Meg, 36, is living a bit of a double life. She works full-time in health care by day, but online, she’s known as Thee W Artíste, aka @wnbaart. She started her account in May and now has about 110,000 followers across Instagram and Threads. Her googly-eyed cartoons of viral WNBA moments have carved out her niche among the league’s supporters. And although her online persona is only six months old, Meg has been a fan of the WNBA for decades.

She was in elementary school when the league started in 1996, but it wasn’t until her home state got its own team, the Chicago Sky, in 2006 that she became, in her words, “obsessed with the W.” Meg has loved basketball and art for as long as she can remember (“I was the girl that was always drawing or painting”) and began to combine her passions ahead of the 2026 WNBA season.

“We had just signed that new CBA agreement. I was so excited for all the team mix-ups, with players on different teams now. And I just started drawing cartoons for fun at bedtime,” she tells Bustle. When she started to share her work online, she had no expectations that people would actually engage with it. Her initial idea was to draw graphics about the matchups for the day or the big stories of the league, but she quickly realized what followers reacted to most: whimsy.

“[My art] went in this really niche direction of just trying to find moments in the game that were silly or funny and brought joy to so many people,” she says.

Her account really began to gain traction on June 17, when she posted her drawing of Natasha Cloud doing her “pride celly.” In July, basketball legend Sue Bird shouted out the @wnbaart account on her podcast, and Meg’s follower count has been growing steadily ever since.

When Meg attended WNBA All-Star Weekend this year, she says she was treated like a celebrity. “I was so unprepared and so overwhelmed by the amount of in-person love that I got,” she says. “I was approached constantly for autographs and pictures. It’s so fun that every WNBA event I go to now, I have built-in friends.”

Now after every game her mentions on Threads and Instagram are flooded with comments from fans telling her about “The Moment” from that matchup that needs to be drawn. Sometimes she can whip up a cartoon in 10 minutes; other times it takes hours.

Ahead of the WNBA Finals, Bustle caught up with Meg, Thee W Artíste, to hear about her online habits, her go-to catchphrase, and the unexpected thing that made her cry recently.

What’s the weirdest internet rabbit hole you’ve gone down recently?

I was thinking about George Washington and looked up what his accent may have sounded like at that time. Was it a British accent? I started questioning what he may have sounded like and what other people in that area at that time sounded like. We don’t have videos of them speaking, so I had to look it up to try and find out!

What app do you rack up the most screen time on?

It used to be Instagram, but after this past summer it has shifted to Threads. WNBA Threads, if you’re in it, is a great community.

What have you been listening to lately?

I’m really excited about the next season of Bridgerton. So sometimes I’ll just listen to the string quartet versions of songs and then try to imagine where they would work well in the next season.

What’s your most used motto?

Six years ago my psychiatrist said, “A bad day does not equal a bad week. A bad week does not equal a bad month. A bad month does not equal a bad year. A bad year does not equal a bad life.” Whenever I’m going through something hard, I remind myself of this. At any given moment things can really turn around for you, which really has been this entire year for me.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve cried at recently?

I cried watching someone react to a Glee episode last night. Embarrassing on so many levels.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.