t’s 11:11 in New York! You have to make a wish!” Jake Shane frantically alerts me over the phone. We’re mid-conversation, but some things take precedence.
Jake Shane Knows It’s Not That Serious
From a Hulu show based on his life to the thirst traps on his Bumble profile, "nothing is ever life or death."
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I get an audience with the podcasting magnate after a titanic week — yachting at the Monaco Grand Prix with Alix Earle, box seats at the absolutely electric game four of the Knicks-Spurs series with Hailey Bieber. . .you know, the epicenter of culture.
Today, he’s promoting a new dating advice video series with Bumble, Bee Line, which features Shane in a mustard-yellow office cubicle taking calls from exasperated daters. Shane has been candid over the years about his mission to get a boyfriend, having been single his whole life (he’s only 26, but as a perpetual single myself, I get it). He’s what you would call the total package — kind, funny, and friends with Glen Powell — but as any single person can tell you in the year 2026, it can often feel like none of that matters.
And dating apps are keenly aware. Dating fatigue, as the monthly think pieces like to call it, has reached a fever pitch. Bumble began piloting an AI-powered matchmaker in New York earlier this year. Tinder introduced a virtual “speed dating” experience. And Hinge’s most recent ad campaign addresses the moribund state of modern dating head-on, leveraging testimonials from “success stories” who lament the Sisyphean loop of getting ghosted, deleting the app, and eventually crawling back out of desperation.
“You never want to approach dating being like, ‘I’m too cool,’” Shane offers. “People are more attracted to vulnerability than you might think. If you’re secure in yourself first, the love will follow.”
When it comes to his own dating profile, Shane says he “prioritizes prompts” to better represent his personality, even though it can be hard not to focus on aesthetics. Shane has become a bit of a gym rat himself, and it’s caused quite the online stir — in one of Dave Portnoy’s garrulous tangents, he reacted to Shane’s fitness journey, exclaiming, “The platypus guy is fucking ripped!” Then, on a top-rated episode of Shane’s podcast Therapuss, guest Kylie Jenner deemed his most recent thirst trap “so sexy” — that’s like Liberace whistling for your bar karaoke rendition of “Pink Pony Club.”
“I’m trying to have it be the year of the thirst trap without falling into my old pattern of posting a photo of myself that I think I look good in, and then becoming really insecure and obsessed after,” Shane admits. This is the signature vulnerability that’s earned Shane such a dedicated zillennial fanbase — he makes it easy to feel like you really know him.
When I ask Shane about his experience with parasocial fan relationships — an increasingly common issue for entertainers in the social media age — he shrugs it off. “I feel like anyone who likes my stuff is someone that I’d get along with in real life. I was on the subway the other day, and some girl was like, ‘I love your podcast.’ It turned out that we lived next door to each other, so we got off at the same stop and walked home together. It was the best — I just made a new friend.”
Shane is halfway through a monster year, with Therapuss moving to Netflix, a Broadway debut in All Out: Comedy About Ambition, and red carpet hosting gigs. But with increased exposure comes increased scrutiny, and Shane has felt the heat. On the Vanity Fair Oscar party red carpet in April, the host got caught in the crossfire of the “should influencers replace journalists?” discourse after an interaction with Julia Fox went viral; Shane joked that he found the little boy in the Rose Byrne vehicle If I Had Legs I’d Kick You “annoying,” while Fox expressed empathy for working mothers in a broken system.
“There’s been more eyeballs, which is something I’ve always wanted and worked for because I love attention. I love people telling me, ‘You’re funny. You’ve made me laugh.’ But it’s impossible to achieve that without people also being like, ‘I don’t like what you’ve put out. I don’t like what you do.’ And hearing that and not letting that affect you has definitely been difficult,” Shane shares.
He credits his “incredible team” with helping him through these moments. And sleep. “I’m big on just pushing it down and going to bed. I got a new therapist who specializes in OCD and exposure therapy, which has been very, very helpful.” When I recommend my favorite newsletter, The Athletic’s “Peak,” which distills sports psychology into practical everyday tactics, Shane seems to take genuine interest, and I pass it along to his people after we wrap.
The Shane snowball is rolling down the mountain at Lando speeds, getting bigger and bigger as accolades and opportunities continue to come his way. When I bring up his forthcoming Hulu show, a comedy based on his life, he adorably screams into the phone. “I know it’s going to be what I dream it could be. My best comedy is when I’m self-deprecating, like poking fun when I'm not taking things too seriously, or when I am taking it too seriously and I'm making fun of how seriously I'm taking it. And [the team] really seems to get that.”
“You never want to approach dating being like, ‘I’m too cool'... People are more attracted to vulnerability than you might think. If you’re secure in yourself first, the love will follow.”
His humility is antithetical to the reputation of Gen Z in the workplace — he’s self-aware and knows he has a lot to learn, but rather than compensate for uncertainty through ego (which, at this point, he’s powerful enough to do), he makes a point to choose curiosity and compassion: “Everyone’s feelings matter. You're not going to get a good final product if there's any animosity on the set. It's okay to stop, have everyone breathe, have everyone be okay, and then continue on. Nothing is ever life or death.”
It’s impossible to be nice every second of every day, but for Shane, it seems deep-rooted and automatic. It’s a beautiful trait, but it can also be a heavy cross to bear, especially as a public figure — we’ve seen celebrity brands built on kindness crumble in the past, as one viral interaction can have the internet racing to call you fake, hypocritical, and much worse. When I ask Shane if his reputation as “the internet’s best friend” ever feels constricting, like he can’t have a human moment, I get the sense that the concept of being anything but gracious is almost ridiculous to him. “You can say you’re having a bad day and still be kind. Two things can exist at the same time.”
BY EMMA SHARPE | PUBLISHED ON JUNE 16, 2026
“I just want people to laugh. That’s all I care about.”
"I feel like anyone who likes my stuff is someone that I'd get along with in real life."
A full-scale television production is lightyears away from the micro-impression TikToks that gave Shane his start, but he’s assembled an all-star team around him. The project is directed by Paul Briganti, who spent six years directing for SNL, along with head writer Genevieve Aniello, who’s written for acclaimed comedies like Hacks and The Other Two. Shane’s inspirations for the show range from clean network sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Abbott Elementary to raunchier hits like Girls, Broad City, and Dave, as well as the improvisational comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. From that wide-ranging list, I’m unsure what to expect, but Shane’s north star is simple: “I just want people to laugh. That’s all I care about.”
Getting his feet wet on the set of Hacks as Deborah Vance’s eager social media admin, as well as upcoming roles in the Maya Hawke film Wishful Thinking and FX’s Adults, has been a crucial first step. Shane approaches each of these opportunities with intention, asking himself questions like “How do I continue to improve my comedic timing? How do I take something from [this set] and bring it to the next set?”
Robby Klein/Getty Images for IMDb
Robby Klein/Getty Images for IMDb