Author’s Note: These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity as part of our second edition of Creator Mag. To read the rest of the magazine, click here.

These days, the term “parasocial relationship” frequently gets thrown around in the context of how we as audiences form connections with our favorite artists, celebrities, and entertainers.

We follow every step of their career, every update in their personal life, tracking this arbitrary timeline and gatekeeping our fandom. These encounters through mass media make us feel like we know the person in question, even when oftentimes, we’ve never once met them in real life — much less had a conversation with them.

So it’s a fascinating experience when one day, you open your phone and see the kid who lived across the hall from you blowing up on Twitter.

Here’s the thing: Rishi Mahesh and I barely knew each other when we were sophomores in college. In some respects, we still don’t. Our relationship that year consisted of half-gestures masquerading as friendly waves and the type of awkward smiles you flash to someone who sits across the hall from you in discussion section.

Still, we were connected on social media and followed each other’s work from afar. And I started to notice that as Rishi shared more of his unique personality with the world — a brand of humor one could describe as “Extremely Gen Z,” even if that barely scratches the surface — people really related to what he had to say.

Of course, as the saying goes, Twitter isn’t real life (for now, at least, until the metaverse hypebeasts have their way). Even as Rishi’s tweets started to reach millions, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and praise from famous comics, it didn’t always lead to material changes in his day-to-day life. On the one hand, he started booking standup sets and auditions for television shows through people who discovered him online — he even got verified because a Twitter employee liked his content. On the other hand, at some points, he found himself more happy when he was off of social media entirely.

I set out to interview Rishi in November of 2020 for a piece I planned to publish during the early months of the following year. Life got in the way, though we were able to stay in touch and meet up in Los Angeles this January. Our conversations spanned many topics across college, artistry, and the creator economy, offering a perspective unique from some of the narratives surrounding this Great Internet Gold Rush.

It’s November 6th, 2020. Almost two months ago to the date, Rishi experienced a definitive moment of his journey as a creator. Under the handle @rishipuff, he tweeted “i feel so bad when i overtake an old person on the sidewalk like man i really didn’t mean to flex on you with my youthful stride”. Nearly 600,000 likes and 80,000 retweets sparked a huge increase in followers for the then-21-year-old, a count that now stands over 23,000.

Rishi, coming off of a summer where he regularly posted comedic tweets and uploaded original sketches on YouTube, is still figuring out where to channel his creative focus. He’s finishing up his senior year at Northwestern University, and this newfound Internet notoriety is leading to opportunities he couldn’t have predicted, such as an interview with comedian/television host Ziwe Fumudoh.

He’ll graduate in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Theatre. Over a Zoom call, we start off by talking about podcasting, as Rishi had recently started a show with a friend.

Nathan Graber-Lipperman: This may be obvious, but a lot of research shows that given how much the space has exploded, the number one way to grow a podcast is to already have a following coming into it. Just because you have a following doesn’t mean your podcast will be good, but if you have a following and the content *is* good, it will grow.

Rishi Mahesh: I mean, I feel like with a lot of these creative endeavors, the first step is just the, like intense imposter syndrome. Even after developing any sort of fan base, it’s still, like, “Really? Me?” Which I think is kind of also necessary and is probably what separates the assholes from the less-assholes.

NGL: You grew up twenty minutes outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, right?

RM: Yeah, I got the Michigan Wolverines flag right here. When I first came to school, my parents were wondering if I was gonna get jumped by Northwestern football fans. I was like, I promise you they don’t care that much.

NGL: Speaking of football, you used to be on the cheer team, right?

RM: Yeah, sophomore year was the last time I was doing it consistently. And then I got busy, and I was like, ‘Alright, I think I’m gonna take this quarter off.’ That quarter turned into forever, as sometimes happens with stuff, you know?

NGL: I get it. I’m weird that I’ve kinda just kept doing the same two things, working on my company and playing on the ultimate frisbee team.

RM: I mean, I wish I had a little bit more foresight to know exactly what I wanted to do earlier in time. Like, I didn’t even know I had an interest in comedy until pretty late, to be honest. When I started sophomore year, I was pretty ass. Looking back, I could have budgeted my time in different ways, but I also think that would’ve involved too much stressing and too much pre-planning.

NGL: I recently saw that Reese’s Cups are the best-selling candy right now. Do you think it’s the same for Reese’s Puffs? Like, would you rank them as a top-five cereal?

RM: You know, I actually hate the cereal. I despise it. I think it’s so bad. The whole reason behind even aligning myself with it is purely because it was a joke from when I was, like, 14. For my high school theater productions, when it came time for show weeks, we would all have to get each other things. And people would give me boxes of the cereal with the name crossed out and “Rishi’s Puffs” written over it. Throughout the years, I would rack up boxes of the cereal and my parents were like, “Stop bringing these home.” And I was like, “I don’t know how to tell people to stop doing this!”

NGL: So is your ultimate goal with this whole venture to get sued by Reese’s one day?

RM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that’s when I’ll know I’ve made it.

NGL: With the [2020 Presidential] election going on right now, I recently saw you tweet that you were feeling extremely hot because you voted in Michigan, where the race is pretty close. Is this a dynamic that you think is gonna emerge moving forward, swing-staters becoming more attractive?

RM: For sure, it’s definitely the swing-staters. If I was a single person on the streets, you know, feeling this euphoria, and I ran into a Georgia voter right now, I would do some terrible, terrible things if it was asked of me.

NGL: Your LinkedIn lists you as a “content creator and internet personality.” As we’ve talked about, you’ve been everything from a business manager at a theater company, a writer and director, even taking a venture capital internship at one point. What experiences do you point to prior to college that led you to pursuing your current career path?

Rishi performing a stand-up set in Los Angeles (photo via Rishi Mahesh)

RM: So I started acting in seventh grade…I was a really shy kid, very awkward, and what originally drew me to performing was the idea of having a space to express my inner personality. And I knew I had an interest in politics and social good, and I also felt like uniquely, the thing I really had to contribute was the experience and the work I thought I could do as a performer. So even though I applied to Northwestern as an economics major, thinking I’d go to law school one day, I immediately emailed them asking to switch to a theatre major. And between my non-theatre classes and my theatre classes, the effort that gets put into them, there’s quite a gap.

I think over the years, I’ve realized that, like, there’s a lot of people with a lot of things to say, and then a lot of people who are maybe in a better position to be saying things in general. But the one thing that I do think I have to contribute is some sort of idea of how to write characters and comedy and, like, deliver these things particularly for the audience that I have developed.

I’ve tried on a lot of the other hats. I thought at one point, the way to go was to get a very nice job in finance or whatever and keep doing this on the side, but then I ran into the problem of realizing that it’s hard to do things that you don’t morally align with. And I had enough experiences where I was like, okay, I have no idea how to make comedy something that supports me or something that’s worthwhile, but as of now, it’s just what I’m doing.

NGL: There are really so many opportunities for creative entrepreneurs now though. I don’t know if you would ever label yourself with that term, but kind of the route you’re going, creating an audience and figuring out how to reach them, and really espousing values that, like…again, didn’t really fit in with those other areas. I think that’s part of the journey in finding yourself. It takes hard work, but if you can carve out this voice and whatnot, you can take that and do more things down the road.

RM: 100%.

NGL: You made a short film last summer called Stovetop while working in Los Angeles. You described the film as expressing the idea of “being grounded while chasing your dreams.” I’d love it if you could elaborate on that.

RM: So I had a friend of mine who passed away that summer, three weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.

NGL: I’m sorry to hear that.

RM: Yeah. He directed and shot the first feature-length film I was in. He was really talented — he had everything necessary to make it. All of a sudden, I was really thinking a lot about, like, you know, the relationship to your own life and your future and what you’re doing.

It was an up-and-down time in general. I don’t necessarily think the short film was that good, but it made me more excited as I was living alone in Los Angeles and working a shitty internship. Doing that film made it worthwhile.

Since then, I’ve had a really different outlook on content creation and, like, life in general. It’s interesting you bring that one up, because that project is probably the thing that’s most out of line with what I put on my YouTube. But it’s definitely where I feel like things really started because if I hadn’t put it out, I wouldn’t have been thinking about what else I have to offer.

It’s now January of 2022. I’m staying with a friend in Los Angeles, so I hit up Rishi and we agreed to find a time to meet up.

Rishi’s senior year ended with a bang. He won a grant to produce a web series called “Using Protection,” and his capstone theatre project was nominated for a playwriting festival. He was working hard, though as COVID rates dropped, he was able to spend graduation celebrating in person with friends and family.

The aspiring actor moved out to L.A. in September and now lives with a friend from college. While booking auditions and organizing standup shows, he’s working two part-time jobs. He’s been noticeably less present on the Internet compared to the last time I saw him, though he’s enjoyed making new friends in L.A. and meeting people in the industry.

We start off by talking about his social media use, as well as his transition from college to the “real world.”

Rishi Mahesh: Something I think about a lot within this narrative of the creator economy is this pressure, especially during the pandemic. This idea that if you want something, like, you can go get it via the Internet.

Nathan Graber-Lipperman: Like, “post eight times a day on TikTok and you’ll grow a following.”

RM: Exactly! And even beyond that, the amount of effort for reward thing is kind of a little bit skewed. I think it’s interesting, the amount of stories of people who, like, blew up a little bit or whatever yet things didn’t take off right away. Which is not to say…because I also do know that the Internet stuff and my platform and all that has led to a bunch of next-level opportunities that I do feel like I’m kinda operating at.

I guess there are short games, and there are long games. And I feel like mine is a longer game.

NGL: I feel like we’re so wired for the short term though, right? Look at the NFL, there are 16, 17 games in a season. Yet all anyone cares about is what happened last week. And I think that a lot of times with creator stuff, it’s like, what happened recently? Did you have a banger tweet? Did you get a sponsor for your video? Versus the reality is, most people work for 30, 40 years, and the majority of their earnings come in the last five years.

RM: Yeah. And the whole thing of, all of your dreams are accessible via this grind that you can be doing personally…it’s great, but it’s inherently a lot of pressure. Then, the place that it would make me fall into often is like, okay, if I haven’t achieved this stuff, if I haven’t achieved everything I want to, it is literally because I cannot find the motivation, the inspiration, the work ethic or whatever to do that and that means I don’t deserve it.

The period of my life where I was slogging to produce stuff and get those numbers up or whatever, like, many other areas of my life were completely lacking. And now those areas are much more fleshed out, and I don’t really have the desire to hole up in my room, making stuff by myself all day. Even though it seems like from all the popular discourse, if I want to achieve the things I want to achieve, that’s the way to do it.

NGL: One thing you’re speaking to is numbers. Like that following number or verified check mark or whatever it is, those discernible things that have essentially amounted to clout nowadays, right? People can make assumptions so easily based off of that stuff, but it doesn’t really represent where you’re at in life.

And I think so many people get wrapped up in views, or followers — rightfully so, if you’re trying to make a living off of it. But once that number starts connecting with how you value yourself and your personal sense of worth, like, that’s when it can get really dangerous.

RM: Oh, and it does! It does. I hit my head against the wall — metaphorically speaking — thinking why am I stagnant around 20,000 Twitter followers whereas this other guy is at 60,000? Dumb stuff like that. As much as I’ve claimed all the popular rhetoric against things like that, it obviously seeps in. It’s an immediate sort of number on your profile, like, your cultural capital.

Comedian Hasan MinhaJ reacting to one of Rishi’s sketches (Image via Hasan Minhaj on YouTube)

NGL: Something you hit on, too, is that it all comes from a place of passion originally, right? And a lot of creators do have that first viral video or something that makes them money and allows them to start working on their content full-time. But then, all of a sudden, you have to be professional and respond to emails from brands, post videos on time and treat it like a job.

RM: The thing that excited me about all of this stuff and the thing that I want to excite me again, I’m trying to find it in small places. Like when [comedian and TV host] Hasan Minhaj posted that video reacting to my sketch, a few opportunities came out of it. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don’t. But this idea that no one’s handing you anything, yet you’re sort of given this opportunity to showcase your creativity and your talents…that is still so appealing to me.

NGL: What did come out of that video?

RM: After that, I was talking to the biggest agencies in the country, like UTA and WME.

NGL: Really? Like they reached out to you?

RM: Yeah. I was getting meetings all over the place. And it was super, super cool, but the overwhelming notion was that it’s too early. And I was like, yeah, you’re right. But for that period of time, I’d just moved to L.A. and I thought everything was gonna work out. Like, I’m gonna have a rockstar trajectory here.

By the end of the year, I realized that was a peak. Not, like, the peak, but definitely a peak.

NGL: You make a lot of jokes about getting verified on Twitter. Walk me through what that process was like.

RM: I was just 20, 21 years old — I hadn’t done anything of note. But someone at Twitter was a big fan of mine, and that’s the thing. I think about the concept of, ya know, “your favorite artist’s favorite artist,” which is something that has more precision to it. The guy asked me to send some press, and since I wrote a play sophomore year, I had all these articles about me in The Daily [Northwestern’s student-run newspaper]. A few months after that, I woke up with a blue check mark, and now it’s a bit that I make fun of.

NGL: Some people are obsessed with getting verified, though.

RM: I know! It’s so funny to me ’cause, like, the metaverse — this idea that your digital persona is becoming tied to your real life or social standing. That is something that I did not realize until this whole thing. Like, where am I in the Los Angeles social scene? Nowhere. But what do people think when they see the blue check with no sort of context of who I am? If they don’t ever find out anything about me, they just assume I’ve done something interesting.

The idea that there’s all these things you don’t consciously believe, but still, the social belief system around it…like, a blue check means something to some people, and that is interesting because of how absurdly meaningless it is. The public performance of social media, though, the “look at all this stuff I’m doing” — I definitely have participated in it because I do think that it has led to opportunities in the past.

An older comedian said something hilarious to me one time about how when he got verified, he was working at the Apple store.

NGL: It’s funny you bring up the metaverse, because, in the Los Angeles club or bar scene or whatever, would you get to the front of the line? Probably not. But, like, in the virtual club scene…?

RM: I saw someone recently talking about whether or not standup comedy is dead. And the take was that no, it’s not dead, it’s just that more is happening online than offline. For a moment, that was deeply depressing, then kind of relaxing! Because I was like, alright, all this stuff is happening for me online, where it’s perceived that I’m more successful than I feel based on my real-world interactions.

Rishi performing stand-up (photo via Rishi Mahesh)

I don’t ever get recognized on the street in person, ya know? But if your online profile is really the important thing in this day and age, I’ll take that, I guess. Like, I know comedians who didn’t do the slogging at open mics, yet still get booked for huge shows because they have a huge following, even if I don’t think their set is good. I guess there’s some doors that you just open by shoving yourself through them.

NGL: I wonder sometimes with this stuff, like, if all the best opportunities are online, you know, what does that say about the real world and the socioeconomic inequality for people who don’t have access to the Internet? It can sometimes be a little dystopian.

RM: I was thinking recently about our generation and, like, what is the literature that is going to come from our minds? There’s all these different eras of literature or art or whatever that represent the period that they came from, and what is ours gonna look like?

The sheer level of existentialism and nihilism that is commonplace…not that that’s the only thing. Some people have translated that into radical optimism. But what is the world gonna look like? I think that’s a question we’re uniquely asking all the time.

NGL: It’s a great point. This idea of the aughts being full of angst, movies like Fight Club and American Psycho and how they spoke to Gen X, the first generation to grow up on TV and the massive commercialization of everything. And for us, it’s like, we’re the social media generation. What’s the equivalent of those films for us? Are these the kind of things you and other friends in the entertainment industry talk about behind the scenes?

RM: Oh, absolutely. Basically, everyone I talk to now is a niche Internet personality in some way. And the resounding sort of thing that everyone knows and feels is that their online persona or their online work is not a fraction of what they could be doing. And people are really uninspired and exhausted all the time because it feels like everything great has been done already, ya know?

It kinda feels like we’re at a point of large artistic recalibration. I think a lot of people are adjusting to go in a direction they want to go in. And I think it’s coming, but it’s not there yet.

After saying our good-byes in January, I didn’t talk with Rishi again until late March. I was planning on following up with him for this story regardless, though there was room for plenty of updates.

Producing a documentary through work, he’d traveled to New York for the first time ever in February, which he described as a “really exciting and invigorating experience.” He started organizing stand-up every month in L.A. with three friends; so far, the two shows have sold out. His web series, Using Protection, was recently accepted into SeriesFest, a “non-profit organization dedicated to championing artists at the forefront of episodic storytelling.”

Perhaps most importantly, though, the actor is now officially represented. Looking back at his initial move to Los Angeles, when it felt like every big talent agency was reaching out, Rishi said that “it was all happening so fast.” With his current manager, he was able to form a relationship with him through a mutual friend (the latter whom he, naturally, met through Twitter).

“I had a meeting with him [the manager] kind of early on,” Rishi said. “Then holidays, he got busy. We were passively keeping in touch. Eventually, he moved forward and signed me…it was a huge sense of relief, after I had time to process it.”

“I realized it was my main goal when I got out here,” he continued. “Because specifically — also, like, being a South Asian man — I knew I was not going to be able to access many parts of this industry without help.”

Rishi has been spending a lot of his time prepping for auditions all across town. He’s still figuring out his relationship with social media, though.

Rishi with Sameer Gadhia, lead singer of Young the Giant (Photo via Rishi Mahesh)

“The last time that we spoke, I think I was trying to negotiate the pace of content creation and the expected rewards from that,” he said. “If you’re always sprinting, you will receive at that level, and people look at it as a one-to-one sort of thing. But it’s so independent, and at that time I wasn’t really interested.”

He’s still working hard, however — he’s just putting more of his time into collaborative, longer-term projects. And he acknowledges that his Twitter has continued to open doors, as he recently got back from a stand-up performance at George Washington University.

“They booked me because they were people who followed my social media early on,” Rishi said. “A lot of the people at the show, the ones who knew me, have been kind of dedicated. And for me, it’s been kind of easy to look at the ratio of numbers and be like, ‘Oh, if I have 25k followers or whatever, how many people are actually convertible into anything’ in the sense of making a career out of it? It’s such a small percentage, so it’s been easy to discount that.”

His voice picked up. “The thing I’m realizing recently is, like, that small percentage knows me so well at this point. At the GW show, for example, I got to meet them and actually see that level of excitement. And that investment in this creative stuff over my life…it was, like, the most beautiful experience ever, you know.”

After the show, one of his fans posted a photo with Rishi on Instagram, writing about meeting the actor and how much Rishi’s work meant to him. Rishi took that energy back to L.A., not only in preparing for auditions but also in his “boots on the ground” work, constantly following up with individual people in order to bring his stand-up together. “That’s how you get a show sold out,” he said.

It’s that one tweet, though, that he sees as a through-line of his career up until this point: “I didn’t mean to flex on you with my youthful stride.” Not only did it set the foundation for his career, introducing him to a wider audience and forming strong relationships through social media, it’s also served as a mantra of sorts, as he charts his own path through Hollywood.

“At the DC event, the next day, I got to talk to Sameer Gadhia, the lead singer of [indie rock band] Young the Giant,” Rishi said. “He told me how the entertainment industry, it’s an industry that is made to take artistry and make revenue off of it. And there’s the making of art, and the making of content, and those are two things that can inherently be at odds with one another.”

“It’s useful to have a relationship with both of them,” Rishi concluded. “You just can’t get lost in discovering that relationship.”

You can purchase the “Puff University” Crewneck — and read other coverage from this edition of Creator Mag — here, as well as follow along with Rishi’s work on Twitter.

"I Didn't Mean To Flex On You With My Youthful Stride"

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