How To Win at the Content Creator Casino
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #204 | January 18, 2024 Let the record show, I love a good conference. And this month, creators and brands have been flocking to Las Vegas, first for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, then for Creator Economy Live this past week, followed by the AVN Awards at the end of…
The Tech Ivory Tower Isn’t All It’s Made Out To Be
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #203 | January 16, 2024 Tech layoffs have been constantly crossing our headlines this week. Just yesterday, Google suddenly laid off over 1,000 employees. On Jan. 10, Amazon laid off a whopping 500 people at Twitch, nearly 35% of its staff. On Jan. 11, it was also discovered that Amazon laid off…
The TikTok Feminism Leaving Fox News’ Body in the Elephant Graveyard of Cable Television
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #202 | January 11, 2024 Show of hands: How many of us still have, like, television? I don’t mean the physical object, because this isn’t a poll about whether you own a tv (though that was a fun thing to be mad about in 2014!). Owning a 67″ Samsung OLED 4K flatscreen…
YouTube’s Union Battle With Contractors
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #201 | January 9, 2024 Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced a decision that Google, YouTube’s owner, is pretty unhappy about, according to an appeal filed this week. The NLRB is the federal agency that protects the rights of employees to collectively bargain for things like better working conditions…
Career-Killer Robots
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #200 | January 4, 2024 I’ve been watching this dystopian anime murder mystery Netflix miniseries called “Pluto,” which is basically about a world where artificial intelligence has become so advanced that robots have accumulated similar rights to humans. It’s based on a 2003 manga by Takashi Nagasaki and Naoki Urasawa, whom “Parasite”…
2024 Is the Year for Creators to Keep Their Cash
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #199 | Jan. 2, 2024 Happy New Year, one and all! Hope you all had a good holiday, or, as is more likely for self-employed creators, a solid 45 minutes of family time watching the clock countdown before high-tailing it back to whatever spare room you were using as a makeshift studio/editing…
YOU.0: Some Assembly Required
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #198 | December 28, 2023 Yay, it’s almost time for the season’s best non-denominational holiday: New Year’s Eve. And with it, prerequisite New Year’s Resolutions. In the future, our mutant great-grandchildren (powered by Grok) will convey via Neuralink to Gen X AE A-XV (the autonomous driverless tanks with human souls generation) about…
Here’s to Holiday Home Videos
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #197 | December 26, 2023 When I was a little kid, I used to love making YouTube videos. I was around nine years old when YouTube launched in 2005. Armed with a laptop, a camera, and iMovie, I was truly unstoppable. The holidays were a particularly fun time because I was able…
A Deal You Can’t Refuse, But Should
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #196 | December 21, 2023 It’s the longest night of the year here in the northern hemisphere. Happy solstice to all of y’all who, like me, experience seasonal affective disorder and know the exact moment (10:27pm EST on Dec. 21, 2023) when our half of the earth starts tilting back towards the…
Kill the Hustle-Bro in Your Head
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #195 | December 19, 2023 Yesterday, I was scrolling Threads (yes, it’s still around), and I found this quote that I think captures everything wrong with our work culture in the U.S. (shared by journalist Taylor Lorenz). Your classic creator-economy-hustle-culture-bro type writes it: “I’m sure this will piss off certain people, but:…
