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The Creator Economy’s COVID Problem
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #173 | Sept. 28, 2023 This weekend, I was scheduled to moderate an LGBTQ+ panel in Baltimore at the go-to convention for creators, VidCon. I was so excited. The panelists were some of my favorite creators — iconic video essayist ContraPoints, queer TikTok icon Cristian Dennis, our club-kid bimbo representative Griffin Maxwell…
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Which Came First: Content or Community?
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #172 | Sept. 28, 2023 Back when I was the publisher of Futurism dot com, I used to go on stage at dorky futurist conferences and tell people “there was more content produced in the last hour than in all of 1990.” Just in terms of raw hours filmed, words published, songs…
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A Love Letter to the Writers Strike
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #171 | Sept. 26, 2023 After a weekend of deliberations, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced on Sunday night that they have come to a tentative agreement for 3-year-contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) — one they assure writers is “exceptional” and guarantees substantial “gains and…
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In the Wake of Kast Media’s Crumbling, Smaller Channels Take Heaviest Hits
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #170 | Sept. 21, 2023 If you haven’t heard the news about Kast Media and why we are all so very angry at them, it’s not because you’ve been living under a rock. It’s actually the opposite: If you haven’t been hearing about the podcast ad agency that made millions on multi-year…
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Red-Pilled Children in Trucker Hats
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #169 | September 19, 2023 Yesterday, I had the unfortunate luck of setting my eyes upon a viral clip of a fan meet-and-greet gone wrong with a notoriously transphobic, YouTube-banned, self-proclaimed Red Pilled Rumble streamer known as “Sneako.” In the video, three little boys (probably around 12 years old?) dressed up as…
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Maher’s Attacks
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #168 | September 14, 2023 Sorry guys, newsletter went to print super late today; had some emergency medical issues today. Don’t worry about it, I’m fine, but the regularly scheduled programming of why the striking writers’ unemployment benefits should be a goal for creators and what that might look like will have to…
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RIP My Idolization of Drew Barrymore
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #167 | Sept. 12, 2023 As a baby of the late 1990s, I first met Drew Barrymore as a fairy princess in “Ever After.” She was my grungey teenage fashion mentor. And as a fellow little girl frightened and delighted by extraterrestrials, I loved her in “E.T.” My parasocial relationship with Barrymore…
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How Late Night Hosts are Coping with the Strikes: The Good, the Fallon and Whatever Is Going On with Bill Maher
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #166 | September 7, 2023 The members that make up the Writers Guild of America are as much content creators as those who appear in front of the screen, but without the glimmer of celebrity to keep them in the news cycle. The fact that they’ve been on strike for 128 days…
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Cold Anger and Cool Labor Fall
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #165 | Sept 5, 2023 This Labor Day weekend, I decided to return to a book that once changed my thinking about political organizing when I was in college. “Cold Anger” follows a successful social justice organizing campaign from activists Saul Alinsky, Ed Chambers, and Ernie Cortes, and the Industrial Areas Foundation…
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Creators Deserve a Guild. Just Not This One.
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #164 | August 31, 2023 It’s Hot Labor Day weekend y’all, and there’s no better time to check in to see how all the recent unionization efforts have been going. SAG and the WGA are on still on strike against the AMPTP, which has countered their proposal for renegotiations with a resounding…
