into it to do crowd work," he tells Mashable. After every show, he has a meeting with his team to talk about what worked, what didn’t, and of course, which "moments we can clip." He takes notes, hands off the footage to an editor, who cuts it down and sends it back. Together, they decide what to post.

He tells me this over a video call from his house in LA, where art dots the walls around him — four of his guitars; one-line drawings turned to sculptures; works of pinks and oranges and blues. The ceilings are tall, and natural light floods the space when he opens the curtains to his left. 

"I'm a firm believer, and I know this may seem like woo-woo or whatever, but I am a firm believer [that] if you make space for better things the universe will provide," Jay says. "Obviously, you need to meet the universe halfway… I was doing all the work, and I had a lot of experience. A lot of things just kind of came together at the right time, and it worked out."

He's wearing a Khruangbin band tee — the rock trio nominated for Best New Artist at the 2024 Grammys — and a silver chain. He isn't fidgeting, which is no small feat for a musician being asked to sit through a multi-hour interview on his computer, but Jay is, after all, an actor who trained at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. When he thinks, he leans his head on his hand. And Jay thinks a lot.

Say hello to the Mashable 101: the creators keeping the internet interesting. From meme-makers to movement-starters, these are the people powering our timelines today. Dive into the full list and find your next favorite follow.

Rewind a few years and you'd find him giving bike tours in New York City or interning on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He appeared on NBC’s Bring the Funny, a show he (and many others) thought would be his big break — "but it didn't go anywhere." He spent a decade doing stand-up. 

"I had a lot of almosts and maybes," he says. "I almost got booked to be one of those talking heads on those shows like, I Love the ‘90s. I was almost a recurring character on [The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon]. I had all these almosts, dude. I just felt, for a long time, I felt passed up."

Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay

In 2017, he quit his job at the Apple Store ("the truth is they were going to fire me") to pursue comedy full-time, and he was doing just fine. But in October 2019, when he started posting on TikTok, he met virality.

"I had a friend who worked at TikTok, and he was like, 'Hey, you should post to this app.' And I was like, 'Bro, I don't want to,'" Jay says. That's a pretty relatable instinct — artists like Halsey, FKA twigs, and Charli XCX have all complained about the pressure to post on the app, and even smaller artists have talked about the creative drain that social media poses. But it wasn't the creative drain Jay was avoiding; he was already posting on Instagram, and the idea of adding another site to the list of platforms he had to post on sounded unappealing. "I don't wanna be posting. It's so many posts to post, dude. I don't wanna do it."

Eventually, his friend convinced him. His first post that went viral was a video of him at a Wendy's singing about chicken nuggets. 

"It got 300,000 views, and I got 17,000 followers overnight," he says, admitting his shock at the time. He had just finished editing a comedy special, but once the pandemic hit, “nobody wanted to see it, nobody cared.” So he clipped it, subtitled it, and started posting regularly. He had a backlog of material and quickly got into the habit of posting every other day. And it worked.

Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay

From an outside perspective, TikTok changed his life. For years, he chased traditional industry validation — late-night spots, festival showcases, TV gigs. “I wanted that for so long,” he says. “And it wasn’t until I blew up on social media that I started getting those accolades and that recognition.”

Now, he sells tickets worldwide. He recently appeared on Apple TV+’s Stick and landed roles in NBC’s St. Denis Medical and J. Pinder’s action-comedy Cotton Candy Bubble Gum, which premiered at SXSW. Next up: a rom-com opposite Chloë Grace Moretz and Anthony Ramos called Love Language, directed by Joey Power.

He is constantly thinking about how to evolve — how to keep his audience engaged and momentum going. He allows phones at his shows, he posts on social media with algorithmic precision, and he responds to comments with a strategy. "When you respond to a comment, respond with a question, because then they'll answer the question and that creates more conversation,” he says. “If somebody leaves a negative comment or judgment, or criticism, leave it up. Don't take it down. Let your fans fight it out for you, because that just creates more engagement."

Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay

But in the end, he's not relying on social media — he says his mailing list is far more important to him than his Instagram or TikTok accounts — he's just using it as a tool. Jay's career isn't a sprint, but a marathon, and one he's already winning.

"When I was selling, like, 200 tickets, I was very content; I was very happy. And I was like, 'If this is the rest of my career where I make X amount of dollars, I sell X amount of tickets, I tour, then great.’ This is more than I could have really hoped for. It's such a blessing to even get to this part," he says. He just announced his biggest venue yet — one that seats "about 6,000 people" — because he thought, "Sure, yeah, let's try it out. Let's see what happens."

Morgan Jay Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Morgan Jay

Beyond touring, Jay is working on an original series with A24 and Cut To, a project he’s writing, starring in, and producing.

"I'm just going to try to collect another Infinity Stone and see if I can make something that has value and that people enjoy," he says. "And if they don't, that's OK. If you can do one thing really well, people will trust you to do other things really well. It shows that you have a certain level of discipline, a certain level of ambition. I'm just going to trust myself and trust the people around me and come up with something worthwhile." 

"Dude, at this point in my career, I consider everything else just like a bonus, an extra thing."

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Tineke "Tini" Younger is someone my grandmother would call a spitfire. She knows what she wants, yes, but she also has the confidence to fully turn away from what disinterests her. She's hardworking. She's curious. And, as she sits across from me on camera from her house in Augusta, Georgia, she's craving something sweet — a consequence of her pregnancy.

"I noticed I want to eat more sweet stuff than savory. I just sat down and ate half a birthday sheet cake in one sitting," she told Mashable.

The 24-year-old chef and content creator is wearing an off-the-shoulder gray top, her hair pulled back, and a heart necklace — a birthday gift from her husband. It matches a ring she can't currently wear due to her hands swelling from being pregnant with twins, but you might be more familiar with her standing in her kitchen, clad in an apron. She started posting videos on TikTok of herself cooking for her then-boyfriend in 2021. The boyfriend is now her husband, and in the five years since the series began, she's appeared on the second season of Next Level Chef, hosted a YouTube show on Gordon Ramsay's Bite Originals channel, and published her cookbook, aptly titled Cooking for my Boyfriend.

Featured Video For You How Tini Younger perfected her viral mac 'n cheese and found a culinary career The mac 'n cheese that divided the internet

Her viral breakthrough, however, came in the form of a polarizing three-minute TikTok in which she shared her mac 'n cheese recipe. The video, which she continuously updates, has amassed over 101 million views and 9.6 million likes and led to coverage in Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Today Show, and more.

In the video, she uses Cavatappi pasta, a spiral-shaped pasta that catches the cheese in its curves — a choice that led to a nearly 50 percent spike in Cavatappi sales in comparison to the year before Younger's video, according to Nielsen data reported by Forbes. The comments on the TikTok are overwhelmingly positive: "In Tini we trust 🫡" and “Girl yessss!! 🤌🏼🔥🫶🏼.”

"That recipe took me four years to perfect," Younger said. "If you go on my TikTok, and if you go all the way down to like 2021 and 2022, I'm making different variations of that mac 'n cheese. I'm experimenting and [asking my then-boyfriend] Antoine, 'Is this the best mac 'n cheese you've ever had?' And he's like, 'not yet.'"

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She worked on the recipe until she got "Antoine's approval" as the best mac 'n cheese he'd ever had — creamy, cheesy, not too powerful, not too seasoned. She said having Antoine as her taste-tester is key. "I can't get better if I don't get honest feedback."

But the viral mac 'n cheese wasn’t without its controversy. Some users called the recipe overhyped, and others said Tini — a white woman — was appropriating Black American culture with the dish.

To be clear, macaroni and cheese has deep roots in Black American cuisine. James Hemings, a formerly enslaved man who became America’s first French-trained chef, is largely credited with introducing mac ‘n cheese to the U.S. in the late 18th century, according to The Guardian. However, it's difficult to pin down. Monticello, where Hemings cooked as an enslaved person, argues that "pasta specifically baked with cheese had already become a popular dish in France" before Hemings penned the recipe on Monticello's menu. He reportedly made the dish with a roux, The Guardian reported, which is the same technique Younger uses today.

Ultimately, Younger says she isn’t taking credit for creating mac 'n cheese — she’s just sharing her version of it. Even now, her instinct is to say, "Either make the mac 'n cheese or don't."

Though the one thing that did upset her was people saying the only reason she uses spices in her cooking is because of Antoine, who is Black.

"When I first started TikTok [in 2021], people were giving [Antoine] all the credit for the cooking," she said, "They were like, 'He taught her how to cook.' I'm like, 'No, this man wasn't even using salt and pepper on his chicken before he met me.' He'll tell you that. So I just kind of had to prove myself to people."

When culinary school changed everything

Proving herself was nothing new for Younger. She grew up in Maryland with a mom who baked occasionally, a dad who liked to "cook" — she used air quotes for that — and a grandmother who rarely stepped foot in the kitchen. Her siblings weren't particularly interested in cooking, and neither parent was particularly skilled in it. She didn't take an interest in cooking until it was a way to get out of class. 

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Younger said she struggled in school due to a learning disability, and as a result, became what she calls “disruptive.” In middle school, she hid behind the gym to avoid class. In high school, she set off stink bombs — sometimes to cheat on a test, sometimes just to watch people react to the scent of sulfur in the narrow hallways. 

Then, in her junior year, everything shifted. Through a program at her public high school, she enrolled in a local trade center for teens. One of the options: culinary school. She signed up mostly to avoid academics and ended up discovering her passion. 

"[My learning disability] took me a little bit to figure out. You're not dumb — it's just a different way of learning. I can soak up information, just when it comes to food," she said.

There was one problem: Her GPA wasn’t high enough. The culinary program required a 2.0, and Younger didn’t have it. But the chef in charge of admissions called her anyway and encouraged her to apply.

Although she started the program "just to get out of class," she discovered almost immediately that it was something she enjoyed and wanted to get better at. "Everything flipped," she said. She went from earning D and C grades to earning As and Bs. She stopped picking fights with people. She felt freedom and excitement, and she "loved every second of it."

Cooking for the cameras

Fast-forward a few years, Younger was preparing to enter a Disney culinary program when another opportunity came up: Next Level Chef, the Gordon Ramsay reality competition show. Two weeks before she was due to leave, she was offered a spot on the show. She made a deal with herself: If she placed in the top 10, she’d keep pursuing food content full-time because she thought she could make a consistent paycheck from it. If not, she’d go to Disney. She finished eighth.

Once again, Younger's life changed. She got an agent. She met some of her best friends. She had a YouTube show on Gordon Ramsay's Bite Originals channel. And she learned something important. "Every time someone talks about [Gordon Ramsay], I'm like, 'Well, first, he smells really good,'" she said. (For the record: it's Creed cologne.)

Now, she's prepping for another Thanksgiving season — this time, with two babies on the way. She doesn’t have any major pregnancy cravings yet, and while she hasn’t picked out specific recipes for her future kids, she’s got one request: “They better not be picky eaters. There’s no way. They’re going to be eating Wagyu ground beef.”

In just a decade, Younger has gone from stink bomb connoisseur to mac 'n cheese aficionado. She’s met her idols, published a cookbook, married her boyfriend and favorite food tester, became a better and more well-trained chef, and found success doing what she loves — all while proving to the world, and to herself, that she knows exactly what she’s doing.

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Arun Maini, aka Mrwhosetheboss, says he was a shy, lanky, acne-prone 14-year-old when he uploaded his first video to YouTube. His big brother had just bought him his first phone, and he was geeking out. That first vlog, a shaky, sometimes out-of-focus overview of a long-since-forgotten phone, surprised him (and his skeptical classmates) by garnering tens of thousands of views in short order. It also showed Maini what was possible on YouTube. 

To take you back in time to 2011, the most-watched YouTube videos of the era were "Friday" by Rebecca Black, Yosemitebear Mountain Double Rainbow (all the way!), Annoying Orange Wazzup!?!?!?!, and The Old Spice Man.

Maini, now 29, is one of the most successful tech YouTubers in the world. Since he posted that first video, he’s created one of the most-followed technology YouTube channels on the platform. Along the way, the Brit picked up a Guinness World Record, achieving yet another childhood dream.

Today, he has 21.6 million subscribers on YouTube, with 7.6 billion views across 1,800 videos. That’s an incredible hit rate for a YouTuber — the equivalent of 4.2 million views per video. He also has 2.5 million followers on TikTok, 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and 1.7 million on X.

Maini spoke to me this September from his home in London. Shortly after our virtual interview, Maini flew to Cupertino, California, for the Apple Event 2025. He's already given his viewers a first-hand look at the all-new iPhone Air, a video that’s racked up 16,000 comments in just six days, as of this writing.

Watching Maini's videos is like watching a charming, slightly nerdy friend show you all the cool new stuff they just bought and can’t stop talking about. His videos are always informative but never feel like homework, even when he’s breaking down complicated specifications or the cameras inside the new Pixel 10 Pro smartphone.

These days, countless 14-year-olds dream of becoming successful YouTubers. Maini’s path provides a clear road map for other aspiring creators. His success didn’t come overnight from a viral video but after years of careful, disciplined work to grow his channel, one video at a time.

Talking to Maini, it’s easy to see why he’s made it. While we chatted, he often paused to think more deeply before answering a question, and emphasized again and again the value of trial and error. Success, he explained, comes from paying close attention to what works and what doesn't.

"If someone asked me, 'What's the secret sauce?' It's literally: make a video. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad. Pay attention to the comments. Implement them. If they're mean, then just take the nuggets and then implement those. Do that 500 times and you're a good YouTuber."

And just think: Maini almost became a consultant.

Featured Video For You How YouTuber Arun Maini went from being a shy kid with a camcorder to 21 million subscribers How did Maini become a world-famous YouTuber? One video at a time.

If Maini hadn’t become a YouTuber, it’s easy to imagine him becoming a successful entrepreneur instead. He started his first online business at just 13.

"YouTube wasn't actually the first business I had," Maini said. "I ran an eBay business before that, when I was 12 to 13. So I was basically selling Beyblades, the kids' toys. But it was such a good exercise for me. I bought about 20 of them from China…that allowed me to get them at about $3 a unit. And then I was selling them for about $5, and then when I did that, I used that money to buy 30, and then I got a slightly better price. And then, you know, I did that again and again. I remember my biggest shipment coming in was, like, 400, and so it was a fairly substantially sized business for, you know, a 13-year-old.”

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A stolen phone put an end to Maini’s growing Beyblade empire. After accidentally buying and then re-selling a stolen phone, eBay banned Maini’s account.

After that, his focus shifted to YouTube, where Maini took a disciplined approach to building his channel. However, it took years of repetition before he finally achieved his first viral video. By then, he was in university and still doggedly uploading vlogs.

“My first viral video ever was ‘How to turn your smartphone into a 3D hologram.’ And I remember making this video and putting it live while I was at a party, and I thought absolutely nothing of it. I was making a video every few days at this point, but this video, I was a little bit drunk in the evening, [and] I remember checking my phone thinking, 'This is a little bit more views than I expected.'”

The next day, Maini woke up, looked at his phone, and realized he had too many notifications to count. It’s the type of "I’ve arrived" moment that’s become a rite of passage for serious YouTubers. "I was obsessed with YouTube at this point, like I was so obsessed with growing this channel that I had charts across my wall, and every day I was checking in on my progress. So, to suddenly see one video perform better than the 100 videos before all put together — my body wasn't ready for it. You know what I mean? I was like, squealing. I was like, running down the stairs. I called my mom. I was like, I've got an email from BBC News! They want to talk to me."

"It was probably one of the top five moments of my life, for sure," Maini said. 

Still, even with a viral video under his belt, Maini was on a conventional track: graduate with an economics degree and get a consulting job. 

"My entire life up until about the age of 21 was gearing me towards a career in consulting," Maini said. "I feel like, you know, the vast majority of people are kind of being carried [along], and I certainly was in that position. You pick subjects that you're good at, then you pick a degree that lines up with those subjects, and you drift, don't you?"

As Maini drifted, his YouTube channel was still growing. He says the turning point came when he landed an internship at the consulting firm Price Waterhouse.

"I hated it," Maini said. "I was sitting in meetings, and I was just doodling ideas for videos for when I got home. And when I looked at the two options on paper, it didn't really make sense to do YouTube, but it was one of those things where one route excites me, one route doesn't. I don't want to regret for the rest of my life not trying."

By then, Maini was no longer the shy and awkward teenager who posted that first vlog. YouTube had transformed him, and not just professionally. While the comments section under a video can be a notoriously toxic place to look for affirmation, Maini said he mined his comments to fine-tune every aspect of his videos. In the process, he found the confidence and charisma of a YouTube star.

"While viral videos don't make you a YouTuber, they can show you what's possible, and that probably changed my and my family's attitude towards what I was doing.” Crucially, Maini was also making enough money to justify the transition. "At the start, there was a lot more confusion. You know, around when I was doing my A levels, which are kind of your end-of-school exams, I remember the day before a very major one, I was filming an earphone review in my back garden, and my mom opens the door, like, ‘Arun, do you want to revise?' 'I'm doing it later, mom!'"

So, while he eventually did quit his day job, Maini’s advice to aspiring creators is straightforward: "Don’t quit your day job."

"It's very easy to want to be a YouTuber, right? When you look at it on paper, it makes too much sense, right? You do what you want. You talk about it for fun. You go travel the world. You get treated like a VIP. Who doesn't want those stat points? In reality, it's very, very unlikely, [and] you kind of just have to convince yourself you're going to become the one percent who gets to do that."

Instead, he recommends starting small and starting now.

"Make [YouTube] Shorts in your spare time, and you'll realize very quickly, either this isn't for you, it's too time-consuming, you hate editing, you hate being on camera, or you've got something here and you love the feedback cycle, and you can get better very quickly," he said.

Maini isn't a kid with a camcorder anymore

If Mrwhosetheboss sounds like a YouTube username chosen by an awkward teenage boy, that’s because it is. I asked Maini if, after all his success, he has any regrets about the username he chose 15 years ago.

He said there came a time in his early career when he asked himself this question a lot. At the time, he was being invited to speak at important tech events, and he worried people might not take a Mrwhosetheboss seriously.

“There's actually something very personable about the imperfection of it. You know, the same reason why we don't hire a massive garage and turn it into a studio. We just film videos in our house. And it's actually a big part of why people were drawn to our channel. Until we hit about 20 million subscribers, everything was shot in an attic, and that attic was my bedroom. So, yeah, there was a phase where I was questioning it and overthinking it, but would I change anything now? No."

Maini’s videos have moved far beyond the attic, in fact. His recent videos include a vlog where he gives his brother his dream car (the same brother who bought him the phone featured in his very first video — just one of the full-circle moments in Maini's life lately). In another, he spent $10,000 to buy random gadgets from Kickstarter. I asked Maini if this is the MrBeast effect, but he attributed this evolution to the nature of YouTube and the pressure to make each video bigger than the last.

"We got a Guinness World Record recently for helping to build the world's largest iPhone. And I remember that feeling really full circle for me, because as a kid, every other day, I would go to the library, and I would just pull out Guinness World Record books. Kid me would never think that one day you'll be in those books."

Maini shared that record with fellow YouTuber Matthew Perks, and that ridiculously oversized iPhone is in his basement, taking up a lot of space, as we chat. And it will probably continue to take up space for years to come. Turns out, besides winning Guinness World Records that take your YouTube career to new heights, giant phones aren’t particularly useful.

As a hugely successful YouTuber, Maini has a unique approach to separating his personal and professional life — he doesn’t. Not only do his family members sometimes make appearances in his videos, but his wife is also his YouTube channel’s general manager. Their sunny London home doubles as HQ, where a full-time team of 12 helps run the operation.

A lot has changed since Maini uploaded that first video to YouTube, but you can see glimmers of the creator he'd become in that teenage vlog. Because 15 years later, he’s still geeking out over phones on the internet — just with a few million more people watching.

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Walking with Estefanía "Tefi" Pessoa feels a lot like being a kite tugged expertly through the air. I know I'm safe, tethered to the ground in some way, but it still feels like she is leading me, alongside whatever other flurries of nature aid her. Other people pass by us in a blur, glancing up to see what she's laughing at or where she's headed. It could be by virtue of the heels she's wearing — her stride is remarkably long for 5'7" — or her ability to project her voice with the ideal decibel, but Pessoa is a force.

When a fan pulled out an AirPod and said, "I love your stuff," to her as we passed by, her legs kept moving at breakneck speed, but her torso twisted mid-stride, leaping toward the fan to thank them. It seemed important to her to not only give me all of her attention, but also do the same for the fan, who was already walking away before they finished their compliment.

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

Featured Video For You Tefi Pessoa wants to do it all — and somehow does

It's that kind of desire to be in two places at once that's so transparent with Pessoa. She has an advice column for The Cut aptly called Ask Tefi and a pop culture podcast, Tefi Talks, for Vox Media. She's been working on a book of essays for years. ("I am on chapter two," she laughs. "I'm moving at a glacial pace, but don't worry, every week I get a text from my literary agent, and I look at my assistant and I'm like, 'When can I do it?' They're like, 'Between 1:00 and 3:00 on Thursday.'") 

She posts anywhere from one to six videos on TikTok a day, ranging from fit checks (usually to Yo Gotti's “Down In the DM”) to pop culture explainers. She somehow finds the time to watch Rush Hour 2, love both Cardi B and Nicki Minaj in equal measure, and interview celebrities on red carpets. 

Pessoa seems to want to do it all and do it all well. Her intense creative drive and curiosity have helped her build a community of nearly two million followers on TikTok.

It might seem like Pessoa is always performing, and, in a way, she is. As we walked down Park Ave in Manhattan, we talk about the performance of womanhood, and she repeats the quote often attributed to Simone de Beauvoir: "To be a woman is to perform." It’s perhaps a paraphrase of Beauvoir’s well-known theory, "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," or maybe of Judith Butler's theory that gender is performative. Either way, the philosophers certainly didn't have TikTok in mind when they coined their concepts, but it still stands true.

Pessoa doesn't livestream, but she will make videos while she's eating cereal, videos with her hair in a towel and a mask on her face, and videos lying in bed. When I ask her when she feels like she isn't performing, she lets out a groan so guttural, it's hard to translate to text. But then she thinks about it and tells me it's when she's at her Thanksgiving table with her family, just after the meal, unbuttoning her pants.

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

If you follow Pessoa online, you know she's close with her mom, sister, and brother. She grew up the oldest of three in Miami, where her family still lives.

"They are probably the most fun siblings ever. Everything was silly goose time. Everything was make-believe time. A lot of play," she says. But, at the same time, they were also "big movie people, big TV people." That early immersion in pop culture helped turn Pessoa into the encyclopedia of 2000s nostalgia she is today. Name a movie, a TV show, a pop star, and Pessoa can tell you their star sign and their lore. 

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It’s one of those magnificent days in New York City — a high of 78 degrees and a low of 63 — when summer is beginning to fizzle out and fall is rising up for its turn, when Pessoa and I take a walk through the Union Square Greenmarket, along with approximately one million other people. She's wearing a blue sweater, a blazer, and jeans, and her hair looks effortlessly wavy (she tells me she had it done that morning while she got in a fight with her mom, who is visiting, over baby bangs and bleached eyebrows.) 

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

As we step onto the cobblestones and take in the tents of food, groceries, and flowers, we both gasp so loud that multiple people turn around to stare. She grips my arm with her hand full of multi-colored rings. In front of us are half a dozen heads of sunflowers for sale, dried out and ready to be harvested for their seeds. We rush toward them.

She turns to someone next to her and says, "Have you seen that?!" before realizing it's a stranger and their child and not, as she expected, her assistant. She quickly apologizes and tips her head back in a full-bodied laugh just as her assistant catches up to us. 

"What is that?" her Gen Z assistant asks. 

"That's how sunflower seeds are made," Pessoa says and, after a beat of silence, asks: "How did you think they were made?"

"I never thought about it," her assistant says.

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

"This is why I moved from Miami to New York," Pessoa jokes, turning her attention back to me. "Because New York opens your horizons." Her assistant laughs, too, and we keep walking through the market, stopping to investigate a small basket of very small strawberries ("Tiny, tiny, tiny," Pessoa squeaks) and bouquets of beautifully arranged flowers ("Farmer's markets are where dreams are made," she says).

This, if you can believe it, is pretty much exactly what Pessoa does online for her millions of followers. She finds something long-forgotten or buried in the churn of social media gossip and explains it in a way that feels like she’s learning alongside you, not lecturing. Pessoa talks about the early aughts and its influence on culture today with the same enthusiasm and excitement that she has explaining to her assistant how sunflower seeds are harvested.

Like how she tells me that iconic photo of Nicole Kidman walking with her arms outstretched — the one long believed to capture her pure, post-divorce relief — is actually just a still from a movie. The news devastates me. She immediately apologizes for being the messenger and pulls me in for a hug. 

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

She taught the entire internet about the dissolution of Fleetwood Mac, brought them through a multi-part series of Amy Winehouse's life that rivals the actual documentary, and, of course, talks about Britney Spears (Pessoa is a "die-hard" fan) as much as she can without pushing the pop star’s own boundaries. She's been telling stories, one way or another, since at least 2019, when she hosted a YouTube talk show that was later dissolved because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, she also co-hosted Prime Video’s Influenced, a talk show hosted by a panel of content creators including Pessoa, Achieng Agutu, Eyal Booker, Taryn Delanie Smith, and Cyrus Veyssi,  and interviewed everyone from Jeff Goldblum at the Met Gala to Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet at the Dune premiere.

When I spoke to one of Pessoa's friends, fellow creator Eric Sedeño, for a story in 2023, Pessoa told me he was "someone who is exactly who he is online," and said she was "not surprised so many people have gravitated toward him because he really is the kind of friend you pray for as a kid. And he kills it in a wig, bitch." When I asked her what she thought Sedeño would say about her for this article, she giggled and said, "She is so busy." When I did reach out to Sedeño, he chose to instead comment on her "palpable" energy and spirit that makes everyone "feel seen."

"I still remember the first time I met her," he told Mashable over email. "She walked in with her huge heels, long hair, and big Latina laugh and took over the entire room (in the best way). She was just such a star and still spent so much time getting to know me. She makes everyone feel like they’re part of her family, and that’s why everyone loves her."

As for the wig? Sedeño loves cosplaying her ("He could easily take my identity — easily," Pessoa laughs) because, as he put it, "I get to be the friendliest diva on the planet."

"Something about having big Latina hair is so powerful, and I think that’s why Tefi is going to take over the world one day," Sedeño said.

Tefi Pessoa Credit: Joseph Maldonado / Ian Moore / Mashable Composite; Tefi Pessoa

These friendships — ones borne of honesty, respect, love, and maybe most importantly, humor — are foundational to Pessoa's success.

"There is a delicate balance,” she says. “There is a fine line between being a really good friend and a kind friend. A nice friend is someone that's like, ‘Oh my god, no, no, you look great.’ And you have a friend who will tell you that you have lipstick on your teeth."

For the record: Pessoa is the kind of friend who will tell you if you have lipstick on your teeth.

From YouTubers and TikTok stars to streamers and podcasters, Mashable talks to creators about how they built their platforms, the gear they swear by, and the trends they see coming next. Read more of our creator coverage to discover the internet's most exciting voices.