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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…
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And ‘Creator of the Year’ Goes to…
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #163 | August 29, 2023 On this week’s “Fear&” podcast Patreon exclusive episode with creators Will Neff, Hasan Piker, QTCinderella, and AustinShow, streamer QTCinderella (the founder of the Streamer Awards) loudly and proudly said, “Fuck the Streamys.” Why? After creating her own awards show specifically targeting categories of creators left out by…
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We Just Found Out Why Elon’s X is So Bad For Creators
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #162 | August 24, 2023 Yesterday, Passionfruit’s “Reactorverse Podcast” host Eric Rodriguez uploaded a 2-minute hype video onto Twi…. *sigh* X. His fan edit took a scene from the new Disney+/Star Wars show “Ahsoka” — featuring iconic “Rebels” character Sabine Wren playing chicken on her speeder bike with two pilots — and…
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Newsflash: It’s Not a Great Time to Be Making Music on the Internet
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #161 | August 22, 2023 MediaMuv founders Jose “Chenel” Medina Teran and Webster “Yenddi” Batista Fernandez were sentenced yesterday to six and four years in prison, respectively. Their crime? 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money-laundering and aggravated identity theft, taking place over the course of four years and netting the duo…
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CriticGate and MovieTok’s Conflict of Interest
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #160 | August 17, 2023 In an infamous AMC ad, Nicole Kidman wore a glorious sparkly pinstripe jumpsuit and made a good point: When watching movies, all of society comes together—and we are not just entertained, but transformed. Kidman, of course, was paid to say this. While we can appreciate the sincerity…
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Musk and Zuckerberg Pull a Page From Putin’s Playbook
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #159 | August 15, 2023 Back in July 2022, amid an ongoing Dogecoin racketeering lawsuit and a court battle over the future of Twitter, Elon Musk took a little getaway to Mykonos on a $20,000-per-week luxury yacht. When topless photos of the richest man in the world were leaked by paparazzi, the…
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Creators: When Was the Last Time You Took a ‘No Bones Day?’
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #158 | August 10, 2023 In European journalism circles, August is colloquially known as “Cucumber Season.” This, according to Passionfruit’s publisher James Del, is because traditionally, very little happens during the month to move the news media needle forward other than the ripening of certain long, green fruit. (Hey! Cucumbers are fruit!…
