Asia the dog went from a shelter to the cover of TIME100 Creators, and her owner was not about to let anyone forget it. That shift, from rescue animal to magazine cover star, captures something genuine about what the TIME100 Creators moment meant to the people inside it: a chance to step back, look at the distance traveled, and laugh at the chaos along the way. When TIME gathered its 2026 class of creators and turned them loose on each other with questions, what came back was less polished than anyone’s usual output and far more interesting for it.
The round of drinks that felt like a million-dollar bonus
Alex brought her dog Asia to the cover shoot, which she described as the highlight of a day full of highlights. Playing up the leash, letting Asia work the set, the whole thing landed as a small personal triumph. ‘Going from the shelter to the cover of TIME100 Creators,’ she said, ‘go Asia, girl.’
One creator’s answer about their first ‘I made it’ purchase cut straight to the economics of early creator life. The purchase was a round of drinks at a university bar. ‘At university, that’s like telling everyone you’ve just given them a block of gold,’ they explained, framing the gesture as their own version of Taylor Swift handing out million-dollar bonuses to her staff. The drink in question was a Jager bomb.
Mickey’s answer to the longest editing stretch landed differently. The edit in question was a half-hour sitcom made with friends during college, cut entirely by hand without prior knowledge of Premiere. Learning the software and making the film at the same time meant deleted files, restarts, and many months of work before anything resembling a finished cut existed.
The Greece moment nobody wants to recreate, except they do
When asked what one piece of content they would want to post again for the first time, a pair of creators answered in near-perfect unison before one of them even finished the question. The answer was a video shot in Greece: a few glasses of wine, a sunset, and a walk straight through a scene that apparently required no plan at all. ‘Wine was involved, which made it extra special,’ one of them noted. The audience loved it. They loved it. And the version they posted cannot be posted for the first time again, which is the whole point.
Maura Higgins went further back. Asked what she would tell herself at the start, she skipped the practical advice entirely and landed on a single instruction aimed at the moment her first video went viral: ‘Girl, buck up, because your entire life is about to change.’
Julian Strobell began an answer about the last time he broke the law or a big rule, got one sentence in, and the transcript ends there.
Asia, on set, the whole day
Asia the shelter dog, on the set of a TIME100 Creators cover shoot, present for the entire day.
The creators who landed on that cover each carried a version of the same story: a first purchase that looked small from the outside, an edit that nearly destroyed itself before it existed, a sunset in Greece that worked because nothing was forced. Asia was just there for the day, which turned out to be enough.
Last but certainly not least – Olandria Carthen is asked “When was the last time you broke the law, or broke a big bill?” Olandria responds “I broke the standard” Then she hangs up the phone and walks out like a boss 😉
