Who is Verity?

If your kid’s been talking about Verity, here’s what that means.

Verity is not a real person. It’s a cartoon character, a yellow smiley face that talks, from a horror series on YouTube by ThatMob, a YouTuber who makes Minecraft stories.

This is something kids watch, not play. ThatMob makes short horror films inside Minecraft, the block-building video game. He builds the sets in the game, moves the blocky characters around like puppets, adds voices and creepy sounds, and posts the result as a video. Plenty of YouTubers do this. The game is basically a free movie set.

The main character is ThatMob himself, as his own blocky Minecraft guy. He gets a friendly virtual helper named Verity that answers his questions. Then things get creepy. Another YouTuber does Verity’s voice.

The series ran in three episodes of about 20 minutes each, posted May 30 to July 8. On July 12 came a 65-minute “full Minecraft movie” version, now past 27 million views. Short clips on YouTube Shorts send kids back to the full videos.

One mix-up to know: Verity is also a grown-up thriller starring Anne Hathaway, the Devil Wears Prada actress. It’s unrelated, and it opened at No. 1 in theaters on October 2, so a search for “Verity” may not land where your kid’s did.