Happy Monday!
I went to the YouTube Creator Premieres event last Thursday and came away with a lot of thoughts, which you can read below. Today’s newsletter also includes links to great criticism, musings on post-literacy, and my favorite YouTube DJ set of late.
For years now, social media has disrupted the traditional entertainment industry, gobbling up everyone’s attention and fundamentally altering people’s capacity to consume creative works. YouTube, as a longtime player in the creator space and the undisputed destination for longform content, became well-positioned to compete with other streamers and TV networks. As such, it has consistently been the No. 1 streamer based on TV watchtime for the past two years, according to Nielsen.
After pulling back from producing original content and letting creators succeed on their own, YouTube has been able to have its cake and eat it too. It gets the eyeballs without incurring any of the risk involved with production. Instead, YouTube has been on an ongoing quest to secure Hollywood accolades and advertisers for its creators in an effort to keep them on the platform. It has been lending its support to channels who have submitted for the awards, including First We Feast (which produces Hot Ones), Mythical Entertainment, Michelle Khare, and Amelia Dimoldenberg (who hosts Chicken Shop Date). Earlier this year, it even hosted its first For Your Consideration event for voters.
Which leads us to the company’s first “Creator Premieres” last Thursday at the Metrograph, an iconic indie theater in New York City.
The event was described as a “one-night-only, 'film festival' style experience” showcasing a selection of the platform’s “must-watch” programming to advertisers. Trailers for new content from Cleo Abram, Mark Vins of Brave Wilderness, and Trevor Noah, Brittany Broski, Deestroying, Dhar Mann, and Ms. Rachel were presented to the audience. The evening was hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum, creator of Recess Therapy. And as if the “new TV” messaging wasn’t already clear, Shapiro-Barnum announced that he was launching YouTube’s first late night show next year called Outside Tonight.
However, as I’ve watched big creators push for more recognition in the traditional media space in recent years, I have been very intrigued by the tensions between art, content, tech, and business that constantly arise. What I’ve noticed about the types of creators that YouTube spotlights is that they often choose the ones with the biggest followings. Sure, they are successful for a reason and they appeal to a lot of people. However, the most popular accounts do not always present the highest quality storytelling or filmmaking. Follower count doesn’t even equate to the most influence, as we saw with the Rolling Stone creator list earlier this year when Caleb Hearon outranked MrBeast, to the latter’s dismay.
Instead, many of the top creators operate not from a place of creativity, but from a business perspective. This is probably very appealing to Hollywood bean counters, but doesn’t lend itself to the best creative work. When you’re publishing at the rate of a MrBeast, or even a “premium narrative content” production like Dhar Mann, you can spend money on big, splashy sets but not a lot on story development. There’s a formula to these videos and it’s very easy to digest, not challenging. Add this to the techpilled “Move fast, break things” mantra that many of these digital production companies have had up to this point, which has led to dangerous on-set environments. Is that really deserving of an Emmy?
This is not to say that everything online is slop (although many people, myself included, spend a lot of time being entertained by videos and memes that are low hanging fruit). In fact, there is incredible creative work posted to the internet everyday — work that may not be possible without the existence of these platforms. Ultimately, while I do think it would be wise for more brands to partner with YouTubers, the goal for wider establishment recognition, such as at the Emmys, is a bit farther off.
I think a lot of YouTubers deserve Emmys (and some literally have!). You will not find anyone more enthusiastic about YouTube’s push to get recognition for its platform and its creators than I am. I just think the presentations reinforced the idea of YouTubers as small fish in a big pond.
By hosting this event at the Metrograph, YouTube was clearly presenting itself as the future of entertainment and culture. But airing some of the content that they did on the big screen had the opposite of the desired effect. In fact, watching these videos in such a large format felt akin to seeing a small child trying on his father’s suit. As much as I love and respect Ms Rachel, I should not be seeing her webcam-shot videos on a screen that big. The closest thing to a premium or prestige offering was a nature documentary on the Galapagos from Brave Wilderness.
We are at an interesting nexus point in the entertainment landscape where film and TV productions are struggling and digital media is booming. Creators across mediums are attempting to balance consumer attention, creativity, and craft. I believe, such as with the advent of TV, that we are in such a nascent stage of digital entertainment that we have not even seen the full artistic potential that YouTube or other social media platforms will be able to unlock for creators. It will simply be an uphill battle due to the place we are in as a culture where the algorithms lowest common denominator stuff.
Every Monday letter gets a playlist. I had a vision of Animal from the Muppets and wanted to make an alternative/rock/post-punk playlist with animal titles.
In this week’s playlist:
Cobra - Geese
Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales - Car Seat Headrest
The Rat - The Walkmen
Gift Horse - IDLES
Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled) - Amyl and the Sniffers
BIRDS - Turnstile
Dog Dribble - Getdown Services
Bug - Fontaines D.C.
Other things I want to share with you.
Workers at Theorist Media, a digital media production company founded by OG YouTubers MatPat and Stephanie Patrick, are unionizing with support from WGAW and the Editors Guild. Theorist is now owned by Lunar X, which declined to voluntarily recognize the union. This is a huge step forward in getting some standards and labor protections for digital media workers, who have been largely been left out of the Hollywood unions to this point. Excited to see how this develops and solidarity with Theorist Media workers.
Dasha Nekrasova, who has acted in Succession and The Materialists, was dropped by talent agency Gersh after she had the far-right, antisemitic political streamer Nick Fuentes on her podcast Red Scare. She was also dropped from the movie Iconoclast, which is, ironically, about a “reclusive young man whose dangerous obsession with a live-streaming influencer increasingly erodes his grip on reality.” I’m surprised it took this long for anyone in Hollywood to notice the podcast episode, which was published a month ago but Deadline reported had only caught wind in the entertainment world last week.
This review of I Love L.A. poses a fascinating dilemma: Are we in a character drought? It does feel as though the main characters of new TV are less memorable than years past, although maybe these recent shows need time to cook.
Off the heels of The Running Man, an argument in favor of remaking bad movies instead of trying to recreate the magic of old hits.
Five years after Quibi died, narrative shows from Chinese production companies, sliced into 60 to 90 second clips, have blown up online. American media companies are interested in a piece of the pie, but would they be able to do it?
I’ve listened to this Black House Radio set from Zack Fox like three times this past week.
The decline in literature is deeply troubling, but perhaps not a new phenomenon. With the rise of technology and fascism across the world, the issue of literacy looks different everywhere. This collection from The Baffler presents seven dispatches from around the world, each with a perspective on our post-literate societies.
The screenplay for Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby is available to read online.
An AI-assisted runaway TikTok hit has been taken off of streaming platforms after listeners began looking into how it was produced.