In May 2023, Olivia Maher posted a short TikTok video of a plate of bread, cheese, grapes, and pickles. She explained that someone online had pointed out how medieval peasants survived on bread and cheese and called it miserable, and that she found this baffling, because that was basically her ideal meal. She called it “girl dinner,” or alternatively, “medieval peasant.” The video collected over 1.5 million views and videos with the caption or hashtag “girl dinner” have billions of views. Another creator, Karma Carr (@karmapilled on TikTok), set the concept to a catchy original sound, and the whole thing took off from there. Maher later described girl dinner as a meal doe when she was eating “bits and bobs” of items from her fridge (like cheese, pickles and salami, for example). The phrase appeared as a clue on Jeopardy!, which Maher watched live with her family and posted about in a video she described as the “cherry on top” of girl dinner’s first year. It entered the Merriam-Webster lexicon discourse and became shorthand for a whole philosophy of eating: low-effort, single-serving, no performance required. So what happened to the person who started all of it? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Maher, who works in television, has since jumpstarted the “House of Maher” weekly podcast with her sisters Adrianna, who works in human rights and Ilona, an Olympic rugby player. Ilona became one of the most visible athletes on social media during the 2024 Paris Games, telling People Magazine at the 2024 Olympics that Olivia was “the inventor of Girl Dinner” and also “my manager, my boss, my everything.”

That manager role is not just hyperbolee. Olivia is based in Los Angeles and handles much of the business and logistics behind Ilona’s career, which has expanded rapidly over the past two years. She was in the crowd at Dancing with the Stars when Ilona competed in late 2024. She was also in England when Ilona signed a three-month deal with Bristol Bears in the Premiership Women’s Rugby league at the start of 2025, drawing a club record crowd of over 9,000 to her debut match. 

In March 2025, the three Maher sisters launched House of Maher, a weekly podcast through Wave Sports and Entertainment.. The show, which Samsung Galaxy signed on as exclusive launch partner for, has released over 40 episodes since launch and holds a 4.9-star rating on Apple Podcasts. The dynamic is loose and personal: they discuss pop culture, dating, sisterly conflicts, and whatever comes up in the group chat. They have hosted guests including Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles. The show has become a significant piece of Olivia’s public identity, shifting her from “person who coined a phrase” to one-third of a media operation.

Outside of the podcast, Olivia has continued making food and lifestyle content on TikTok and Instagram, pivoting to full-time social media work. She hosted a brief video series called Girl Dinner with a Chef for Cherry Bombe magazine, visiting chefs like Susan Feniger to see how they approached the concept. She was also listed as a speaker at ADWEEK House during Cannes Lions 2025, where she was billed as a creator who “crafts engaging food and lifestyle content while managing the demanding business and life of her professional athlete sister.”

In November 2025, Olivia ran the New York City Marathon as part of Team Maybelline, finishing in 5 hours, 17 minutes, and 9 seconds. It was her first marathon. Ilona cheered from the sidelines holding a sign that read “Girl Dinner, Running Winner.” The House of Maher podcast dedicated an episode to the recap, in which Olivia discussed the experience with their parents. The NYC marathon set a world record that year with over 59,000 finishers.

Most recently, in February 2026, Olivia and Adrianna attended the Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina as part of the Team USA Creators Program. In an interview with Olympics.com, Olivia talked about exploring Italian cuisine, citing Venetian spritzes, pasta, and bowls of olives as her version of Italian girl dinner. She and Adrianna described themselves as “full-time female fans,” there to support athletes across disciplines while their rugby-playing sister sat this one out.

The internet has a short memory, and most viral creators fade quickly once the trend cycle moves on. Maher has avoided that, partly through luck (having a sister whose fame skyrocketed at the exact right time), partly through work (managing Ilona’s career is a full-time job), and partly through a willingness to keep showing up without pretending to be anything other than what she is: someone who likes snack plates and takes her role as oldest sister seriously.

James Lewis

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Viral Twitch streamer and artist PlaqueBoyMax has restarted his notorious “Song Wars” competition after leaving it dormant for nearly a year. Earlier Song Wars runs in 2024 and 2025 helped establish the series as a regular stop for underground rappers looking to test unreleased tracks on stream. The new “Rising Stars Edition” of the series has artists play their unreleased music for a panel of judges. The first iteration was certainly a memorable one. The contest, where artists tried to impress a small room of judges and gain new listeners has contestants joining a video call live while their track is played and scored zero to ten. Notably, contest and previous “In The Booth” guest 2Slimey left the show early after a poor response to his music. Here’s how the stream went down, and what’s next for Max in 2026.

Over the past year Max shifted some of his focus away from streaming and toward his own music career. He still streams regularly, and has many brand partnerships, including recent streams with Nike in London for example. But Max has also jump-started his own music career. In May 2025, he formally announced a joint deal with DJ Zack Bia’s Field Trip Recordings and Capitol Records and began focusing on touring and promotion. Max also recieved praise by probably being the first Twitch streamer to be nominated for a Grammy. He was nominated for Best Dance/Electronic Recording for his production on the song “Victory Lap”, a collaboration with Fred again.. and Skepta. Max spoke about the nomination on stream and in interviews, describing how he first heard the news while he was live and then watched the clip circulate across social media In mid-March, Max announced that Rising Stars Song Wars would return with updated rules.

In the Rising Stars stream, which aired three days ago on March 15th, Max tells viewers he invited thirteen artists and that each one will play one song while judges score from zero to ten in a single night competition. He also says he intends to repost the records on his own channels, through playlists and SoundCloud uploads, so the songs keep moving after the stream ends. With a focus mainly on the underground, the Rising Stars lineup included BabyChiefdoit, BabyFace E, 1300Saint, Teezus, Slayr, alongside lesser known artists like Bleood, Chucky, Sk8star and 2Slimey. The judging panel gave this competition more reach than a typical Twitch stream. Multi-platinum producer Southside, DJ Akademiks, BruceDropEmOff and ImDontai all joined Max on the panel. The show aired live on PlaqueBoyMax’s Twitch channel and later appeared in full on YouTube, allowing viewers to watch the entire competition after the stream ended.

Most coverage after the stream focused on 2Slimey’s appearance and exit. Known for his auto-tuned, heavily distorted music, the Oklahoma-based rapper was polarizing for the panel. During Rising Stars, he played his track “New Swag,”. Almost the entire panel gave him zero out of ten, with Akademiks as the only judge willing to go as high as five. 2Slimey then left the call after hearing the mostly negative feedback. Reaction content framed that moment as the main story from the stream, replaying and commenting on 2Slimey’s segment, although Chicago rapper Lil Noonie also received low scores from some of the judges. Several creators uploaded dedicated reaction videos to the Rising Stars stream, focusing on the judges’ scores for 2Slimey and replaying the moment he left the call. Slayr, from Philadelphia, won the competition and received praise and positive feedback from the judges.

Song Wars now operates at a different scale than it did when it first helped build Max’s profile. He comes into this version as a working rapper with label support and streaming numbers, not just as a Twitch host sorting through submissions. Artists still show up because the room can move them into playlists, social posts and writeups that would take longer to reach on their own. Outlets such as The Fader and NPR have since profiled Max’s streams and competitions, treating Song Wars and In The Booth as central to his rise from Twitch into wider hip‑hop coverage. The Rising Stars competition shows that this mix of risk and opportunity remains in place, and it shows that Max still wants one strong song, played once in front of the right crowd, to matter.

James Lewis

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New Jersey native PlaqueBoyMax, born Maxwell Dent, has seen his meteoric rise to fame for streaming and music since 2022. Alongside this growing fame, Max has upgraded his recording setup from the most basic and budget of microphones and interfaces, to studio sessions in some of the most famous recording studios in the world, alongside producers like frequent collaborator Fred Again (often stylized Fred again..). Max’s setup is a case study in going from DIY bedroom workflow to a fully‑routed hybrid studio and streaming rig, without losing the speed that made his early clips feel so off‑the‑cuff. What makes his current setup interesting isn’t just the price tag, but how it’s designed so he can record vocals, talk to chat and cut songs live, all on the same grid.

In those earlier tutorials, Max is almost apologetic about how barebones his rig is: a Scarlett 2i2 on the desk, an SM58 or AT2020 on a stand, Audio‑Technica headphones into a cheap splitter so a friend can listen in, and everything running through FL Studio. The workflow is simple: drag a YouTube beat into FL, find the key and tempo with a site like Tunebat or similar analyzers, then build a vocal chain from the DAW’s built‑in EQ, delay, reverb and limiter. For pitch correction, he points viewers toward Antares Auto‑Tune and budget alternatives like Slate Digital’s Metatune, turning that basic chain into something closer to a modern rap preset. It is the definition of an accessible starter kit: one interface, one mic, one DAW, and a handful of plugins that come standard or are easy to pirate if you’re a teenager on a laptop.

The PlaqueBoyMAX vocal sound that people now try to reverse‑engineer is a more polished version of that chain, with third‑party plugins doing the heavy lifting. Community presets and breakdown videos point to him leaning on EQ stages like Waves VEQ3 or VEQ4 for tone‑shaping, plus an exciter or enhancer such as Waves Vitamin to pull his voice forward without just cranking the top end. From there it is the classic modern stack: Auto‑Tune for continuous pitch, compression to level out the performance, then short room reverb and slapback delays that keep things intimate even when the beat is wide. It is still built in FL Studio, but instead of only stock plugins, he layers color EQs and enhancers similar to the way his collaborator Fred again.. stacks analog‑style tools in Ableton and on outboard gear.

Hardware‑wise, the jump from the SM58 and AT2020 to a Neumann U87‑class mic instantly changes how that chain behaves. Condenser mics at that level pick up more top‑end detail and room tone, which means his EQ and de‑essing can be subtler while still landing that bright, hyper‑present vocal that cuts on TikTok and Twitch VODs. Max uses a dedicated USB mic like the Elgato Wave 3 for streaming, keeping his recording chain and his broadcast chain separate. The Wave series is designed for creators: plug‑and‑play on Mac or PC, built‑in clip protection and a software mixer that can route game audio, DAW output and mic to different virtual faders. 

If you look at the streamed studio sessions with Fred again.., you can see how this philosophy scales up. Those sessions often run on a two‑computer workflow: one machine dedicated to the DAW and recording, the other capturing the screen, camera feeds and audio mix for Twitch, bridged by virtual channels and an interface capable of multiple cue mixes. A Stream Deck or similar controller sits on the desk to instantly mute talkback mics, switch scenes or drop markers, so a private conversation can happen while the beat still plays for viewers. Cameras range from a proper mirrorless body on an HDMI capture card in the control room to a simple webcam in the booth.

What ties all of this together is that Max’s setup is optimized for what his audience expects him to do on any given night: write hooks in real time, bounce between Discord, Twitch chat and FL Studio, and turn the best ideas into actual releases. The bedroom rig made that possible on a budget, but the current high-end configuration lets him keep the same spontaneous energy at a far higher technical ceiling. No matter what the setting, PlaqueBoyMax has excelled at giving people chances to watch the music being made as it happens.

James Lewis

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