The Gist:

• A whopping 456 players entered Squid Game: The Challenge, but only one will claim victory.
• Mai Whelan (Player 287) took home the crown and the life-changing $4.56 million prize.
• Since winning, Mai has enjoyed laying low and relaxing at home with her family.

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Squid Game: The Challenge.

After a thrilling 10 episodes spanning three weeks, Netflix finally unveiled the inaugural winner of Squid Game: The Challenge. The finale saw Sam Lantz (Player 016), Mai Whelan (Player 287), and Phill Cain (Player 451) compete in the final challenges for the life-changing grand prize.

Ultimately, following a series of gripping “Rock, Paper, Scissors” rounds, Mai emerged victorious, securing the record-breaking $4.56 million prize and etching her name into the history books. Months have passed since Mai last sported her green tracksuit, so where is she now? Keep reading to discover her current whereabouts!

Despite bagging an impressive $4.56 million, Tudum noted that “little else has changed” in Mai’s quiet post-victory life. She returned home to Virginia, opting for a low-key life with her husband and their two dogs. Additionally, Mai has been enjoying spending quality time with her 12-year-old granddaughter.

“It was a relief to go back to normal life and not worry about getting eliminated. I needed that after two and a half weeks of intense go, go, go, and emotional ups and downs,” Mai told the outlet. “But the person that came into [the competition] is me. I’m still Mai, and she hasn’t changed — except that I came out stronger.”

Now, you might be curious: What is Mai doing with her winnings?! Well, as the proud recipient of $4.56 million, Mai treated herself to an intricately beaded, black velvet Ralph Lauren gown, which she flaunted at the Squid Game: The Challenge finale watch party on Dec. 6, 2023, in New York City.

“It’s a beautiful dress. I couldn’t help it,” she said of the purchase. “But that’s about as frivolous as I want to go.”

For now, Mai is using the money to renovate her home, with plans to build a small dock for a boat. However, once her home improvements are complete, Mai’s focus will shift toward making a positive impact on the lives of others.

“My heart is with people, animals, and climate change,” Mai shared regarding how she plans to spend her winnings. “If we continue what we’re doing, there won’t be a future for all the little kids growing up right now.”

Squid Game: The Challenge is now streaming on Netflix.

The Gist:

• Amazon announced that it will no longer be accepting Venmo as a payment method for purchases beginning on Jan. 10, 2024.
• The tech giant hasn’t explained its decision, but some have speculated that Venmo wasn’t a secure enough payment platform to partner with Amazon.
• Amazon will still take payment from Venmo debit and credit cards.

Although Amazon offers its users many things, one of the things it prizes most is convenience. You can order things quickly, and they’ll ship to you almost immediately. Another way that the tech giant has maximized convenience is by allowing you to pay for goods in a huge variety of different ways.

Recently, though, Amazon announced that it will no longer be accepting payments through Venmo starting early in 2024. Now, many want to know why Amazon decided to stop accepting Venmo payments. Keep reading for all of the details.

In Amazon’s announcement that it will no longer be accepting Venmo payments, the company didn’t explain its decision. The tech giant did emphasize that there are still many ways for users to pay for orders, including using a credit card and through Apple Pay.

Amazon said that the change would be effective on Jan. 10, 2024, and that users would have to switch their payment method before then.

The company placed a particular emphasis on any subscriptions that might be tied to a Venmo account, as those will be charged automatically and be rejected if the payment information isn’t updated.

Also, Amazon clarified that while payments from Venmo itself will be banned, payments from Venmo credit cards or debit cards will still be allowed, just like most other major credit cards.

Because Amazon hasn’t explained its decision, all the public can do is speculate about why it may have decided to ban Venmo. Amazon might be launching some sort of rival service, and it wants to preemptively remove Venmo so that users will have to sign up for its service instead. Ultimately, though, we won’t know for sure until Amazon decides to explain the decision.

There’s something undeniably magical about Christmas, especially when you’re a kid and you get to wake up in the morning and see the gifts that Santa brought you in the middle of the night.

You thank your parents for allowing the jolly, large, bearded man to come into your home and hook you up with all of the gifts you’ve been begging them to get you.

You don’t question the economics of how Santa manages to make deals with companies from across the globe that are at the top of their respective industries. Nor do you really care about how one man is able to make so many deliveries in a single night or how he gets into houses without chimneys.

You just know that there’s no better feeling than tearing open that wrapping paper and seeing that special gift you’ve been thinking about for a long time.

And even if you don’t believe in Santa Clause or that Elves are making handshake deals with Japanese gaming companies to manufacture Nintendo Switches, you can still enjoy that element of surprise.

That is, unless an ill-timed delivery ruins the magic for you, which is what happened to this family in a viral TikTok and it looks like their doorbell camera recorded the entire thing.

TikToker @frankpappalardo writes in a text overlay of the clip: “The problem with ordering online when you have kids…”

In the clip, a dad can be seen coming home with his two daughters — it looks like they were picked up from school. And what was waiting for them? A giant box containing a toy that one his kids was really, really excited about.

Unsure of how to cover up the fact that the big Christmas surprise was effectively ruined at that moment, he stammers through some excuses that even the most gullible of children probably wouldn’t believe.

It’s hilarious to see him react in real-time, cussing up a storm and trying to convince the girls that they didn’t see the gifts or that it actually wasn’t for them but for someone else, but those kids seemed to know what was up.

Which means that they’ll have to play the waiting game until Christmas when they can finally open the gift.

It’s difficult to not wonder though: was he not receiving email updates about the status of his delivery? If it was delivered from Amazon he should’ve received a notification that it was delivered.

Or perhaps the source of his ire was the fact that he left specific instructions about the delivery, or maybe he just thought that the gift would’ve been delivered in a box and not just, you know, left out in the open for everyone in the world to see what he purchased?

He hints as much in the video, and it’s not that difficult to understand his frustration: it’s not like you get a Playstation 5 delivered to your house and the parcel service simply leaves the box on your front doorstep, unless it’s wrapped up in a different package.

What do you think? Is this on whoever delivered the package? Or should dad have been more proactive in monitoring when the packages were coming to the house and not assumed that there was going to be a box big enough to fit the large gift that he ordered for Christmas?