Happy Monday! 

This has been a chaotic and busy week online, apparently. There were several dramas that will remind you of the late 2010s, new viral characters, discourse over discourse, and more. Enjoy a recap below.

To be honest, I’m not that moved by this Chanty Beluga business. However, considering it has reached the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow at this point, it is worth mentioning up top today. 

If you haven’t seen Chanty Beluga, I am not surprised. She has amassed just under 120,000 TikTok followers and 36,000 Instagram as of Sunday evening. While she has received millions of views on TikTok, she’s the kind of internet phenomenon that everyone is talking about but isn’t actually that viral in the grand scheme of things. Such hits include “A woman named Chanty Beluga orders a coffee” and “A woman named Chanty Beluga orders an Uber.” The gist of the bit is that her name is weird and she does quirky stuff like order swordfish burritos. That’s what you missed!

In the past week, Courtney O’Donnell, the woman behind the Chanty Beluga character, has been featured in Rolling Stone, Yahoo News, Today, USA Today, and People. From the amount of media coverage she’s received, you’d assume that she’s reached critical mass. But I’d say Yahoo’s Kerry Justich put it best when she wrote that O’Donnell is niche famous, which is basically the nature of the internet these days. (Although, most minor social media stars don’t get this amount of traction.) 

Still, I can’t knock the hustle, especially since O’Donnell told Rolling Stone that she has been making content for eight years. (She also admitted that the simplicity of the bit is silly but noted that that’s what has resonated with viewers.) And her success is further proof that you don’t need a giant audience to find a groove, as the Chanty Beluga character has gotten O’Donnell a brand deal with Verizon and a mention from the MLB. 

Dhar Mann, YouTube’s favorite moral creator, has done a lot of work to grow his brand’s visibility over the past few years. He was already one of the platform’s biggest stars, garnering 27.5 million subscribers from his simplistic—sometimes cringe—videos imparting life lessons onto the youth. Many of those videos have become fodder for YouTube’s commentary ecosystem, which has only added to his notoriety. 

Now, Disney and Dhar Mann Studios have inked a deal to partner on new family content,  according to Variety. Disney has ordered 20 episodes of a new series produced by the YouTuber’s production company.

Say what you want about Disney, but I do think that the kids' media I consumed from them in my youth was pretty complex. From Lizzie McGuire talking about body dysmorphia to That’s So Raven addresses racial bias in hiring, they did make a lot of programming that was entertaining, accessible, and easy to understand. Have they always been perfect? No. But I do feel as though many of the shows from the Golden Age of Disney Channel approach difficult topics with a level of respect for the children watching, which is to say they don’t write stories as if the kids are too dumb to understand the issues at hand.

That’s not something I have ever felt from a Dhar Mann video, as they are typically depicting quite black and white moral lessons. His videos are literally titled “RICH GIRL Won't Let Poor Girl To Her Sleepover” or “SPOILED GIRL Humiliates Her New Maid.” They usually feature comically evil characters that abuse and discriminate against someone who is different from them. These antagonists “instantly regret” their actions or get their “karma.” It’s not dissimilar to those Chinese vertical dramas that have become all the rage over the past year. I suppose this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, we are in an era where streamers and studios are making shows for “second-screen” viewing, meaning the plots are often simple and constantly explained under the assumption that the viewer is only half paying attention.

We’ll see how this partnership goes, but the one thing I hope is that the new series is produced in a safe way. Now that he’s partnering with a major force in the traditional entertainment industry, I can’t help but think about how a handful of his actors went on strike about three years ago, citing poor working conditions including long hours for child actors. All of those cast members who had spoken out were fired. Following the incident, there was much debate over how YouTube productions should manage their sets—and what roles Hollywood unions should play in helping standardize that. It’s an issue that persists to this day, but I hope that a Disney contract would incentivize Mann to run a tight ship. 

Italian brainrot—those absurd AI-generated characters that took over social media last year—is now at the center of a legal battle that could set a precedent for AI art. 

Video game company Do Big Studios and French agency Mementum Lab are fighting over the use of Italian brainrot characters in California court. The former owns the popular Roblox game Steal a Brainrot, which uses the Tung Tung Tung Sahur character made by a creator represented by Mementum Lab. 

After Mementum approached Do Big with a licensing agreement for Tung Tung Tung Sahur, the gaming studio decided to take the agency to court to establish that Mementum’s clients have no copyright protections over the characters because they are AI-generated. 

Momentum filed a counterclaim for trademark infringement, which covers brand identifiers rather than the art itself. In an effort to avoid a larger existential battle over who can own AI art, the agency instead argued that Do Big used Tung Tung Tung Sahur’s name and likeness without the original creator Noxa’s permission. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as AI-generated art is only getting more ubiquitous. 

Every Monday letter gets a playlist. Today, an end-of-summer party playlist with some recently released dance tracks.

In this week’s playlist:

Other things I want to share with you.