Rolling Stone’s 2025 ranking is less a list of the internet’s largest accounts than a map of where online influence is moving. It includes livestreamers who can fill streets, comedians whose characters travel through reposts, podcasters who shape political conversations, and creators turning personal communities into businesses, shows, books, and campaigns.
The ranking was published on August 26, 2025. Rolling Stone described a creator as someone who emerged from the internet and uses digital platforms to advance conversations. Its editors combined follower counts, engagement rates, and audience-growth data supplied by CreatorIQ with editorial judgment. The follower totals below are historical figures from that ranking, not live account counts.
The 25 creators in Rolling Stone’s 2025 ranking
The order is important: this is an editorial influence ranking, not a simple follower leaderboard. That distinction explains why some creators with relatively small audiences appear above accounts with hundreds of millions of followers.
| Rank | Creator | Primary format | Followers or subscribers reported by Rolling Stone |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IShowSpeed | Streamer | 135 million |
| 2 | Druski | Sketch comedian | 28.4 million |
| 3 | Ms Rachel | Children’s entertainer | 27.8 million |
| 4 | Kai Cenat | Streamer | 80.1 million |
| 5 | Quenlin Blackwell | Comedian | 20.8 million |
| 6 | Caleb Hearon | Comedian and podcaster | 1.6 million |
| 7 | MrBeast | Stunt YouTuber | 871.6 million |
| 8 | Hasan Piker | Political streamer | 10.5 million |
| 9 | Camilla Araujo | Subscription-content creator | 18.5 million |
| 10 | Alex Cooper | Lifestyle podcaster | 9.5 million |
| 11 | Jake Shane | Comedian | 4.9 million |
| 12 | Duke Dennis | Streamer | 25.2 million |
| 13 | Drew Afualo | Lifestyle creator | 10 million |
| 14 | Tefi Pessoa | Lifestyle creator | 2.5 million |
| 15 | Speedy Morman | Journalist and interviewer | 1.6 million subscribers |
| 16 | Ilona Maher | Sports creator | 9.1 million |
| 17 | Ironmouse | VTuber and streamer | 5.2 million |
| 18 | Anayka She | Lifestyle creator | 2.1 million |
| 19 | Theo Von | Podcaster | 26.3 million |
| 20 | Sabrina Brier | Comedian | 1.4 million |
| 21 | Alix Earle | Lifestyle creator | 13.2 million |
| 22 | Meredith Hayden | Cooking creator | 3.8 million |
| 23 | Dave Portnoy | Media personality | 18.2 million |
| 24 | Brandon Edelman | Lifestyle creator | 1.6 million |
| 25 | Kay Poyer | Lifestyle creator | 1.1 million |
1. IShowSpeed
IShowSpeed takes the top position because his influence is unusually visible offline. His IRL livestreams, international tours, gaming background, and high-energy public appearances turn a stream into an event. Large crowds are not merely a measure of reach; they show how quickly a digital personality can organize attention in physical space.
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2. Druski
Druski built his audience through Instagram-born characters and expanded that comedy into independently produced satirical shows. His sketches are designed to be clipped, reposted, and recognized outside their original context, making him one of the ranking’s clearest examples of social comedy becoming a broader entertainment format.
3. Ms Rachel
Rachel Accurso, known as Ms Rachel, made “Songs for Littles” a major educational children’s brand. Her influence extends beyond preschool programming: advocacy for children affected by war and humanitarian crises gave her public profile a social and humanitarian dimension.
4. Kai Cenat
Kai Cenat’s position illustrates the power of sustained live relationships. His Twitch broadcasts, large-scale audience, and 2025 “Streamer University” helped establish him as one of the defining personalities in streaming culture. His influence comes from repeated, long-form contact rather than isolated viral posts.
5. Quenlin Blackwell
Quenlin Blackwell is a bridge between several generations of internet comedy. After first gaining attention on Vine, she expanded through YouTube, Twitter/X, and TikTok. Her Grammys appearance and mainstream entertainment work show how a creator can carry an internet-native persona into conventional media without abandoning the original audience.
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Caleb Hearon ranks sixth despite a comparatively modest 1.6 million followers. His sharp social commentary, “So True With Caleb Hearon” podcast, and growing acting career demonstrate why Rolling Stone did not treat follower totals as the only measure of impact. His audience is smaller than MrBeast’s but highly connected to his voice and point of view.
7. MrBeast
MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, is the ranking’s largest-scale operator. His influence reaches beyond stunt-based YouTube videos into consumer brands, streaming entertainment, and Amazon’s “Beast Games.” The striking contrast between his reported 871.6 million followers and his seventh-place finish reinforces the list’s central qualification: it is not a ranking of audience size alone.
8. Hasan Piker
Hasan Piker has built a major political-media operation through livestreaming. His coverage of U.S. politics, protests, immigration enforcement, and international left-wing movements gives his broadcasts the feel of an ongoing commentary channel rather than a collection of short clips. He represents the creator as news interpreter and community broadcaster.
Rank #2
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9. Camilla Araujo
Camilla Araujo’s cross-platform career reflects the growing visibility of subscription-content creators. Viral controversy, rage-bait, and deliberate promotion across social networks have helped move that business model into mainstream internet culture. Her inclusion also shows that “creator” is now a wider category than advertiser-friendly lifestyle content.
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10. Alex Cooper
Alex Cooper turned “Call Her Daddy” into a broader media and consumer brand. Documentaries, reality television, Unwell Hydration, and high-profile political and celebrity interviews all extend the podcast’s original relationship with its audience. Her career is a case study in converting an intimate digital format into a multiplatform company.
11. Jake Shane
Jake Shane first became known through the octopus-food-review persona associated with @octopusslover8. He later developed improvised comedy about historical and biblical subjects, along with podcasting, touring, television, and live performance. The progression shows how a deliberately strange short-form premise can become a flexible stage identity.
12. Duke Dennis
Duke Dennis is a prominent figure in gaming and young-male creator culture, both through his own streams and his membership in AMP. His international livestreaming activity has helped make gaming personalities feel less confined to a screen or a single game community.
13. Drew Afualo
Drew Afualo’s viral responses to misogyny made confrontation itself part of her format. Her TikTok commentary, live touring, and memoir Loud show how a creator can move from reactive short-form posts into a sustained public argument about gender and online behavior.
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14. Tefi Pessoa
Tefi Pessoa combines advice, personal storytelling, red-carpet interviews, and TikTok commentary. Her “Ask Tefi” column at The Cut and “Tefi Talks” podcast extend the conversational quality of her social content into established editorial and audio formats.
15. Speedy Morman
Speedy Morman’s “360 With Speedy” interviews generate viral clips and memes involving musicians, actors, public figures, and politicians. His influence comes from extracting highly shareable moments from longer conversations, placing journalism and creator distribution in the same workflow.
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16. Ilona Maher
U.S. rugby player Ilona Maher uses humor, behind-the-scenes sports material, women’s-sports advocacy, and body-positivity messaging to reach people beyond rugby. Her career demonstrates how athletes can become creators in their own right, controlling the tone and context in which audiences encounter them.
17. Ironmouse
Ironmouse is one of the ranking’s most significant representatives of VTubing. Her avatar-based Twitch career, music releases, and position as a leading female streamer have helped push virtual performance further into mainstream creator culture. The audience relationship is real even when the on-screen identity is animated.
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Anayka She’s short-form videos combine humor, facts, and everyday explanations. Her 2025 music activity expanded that identity beyond social posts, showing how creators increasingly use a recognizable online voice as a starting point for work in other media.
19. Theo Von
Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast has become a major interview platform for guests across the political spectrum. That range has given him influence in political and male-oriented online media, where podcast conversations can circulate as clips, arguments, and cultural reference points long after the original episode.
20. Sabrina Brier
Sabrina Brier’s recurring characters and catchphrases demonstrate the continuing strength of constructed short-form comedy. Her work has expanded into writing, an audiobook, and performance, turning familiar social sketches into a broader comedic vocabulary.
21. Alix Earle
Alix Earle remains a powerful lifestyle and commercial creator through candid content about beauty, dating, and personal life. Brand deals, a Super Bowl appearance, investment in SipMargs, and podcast expansion show how personal disclosure can become a durable business ecosystem.
22. Meredith Hayden
Meredith Hayden’s private-chef vlogs and intentionally imperfect cooking videos make food content feel less like a polished production and more like an accessible routine. Her appeal lies in lowering the distance between aspirational food culture and ordinary viewers.
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23. Dave Portnoy
Dave Portnoy developed a second major internet identity through “One Bite Pizza Reviews,” separate from his role at Barstool Sports. His political commentary has widened that audience further. The inclusion captures how a recurring, tightly defined review format can become a durable public persona.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.24. Brandon Edelman
Brandon Edelman’s Philadelphia-centered videos are conversational and community-focused. His “Brantrips” initiatives, which involve local businesses and creator-fan participation, offer a different model of influence: less mass spectacle, more direct connection to a place and its audience.
25. Kay Poyer
Kay Poyer uses TikTok commentary to discuss identity, transgender rights, community, and personal opinion. Her strongest connection is with younger alternative and LGBTQ+ audiences, illustrating how a relatively small creator can become especially important within a defined community.
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Reach is only one part of the story
The list places Caleb Hearon, Speedy Morman, Sabrina Brier, and Kay Poyer alongside creators with vastly larger audiences. Engagement, growth, cultural distinctiveness, and the ability to move conversations beyond one platform matter alongside raw follower numbers.
Livestreaming is becoming a public event
IShowSpeed, Kai Cenat, Duke Dennis, Hasan Piker, and Ironmouse represent different versions of live influence. Gaming, politics, avatar performance, and travel can all be organized around the same basic promise: viewers return because they want to participate in an unfolding relationship, not simply watch a finished video.
Creators now operate across media
Podcasts become television, sketches become tours, TikTok commentary becomes a book, and sports coverage becomes advocacy. Alex Cooper, Drew Afualo, Tefi Pessoa, Theo Von, and Ilona Maher all illustrate the erosion of the old division between “social media personality” and “media professional.”
Community can be more valuable than universality
Brandon Edelman’s local focus and Kay Poyer’s identity-centered commentary do not require every viewer to be the target audience. Their influence is meaningful because it is concentrated. A creator can shape the language, habits, or confidence of a community without dominating every platform.
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How this list differs from other 2025 rankings
It is important not to combine this ranking with other “top creator” lists. Forbes’ 2025 ranking assessed 50 creators using factors including earnings, followers, engagement, and entrepreneurship, and placed MrBeast, Dhar Mann, and Jake Paul in its top three positions. TIME’s inaugural TIME100 Creators list included 100 digital voices and focused on digitally native creators across platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack.
Those lists answer different questions. Rolling Stone’s list is particularly interested in internet-native cultural influence: who is changing how audiences gather, talk, laugh, learn, argue, and build communities online.
FAQ
Who was ranked the most influential creator of 2025?
Rolling Stone ranked IShowSpeed first. The publication highlighted his global IRL livestreaming, international tours, gaming background, and ability to draw large real-world crowds.
Was this a ranking of the creators with the most followers?
No. Rolling Stone combined CreatorIQ data on followers, engagement rate, and audience growth with editorial judgment. That is why MrBeast, whose reported audience was the largest, ranked seventh rather than first.
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No. They are historical figures displayed in Rolling Stone’s 2025 ranking, published on August 26, 2025. Social counts change constantly, so they should not be treated as current totals.
Why are traditional celebrities missing from the list?
Rolling Stone defined a creator as someone who emerged from the internet, rather than a traditional celebrity who later adopted social media. The ranking therefore favors internet-native figures and does not attempt to list every famous person with a large online audience.
The Bottom Line
Rolling Stone’s 25-name ranking shows that creator influence in 2025 cannot be reduced to follower totals. The strongest figures combine a recognizable format with a loyal audience and a way to carry attention into live events, politics, education, entertainment, sport, business, or community action. IShowSpeed leads the list’s public spectacle, while the other 24 reveal how many different forms internet-native influence can take.
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