Estefania "Tefi" Pessoa refuses to chase the storm

Tefi of @hellotefi and a few of her favorite things

I first met Estefania "Tefi" Pessoa on TikTok. I have never seen Tefi IRL nor have we ever had a conversation outside of this interview, but that's what makes Tefi, or @hellotefi on TikTok and Instagram, so good at what she does: When she popped up on my For You Page I felt like I had met her. She's famously transparent about her botox, her skincare, and her love for Britney Spears. She regularly gives advice to her followers and her opinions on just about everything in pop culture (but only if she thinks she can add to the discussion in a meaningful way).

She first rose to prominence by doing these pop culture deep-dives on TikTok, in which she spends a considerable amount of time breaking down everything from Amy Winehouse's life to the Don't Worry Darling drama to her 1.5 million followers. She currently hosts MTV’s YouTube competition series "Merch Masters" and serves as InStyle's social media host. She's collaborated with major brands like Paramount, Netflix, Focus Features, Hulu, Peacock, ABC and DirecTV, Governors Ball, and Coachella. In 2021, she was nominated as a TikTok Latinx Trailblazer as part of their creator spotlight series for Hispanic Heritage Month.

This Hispanic Heritage Month, I decided to break the fourth wall of my parasocial relationship with Tefi and give her a call. In the spirit of Small Talk, she told me about her favorite interviews, refusing to chase the storm, and her Neopets.

Mashable: I'm very excited. I'm a fan of yours. What's one of the biggest takeaways you've had from interviewing people you're a fan of?

I've only interviewed people whose work I'm a big fan of. It's weird because sometimes you'll be interviewing somebody, and then you'll just think like, "Oh my God, this is like literally just some dude. Like, that's crazy. Like, this is literally just some guy, that is so insane."

Keanu Reeves and Nicole Kidman were probably the people that I was like, "That's wild. That's wild that I'm doing that right now." But then I think the most fun was probably Melissa McCarthy.

What made it so fun?

Because she danced with me. She's silly. I like people who are silly, you know what I mean? For the sake of being silly. She's a silly goose, and I like that she doesn't take herself too seriously. She gives a lot of mom energy, but not in a hyper-maternal way or anything like that. She's like a Disney mom in real life, and I like that.

Even outside of interviews, you post so much. How do you choose what to post about and when to just sit it out?

I have this rule that if I'm reading about something and I don't feel pulled to it, I'm not gonna post about it. Like Hayden Panettiere, for example. It's a horrible story about substance abuse. But if I don't feel like I want to talk about it, if I don't have anything to add to the conversation, [then] all I'm doing is adding noise. People can feel that. For people who talk about pop culture — I don't wanna call it clout chasing because that's not, but it is storm chasing. I'm gonna be fighting in the comments all day if somebody talks about her. And I'm always gonna try to come from a place of "that's so horrible that she can't be with her daughter." You have to know that, sometimes, people don't need to know where you stand on everything to want to relate to you, and I think people can immediately tell when you don't wanna talk about something. The vibe is just off.

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A lot of people ask me, "You never talk about Britney, even though you say that you love her." I don't talk about Britney because she said that she hates it. I don't want to talk about Britney. I feel like Britney talks about Britney more than I ever could. She's honest, and we're getting news from the source. So I don't feel like I have anything to add.

Have you ever broken that rule?

Of course I have. That's how I learned that rule. When I had my YouTube show, I really wanted to get people's attention. So I was looking at what people were talking about in the news all the time. And some of those things were just things that I just didn't care about.

I live life on the edge, and I'm gonna tell you why: I like Cardi and I like Nicki. OK? I like both. And when they fight online, I get the DMs, I get the comments like, "Are you gonna talk about this?" No, I have to protect myself from you animals. There are some things that I do because I don't think I can add anything... And then there are also times for self-preservation.

Is there anything you want to talk about that you can't?

I'm trying to find more ways where I can talk about Iran, where I won't get shadow banned. I know that a lot of it is violent, but I think it's important. But that's hard to show on TikTok because the community guidelines really will get you. And it's my largest platform.

I was talking to my mom about it last night, how I posted something about BLM and I always get these death threats… I was talking to my mom about how it still scares me and my mom's like, "Well, why don't you just only talk about pop culture?" And I'm like, "This is pop culture." The political climate is part of pop culture. And if I don't talk about things that are important, then this platform is useless.

You show a lot of different dimensions of yourself online, but I can see that being difficult. What kind of boundaries do you set?

I've chosen to be very, very vulnerable about certain things and not talk about other things at all. I've gone through horrible heartbreak and friend breakups and fights with my family while I had TikTok, and I haven't talked about it because those things are private. However, I am in denial that people see my videos. What I didn't realize is when people don't know anything about your personal life, but they want to feel like they know you, people will legitimately just make things up. And that's the worst part.

When you first read those things your knee-jerk reaction is to create an account, find a profile, scroll, find the comment, reply, and say, "Cynthia, you're out of your mind. You're crazy." But that's never going to do anything. You're just going to feed the fire. You're just going to give people more material, and that's just going to keep happening as you accomplish things that you want to accomplish, especially if they're going to be public things. So I have to come to terms with the fact that I have to let people talk about me. And I haven't let anybody talk about me my whole life.

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It sounds like you're trying to set up these boundaries, but you actually don't have control over if those boundaries are followed by other people.

Yeah. And then also you have to deal with, like, if you talk about it, people run to go find what you're talking about. So I think the best thing to do is to just be as ignorant as possible when it comes to social media. Not with world news. Not with what people are going through, what's happening in the world today, with your family, with your friends, with trends, with fashion, with any kind of culture. But with social media, I really think the key to being successful once you have a platform is to be as ignorant as possible. I think that's the only way to do it, to continue to be real and vulnerable.

You almost have to put up blinders to simply exist online, but part of your job requires some real consistency and engagement. How do you stay working when you just don't want to anymore?

There are people in the world that know that they want to tell stories, and I want to tell stories. That's just something that I've always done, and it comes naturally to me. It would be like holding in my poop. I have to do it. It would be like holding my breath. But maybe in order to stay soft, I have to read comments less or not at all. And I'm OK with that. Some of my friends have 10 million followers, and I don't know how they do it. I'm on people's "friends only" and there are so many creators that are so popular that are crying all the time, and they're like, "I can't do this anymore." And I have absolutely done that, where I'm just like, "I'm giving it up. I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore." That lasts six days and then I'm like, "OK, so anyway, where were we?"

When you're in those six days, where do you go? What's your dream escape career?

I always say, Britney Spears would be such a good cheerleading coach. I think my escape career would be, and I'm gonna be honest with you, I would raise the hell out of some alpacas. I would raise goats, and I would love to have an animal sanctuary where no cow would ever have to worry about being slaughtered.

That's what I would do. I really enjoy caring for other people. I like rehabilitating people in any way that I can, if that makes sense. Like, if you're going through heartbreak, I come over with the pizza and the ice cream and the soup and the dumplings because I didn't know what you wanted. We watch a movie, and it has to be like a horrible, horrible, excellent Lifetime movie. And that is a real type: a horrible, horrible, excellent Lifetime movie or Hallmark movie, that is a type of movie. Those things are fantastic, and I think I can take it. I can absorb when people need a shoulder.

You've spoken a bit before about people not feeling Latina enough. What keeps you grounded in your culture?

What keeps me grounded is talking to people who love me. It's not people who want to please me, it's people who really love me. You hear about these careers that never even started because of mismanagement and being sold snake oil. Or you hear about these mega celebrities who are surrounded by yes men, like Elvis for example. It was not in their benefit. It was not in their team's benefit for someone to stop or to be aware of their surroundings. So I like to talk to my mom a lot. And my mom is someone who I'll be talking about something so painful, and in the middle she'll start laughing and she'll be like, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. OK. I'm back. I'm back." And it's just like, girl.

I will say I am losing a lot of friends, and I never thought that would happen. I am going through a lot of friendship breakups, and I know it's for the best. Maybe I held onto them for a long time because I knew that they weren't going to be around for a long time. I guess in your gut, you always know when a friendship ends. No one's really ever truly surprised. You kind of knew, right? But I think the friends that I have that I'm still close to are definitely people who are like, "You just made that up," or like, "I think you're being too hard on yourself," or "No, I do not think you should call him," or "I know that your event is at 10, I'm gonna be there at 11 because that's the best I can do." [They are] people who are just honest about what they can bring to the table, and I'm really, really grateful. So that's what I think is important. They don't have to be Latinos, either. It can just be people who don't ask you to be more.

Those friendship breakups can make you feel really lonely. How do you fight against feeling like you need to replace friendships you've lost?

I'm way too tired to make new friends like that. I do not have time. All the new friends that I have are like a year old. So all my new friends are social media friends, where we met, we liked what we were saying, and we met in real life. Those friendships are relatively new, but I'm not going to have any more childhood friendships, and that's really hard. I'm not gonna have teenage sleepovers anymore. The sleepovers that I have are with people who are my age, and usually if I'm having sleepovers with somebody I know them very well. I'm not gonna have sleepovers with new friends that I'm making right now. It's hard to accept that my circle is getting smaller. However, and maybe this is why I'm tired, but I always try.

I'm really trying to do the best I can with everything that I do. Am I the neatest person? Absolutely not. Do I go to the gym three to four times a week like [Anthony] Fauci wants us to? No, I don't. But when it comes to the way that I treat people, I really do try my best, and sometimes I've got nothing left and I'm trying to show myself grace about that too.

But with these friendships, I truly feel like I have peace because I can look at that friendship and be like, I was a good friend to you. I know that I was right. And you got greedy or you got spiteful. I mean, I'm making this up — like I'm just creating reasons why friendships end, not necessarily mine, or there was distance or we don't have anything in common anymore, or you changed or I changed. Like whatever it is, when it's all done and I've moved on in my mind, the last thing I tell myself is, "OK, you learned something from this, you did the best you could."

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What was the first website you were obsessed with? Were you a Neopets kid?

How did you know? How did you say Neopets? Oh my God, yes. Of course. I had a slam jam, flop jam. I was obsessed with that marketplace, and my baby had to have the best of everything.

Do you remember the name of any of your pets?

Yes, of course. Britney Spears. One was named O-Town. One was named... I can't remember if it was Arthur or Franklin, but that's where I was going. There was Manny from Degrassi.

In a way, I feel like I'm taking care of people who helped me realize things about myself through media and pop culture and maybe through Neopets, I was doing that in a more literal way. Which is weird to think about.