Community Builders

Some might argue that the most powerful food critic in the U.S. doesn’t work for the New York Times or Food & Wine: He has a TikTok account with more than 17 million followers.

Keith Lee, 28, has the power to single-handedly save a business with a positive food review — and he’s done it. With his trademark straightforward delivery, Lee has showered small businesses with praise and money, bringing them back from the brink.

While landing brand deals and menu items with national chains, Lee’s primary focus is on under-hyped mom-and-pop joints, often run by people of color. Lee — previously a mixed martial arts fighter with a fledgling pro career— has installed himself as a stalwart in the food world just a few years after he began posting videos.

When you hear Lee say, "I got it, let’s try it, and rate it 1-10," you know the next few words are going to really matter.  

Many social media couples depict a life far different from their daily reality, highlighting extravagant trips, cars, and clothes. Though Khadeen and Devale Ellis don’t lack for worldly possessions, bling is not the focal point of their Webby-winning podcast, Ellis Ever After (formerly named Dead Ass).

Recent episodes saw the couple discuss ethical wealth, code-switching, and the differences between Black Power and Black Excellence. The conversations are candid and thought-provoking and peppered with interludes of Devale belting out his favorite songs. Ellis Ever After’s YouTube channel brings the podcast fully to life, with clips of the couple working and interacting outside the studio.

With four kids and two TV shows currently on the air — Devale, a former NFL player, stars on Tyler Perry’s Sistas on BET, while Khadeen is part of that show’s spinoff, Divorced Sistas — the couple doesn’t make success look easy, but rather hard-won and joyously chaotic. The Ellis partnership is at the heart of their podcast and socials, and they’ve amassed more than 4 million followers on their individual Instas.

By showcasing a high-profile marriage grounded in love, compromise, and respect, Ellis Ever After and its namesake couple have accomplished something quietly revolutionary.

Ayman Chaudhary first began making content about books in 2020, having fallen back in love with reading during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chicago-based 24-year-old has since amassed more than 1 million followers under the handle "aymansbooks," with some 915,000 on TikTok and 338,000 on Instagram.

A popular BookTok influencer, Chaudhary regularly posts reviews, recommendations, and reactions to what she reads. Her opinion can significantly impact a novel's sales, and authors such as V.E. Schwab have even credited her with being instrumental in their books' success. Chaudhary particularly focuses on genres popular with women, such as romance, fantasy, and erotic literature — her videos destigmatize and encourage enjoyment of such works. She also uses her platform to spotlight authors of color, hoping to promote increased diversity in publishing.

There's no shortage of dupe recommendations on the internet, but few feel as authentic as those made by beauty influencer ghoul Nina Pool — colloquially known as @ninaghoulina on TikTok and Instagram, where she has amassed 5.8 million and 561,000 followers, respectively. Pool has become a go-to source for finding affordable alternatives  — duperoonies, as she calls them — of expensive makeup, skincare, and perfume. Most suggestions are made in a video of Pool using or reacting to the product live, as if you were sitting there getting funny, unfiltered feedback from a friend. All duperoonie videos, each complete with unintentional god-tier long nail ASMR, can be found in the TikTok landing page Nina Pool Master List. Fans value Pool’s recommendations so much that they were scrambling on Reddit to find the spreadsheet version of these sacred texts when TikTok went down for a day in the winter of 2025.

Adrian Per embodies the term "creative." The LA-based Filipino-American directed a promotional film for Lil Nas X, produced content for Nike's run club in Los Angeles, and served as the creative mind behind photo exhibits in both San Francisco and his home city. Teaching the cinematic tools of the trade on his social channels, where he goes by the moniker omgadrian, has endeared him to over 1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram.

Per is not afraid to reveal creator secrets, like how to properly set up shots, how to use color grading effectively, and the best settings for video exporting. This year, Per launched a YouTube channel, offering not only long-form tutorials on filmmaking but glimpses into the reality of hustling in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Adding to his impressive workload was his self-imposed challenge of posting to YouTube daily.

"The growth was wild," Per tells Mashable. "I gained 43K subscribers and racked up just over 1 million views. But keeping that pace? Not realistic long term…it burned me out. The challenge now is figuring out how to return to YouTube with more balance. I still want to post, but maybe just twice a month, slower, more intentional, and something I can sustain and enjoy."

Dubbed "TikTok's auntie," Ann Russell is a no-nonsense creator who brings practical and cost-effective cleaning advice, useful time-saving hacks, and honest life advice to her 2.8 million TikTok followers. Russell, who's in her 60s and lives in the New Forest in Hampshire, UK, has spent over two decades working as a self-employed cleaner. Russell said she first joined TikTok to follow her niece and began posting "little videos of nothing much in particular." Then, she said, "One blew up when someone asked me to explain what a bay leaf did."

Now, Russell is regularly tagged in videos with cleaning-related questions, ranging from stain removal and bathroom cleaning to more complicated household dilemmas. Russell talks often about spending much of her adult life getting by with limited money, so her tips and tricks are often budget-friendly and aimed at all walks of life. An avid LGBTQ ally, Russell has also written a number of cleaning books: How to Clean Everything and How to Be an Adult.

In the world of flowers, Erin Benzakein is the Queen Bee. This farmer-florist, author, plant breeder, and social media darling is the face of Floret Flower Farm and its corresponding social accounts (@floretflower on Instagram), where she shares a steady stream of gorgeously shot content chronicling her adventures in floral arranging, farming, seed saving, zinnia breeding, and more. Erin runs the farm alongside husband Chris Benzakein, who is a self-taught photographer and the man behind the camera. In the last few years, the pair have transformed Floret from a farm and seed business to a content powerhouse, growing their online following to a whopping 1.6 million followers across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Floret — and Erin— really exploded in popularity following the 2021 documentary Growing Floret. Since then, the Benzakeins have dug deeper into longform content, with Chris capturing the beauty of farm life on scales both large and small, and Erin cheerfully taking us along for the ride. Erin's knowledge in the field runs deep, but it's the authenticity and joy that come through every time she talks about flowers that have helped cultivate a dedicated legion of loyal fans.

In 2021, Whitney Wolfe Herd, 36, became the youngest woman (at 31) to take a company public when Bumble, the dating app she founded in 2014, launched its IPO.

At launch, Bumble was a revolutionary app where "women made the first move" in heterosexual matches. Only women could message first, fostering a community of female users taking their dating lives into their own hands.

Today, amid some disillusionment with online dating, Bumble is still one of the most recognizable and downloaded dating apps in the U.S., with 50 million active users, according to Business of Apps. After leadership, policy and staffing changes and challenges, the company in September launched its BFF app (its Bumble for Friends app will reportedly no longer be available in the U.S.), designed to help users find friendship and a different type of community.

Want a social platform where you actually control your data? Jay Graber is making it happen. The American software engineer is at the helm of Bluesky Social, a decentralized microblogging app that has quickly grown to rival X. While she's now the CEO of the Seattle-based social media platform, Graber joined the team in 2019 when it was still a project within Twitter. She has since guided Bluesky from private beta to a public launch in February 2024, with the platform growing to nearly 36 million users as of this May. Graber is a public champion for building nontoxic social media, telling WIRED that Bluesky will always have free options, "and we can't enshittify the network with ads." At SXSW in March, Graber took this ethos one step further, donning a Bluesky shirt with "Mundus sine caesaribus" written on it. The Latin phrase translates to "a world without Caesars," a playful jab at Big Tech's centralized giants.

It's hard to imagine a celebrity imitator could get to 2 million followers across YouTube and Instagram just by doing their Kim Kardashian or their Britney Spears. So how did those impressions propel IRLrosie (aka LA-based voice actor Rosie Okumura) to creator superstardom? Simple: Okumura uses impressions as bait for scam artists. "Kim Kardashian" starred in the viral Facebook Live, a phone call with a guy who'd conned her mother out of $500, that kickstarted Okumura's career in 2019; in the climax of her most popular video, "SCAMMING the SCAMMER in 5 voices!," she goes next-level meta on the 5th voice: convincing the ne'er-do-well on the line that he's on an MTV prank show starring Britney. The result, edited down to a sweet spot of 10 minutes, has been viewed some 13 million times. Okumura, 39, is part of a rising tide of scambait entertainers on YouTube. But unlike the larger multi-person scambait channels she sometimes collaborates with, IRL Rosie doesn't generally focus on getting revenge. "I prefer to take a more comedic approach," Okumura told Mashable. She believes that's the best way to educate potential victims. Multiple times a day, viewers will thank her in the comments for teaching them how to spot a scammy phone call. "Sometimes people just thank me for the laughs," Okumura adds, "and that’s reason enough for me to keep making content."

Best friends, business partners, and moms Deena Margolin and Kristin Gallant launched their Instagram account @BigLittleFeelings in March 2020, promising to provide "less chaos and more calm in your home." Since then, they’ve grown their community to more than 4 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and this past year launched a podcast called After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings. Their content is a place where overwhelmed moms can feel seen and celebrated, while also gaining access to valuable parenting skills. Margolin, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and Gallant, a parent coach, also run a series of popular online courses that cover things like "Potty Training Made Simple" and "Winning the Toddler Stage." Margolin and Gallant keep it endlessly real with their audience, sharing their journeys with infertility, depression, pregnancy loss, body image, disordered eating, and the reality of how hard marriage can become after having children. They are a light in the dark for many parents. At a time when motherhood can feel exceptionally isolating, their presence on our feeds is a reminder that no parent is alone.