Dustin Hansen is a lanky twenty-something skate rat, aspiring filmmaker, part-time barista, and occasional participant in what other people might generously describe as a career plan. Dustin would dispute that characterization. Plans imply considerably more advance preparation than he generally brings to the situation.
Skateboarding has been the one constant. Dustin has been doing it long enough to be genuinely good, although not quite good enough to make a living from it, a distinction his knees understand better than he does. Filming skating eventually turned into an interest in filmmaking itself. He loves figuring out shots, improvising rigs from whatever happens to be nearby, editing footage until three in the morning, and discovering that the terrible idea he had twenty minutes ago somehow looks fantastic on camera. His equipment collection is worth considerably more than his car.
Dustin is also the longtime best friend and frequent cameraman of Aria Featherstone, having known her well before she became an online celebrity. Their friendship is entirely platonic, deeply affectionate, and sufficiently comfortable that neither gives much thought to how it looks from outside. Dustin has filmed Aria from bushes, stairwells, moving skateboards, the floor of cafés, and several positions that probably violated workplace safety regulations. He's proud of what she's built, but remains almost completely unimpressed by her fame. To Dustin, she's still Aria, which is occasionally exactly what she needs.
Away from the camera, Dustin is friendly, loyal, chronically underprepared, and almost impossible to embarrass. He's the person who will enthusiastically help a friend move house, arrive twenty minutes late with the wrong size truck, somehow recruit three additional people along the way, and still have everything finished before dinner. He works enough shifts at a coffee shop to technically call himself employed and spends the rest of his time skating, filming, editing, or pursuing some new project whose financial model consists primarily of it'll probably work out.
His parents believe he's still in college.
Nobody has yet established who told them this. Dustin certainly isn't volunteering to correct the record.