For TIME's fifth annual roundup of the most influential people on the Internet, the publication evaluated contenders by looking at their global impact on social media and their overall ability to drive news.
JoJo Siwa
There is no teen star quite like JoJo Siwa, a relentlessly enthusiastic 16-year-old from Nebraska who sings, dances, and vlogs on YouTube and TikTok. She wears bright colors and plays with unicorn toys; the trademark giant bows that she wears became so popular among tweens that they were banned at a number of schools in Great Britain, one of the star’s few controversies. More recently, she has parlayed her online fame into a real-world music career; as part of a larger creative collaboration with Nickelodeon, she has embarked on tour to perform songs like “Boomerang,” a sugary anthem against cyberbullying that has 700 million views on YouTube. But she still makes time to vlog the more mundane aspects of her life, such as bowling or shopping at Target. Her mostly young, fervent fanbase can’t get enough, and she regularly clears 2 million YouTube views a day. —Andrew R. Chow
Liza Koshy
How did a 23-year-old former Vine star get so famous that she was tapped to host Vogue’s Met Gala red carpet and interview Barack Obama? When Liza Koshy was asked a similar question during a WIRED Autocomplete Interview, she responded with a smirk: “I honestly don’t know. You guys have weird taste online.” Koshy revels in the weirdness of Internet culture, which in turn has catapulted her from six-second novelty act to YouTube star to fashion maven to film and television actress (with appearances in Hulu’s Freakish and Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween). Koshy has thrived in each of these spaces—as well as on Instagram (17.9 million followers) and TikTok (14.1 million followers)—but her uproarious and bizarre sense of humor shines most clearly on YouTube. There, she creates frenetic skits stuffed with virtuosic dancing, alter egos, fourth wall-breaking, groan-inducing puns, and plenty of mugging to the camera. Her upcoming role in an Alicia Keys-produced comedy film is yet another sign that her rise won’t slow anytime soon. —Andrew R. Chow
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande didn’t have to put out a second album, Thank U, Next, just months after her Grammy-winning 2018 project Sweetener. But she did, and at one point in February held all three top spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — the first artist to do so since the Beatles. Her success was buoyed, in part, by hype she built via Twitter call-outs that doubled as song lyrics and music videos designed for (and steeped in) internet culture, including a Mean Girls-inspired concept for the album’s title track. It helps, of course, that Grande recently became Instagram’s most-followed musician, giving her an even bigger platform (223 million followers across Instagram and Twitter) to promote her work. —Raisa Bruner
Congrats JoJo, Liza and Ariana!
H/T: Moms.
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