3 Trends Reshaping the Creator Economy in 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Colin and Samir Show

Episode: 3 Trends Reshaping the Creator Economy in 2026
Date: April 1, 2026
Hosts: Colin and Samir

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Overview

In this episode, Colin and Samir break down the three most significant trends that have defined Q1 2026 for the creator economy and internet culture. They explore the explosive rise of IRL live streaming and the "clipping economy," the rapid evolution (and backlash) of AI-generated video content, and the memeification/gamification of everything from war narratives to internet communities. Their candid discussion examines both the positive and negative impacts of these trends and where they might lead in the coming year.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Ascendance of IRL Live Streaming and the Clipping Economy

[04:55 – 21:54]

• The New Faces of Streaming Fame
  • Discussion begins with Clavicular (Braden Peters), an IRL streamer who became infamous through extreme "looksmaxing" content—emphasizing physical appearance as a means to “ascend” in society.
  • Clavicular's notoriety skyrocketed in just a few months, culminating in a New York Times profile, Fashion Week appearances, and even an SNL skit. His rise illustrates how quickly internet fame can be manufactured through constant streaming and provocative, fringe content.

“The pace at which someone can become a face and a name with a following on the Internet has increased. Now, I think the half life of fame has also gotten shorter.”
— Host 1 [06:39]

• Data on Live Streaming Growth

  • 29% of internet users now tune in to a livestream weekly ([08:04]).
  • Twitch’s IRL category saw a 186% increase in hours watched since 2024 ([08:23]).
  • TikTok Live now surpasses Twitch due to IRL content.

• The Clipping Economy

  • New companies and an entire freelance labor market now exist to clip live streams for viral distribution.
  • Notable stat: Companies like WAP and startups in LA have amassed thousands to millions of editors who are paid per million views generated ([10:53]).
  • This system incentivizes increasingly extreme or novel live and IRL content, amplifying fringe ideas and creating manufactured moments designed for virality.

“While I’m live, I am trying to create insane, chaotic situations that will be clipped and will generate views.”
— Host 1 [11:48]

• Fringe to Mainstream: The Fame Formula

  • Fame now routinely originates on the internet’s fringes before breaking into the mainstream, amplified by controversy, shocking events, and repeated exposure.
  • References to the "Kim Kardashian playbook" and the Trump campaign utilizing media saturation ([13:15]–[13:57]).

• Positive Examples

  • TPBN (a tech and business daily live show) cited as a positive, non-provocative application of the live + clips model. Their success demonstrates that this strategy can build valuable communities—even in "boring" niches—without resorting to chaos ([15:15]–[18:10]).

“My hope is that it continues in the vein of live news in every different industry and sector... where creators truly innovate in a lane that is not just provocative for the sake of eyeballs.”
— Host 2 [20:16]

• Prediction
  • The hosts speculate about live streaming influencing political campaigns and elections, warning of its potential for both connection and chaos ([21:34]–[21:54]).

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2. AI Video: From Creation Boom to Backlash

[21:54 – 29:09]

• Explosion of AI Video Platforms

  • The year started with excitement around OpenAI’s Sora platform, rapid advances from Chinese competitor Seed Dance, and AI-generated viral franchises like "AI Fruit Love Island."

• AI Fruit Love Island as Viral Franchise

  • A TikTok phenomenon featuring AI-generated fruit characters in a Love Island parody. It amassed 3.1M followers and 12–40M views per episode in weeks, but was swiftly removed from multiple platforms amid controversy ([23:10]–[25:10]).

“This feels very new to me—this is a viral franchise. This is new IP. That was the thing that went viral, not just a moment.”
— Host 2 [25:46]

• Sora’s Downfall
  • Despite an initial million users and a massive partnership with Disney for IP licensing, Sora suffered a 66% drop in downloads over three months and shut down, with a reported $1M/day burn rate ([26:32]–[28:10]).
  • Key takeaway: The real appeal was in creating and sharing AI video, not passively consuming it.

“I think it’s a completely misguided assumption. Like, I don’t think we actually enjoy consuming any of it more than we enjoy creating it... AI video, again, is the equivalent of an inside joke.”
— Host 1 [28:13]

• Policy & Platform Challenges
  • Platforms like YouTube and TikTok struggle with moderating novel, creative, and bizarre AI content that doesn’t fit old policy frameworks ([29:09]).

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3. Memeification and Gamification of Everything

[29:09 – 40:27]

• Meme & Gamer Language as Mainstream
  • The “memeification” trend now permeates even the highest levels of government communication. The White House posted meme-edited, video-game-style war footage in official statements after recent global events ([30:52]–[33:19]).

“[Now] the White House is trying to speak the language... of the most important group of people to them. And that language is video game edits.”
— Host 1 [34:12]

• The Sensitivy to Absurdity
  • The internet’s absorption of absurdity and meme language means even serious events (like war or the massive KitKat heist) are recast in humorous, non-serious ways.

“That is what the memeification of everything is—it’s like taking everything and making it less serious.”
— Host 1 [35:12]

• Gamification & Prediction Markets

  • The “casino-ification” of life: platforms Kalshi and Polymarket let users bet on anything, from sports to MrBeast videos to geopolitical events. Market volume jumped from $1.2B/month to $20B/month in just a year ([35:59]).
  • The “stakes” make watching and participating in culture more addictive and entertaining—but introduce profound legal and ethical concerns, as noted with alleged insider trading in big YouTube creators’ teams ([37:32]).

• Cultural Recoil: Retreating to Smaller Spaces and Offline

  • As the public internet becomes louder, more chaotic and absurd, creators and audiences are building or retreating to niche online communities (e.g., Johnny Harris’s Circle, Jay Clouse’s In the Lab) and even seeking the “luxury” of offline, real-world events ([38:19]–[40:27]).

“There was some quote that said, like, offline is the new luxury. And I think that’s really true. I think people seeking out opportunities to be offline is a major thing.”
— Host 1 [40:27]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the economy of viral live stream clips:
  “There’s an economy of clippers... Now there’s incentives for an army of editors to clip live content as it’s happening.”
  — Host 1 [09:37]

• On fame and fringe origins:
  “Fame has always kind of started on the fringes. You have to be different... Fame doesn’t necessarily come from normalcy.”
  — Host 2 [11:59]

• On the mainstreaming of meme language:
  “It’s a bizarre new world... where this language of the internet, of these edits, is being applied to something like war.”
  — Host 2 [32:48]

• On the shift to smaller communities:
  “The Internet’s getting so absurd that our Slack, our company Slack channel, is a safe space for me. And it’s fun... That’s what’s happening with the Internet.”
  — Host 1 [39:21]

• On craving offline interaction:
  “Offline is the new luxury.”
  — Host 1 [40:27]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Live Streaming/Clipping Economy: 04:55–21:54
• AI Video & Its Downfall: 21:54–29:09
• Memeification, Prediction Markets, Niche Community Migration: 29:09–40:27

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Closing Thoughts

Colin and Samir’s episode captures a creator economy transformed by speed, extremity, and absurdity—driven by new economic incentives, technological tools, and the insatiable appetite for novelty. As the public web becomes more chaotic and unpredictable, the hosts note a growing value in slower, smaller, more intentional spaces—both online and offline.

For creators and observers alike, the episode is a cautionary—and sometimes comedic—reflection on the cultural tides shaping our digital future.

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If you have insights or missed trends from this quarter, Colin and Samir encourage comments on Spotify and participation in their upcoming LA event.

“See you next week!”

Transcript

[Host 1]

It is April 1, 2026, which means by most companies standards that is the first quarter of the year.

[Host 2]

And I want you, as you are listening right now, to try and answer the question that we answer in this episode, which is what are the three most important cultural things that happened in this quarter?

[Host 1]

We need to talk about how Markiplier's independent horror film could change Hollywood.

[Guest]

President Trump also weighed in saying the super bowl halftime show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst ever.

[Host 1]

OpenAI saying it's shutting down its video generation platform.

[Host 2]

Sora Clavicular is a looks now if

[Host 1]

you haven't heard of Fruit Love island, it is a unfortunately viral TikTok series.

[Guest]

The White House's war videos are racking up millions of views.

[Host 2]

Does Netflix have the balance sheet to boost its bid for Warner Brothers Discovery

[Guest]

to the extent that over a million YouTube channels each day in December used AI technology in creating those videos?

[Host 1]

In a world where so much happens in a week and in a day, it's actually a really hard question to answer. And as guys who try and distill what happens on the Internet, it's actually an important, important one to answer. And as we tried to go through this exercise of answering what happened this quarter on the Internet, it helped inform some thoughts around where we think the Internet and the creator economy are going

[Host 2]

and in many ways culture in general. What we talk about in this episode gives us a bit of a glimpse of where the world is heading.

[Host 1]

So in this episode, we're going to break down three trends that we wrote down as the biggest trends that we saw in the past three months. We're also going to talk about what that means going forward. If you're listening and you feel like we missed something, feel free to reach out. You can tweet at us, you can comment on this episode, you can email us, you can write us a letter, although you don't know where we are. So don't do that. Just do one of the digital ones.

[Host 2]

Samir, it's getting confusing.

[Host 1]

Okay. All right, well, here's our look back on Q1 2026. All right, April Fool's Day. Who do you think has the best April Fools right now? Like, our feed is about to be flooded. I mean, we're recording this before April Fools, but today, while you're listening to this, while we're all here, it is April 1st.

[Host 2]

I'll tell you who gets me every time.

[Host 1]

Who?

[Host 2]

And this is more of a YouTube thing, but Kelly Wakasa every year uploads some sort of personal vlog where he looks really sad in the thumbnail. It's some sort of apology, and it's just so convincing. And he gets me to click every single year.

[Host 1]

I feel like MKBHD is always good at this, so I would anticipate he has a good one. It's a bizarre week because our feeds are flooded with this KitKat heist, and every company has reacted to the KitKat heist.

[Host 2]

Every company.

[Host 1]

So I wonder if people are gonna play with that or if there's going to be. Who knows? Could be anything.

[Host 2]

It's a good move. I like the official statement.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah, it's fun. It was funny for companies who had to make official statements this week. Yeah, Tough time. Tough time to make an official statement. But here we are, one quarter into 2026. It feels like these three months have been so chaotic and kind of wild on the Internet. I put out a call out on Instagram because, honestly, I was trying to latch on to, what has 2026 been about? It used to feel so clear what the moments were. And it was hard for me as I sat down to write out this quarter in review on the Internet, like, what were the moments this quarter? And so I put a call out on Instagram and they were all over the place. When we took a step back and we. We asked this question to our writers at Publish Press, we asked this question to our team, and we all sat together and tried to write down, like, what were the things that we think defined the first three months of this year and broke them down into three categories? And we'll start with the first one, the continued rise of live streaming. We've talked about live streaming quite a bit, but this has all come to a head in the first three months of this quarter. Like the world of IRL live streaming, the world of business live streaming. Now live has proven to create some of the most culturally relevant characters on the Internet. Ishowspeed is an obvious example. Kai Sanat is an obvious example. And now we have a fellow by the name of Clavicular that I didn't know this name in December. I didn't know this name in January. It hit my texts with a New York Times article. It has hit my feed with clips and videos and insane topics and things that he said. And then it hit the news desks of everyone, most recently because he was arrested. And so I think we should just explain this character Clavicular. And the Atlantic had a great title for their article about him yesterday that just said, what was Clavicular. And I love that it Was in the past tense. So why don't we start by explaining what this is and what it means?

[Host 2]

Okay, so clavicular. His real name is Braden Peters. He is a looks maxer and he's an IRL live streamer. He rose to fame because of his absurd takes, some of his streams that were clipped, which we'll get into, but basically, he is the face of the looks maxing community. And the looks maxing community is essentially an ideology that believes the most important thing in life is how you look. And so you should go to extreme lengths to become more attractive.

[Host 1]

Like, it will help every part of your life to be more attractive. Like, the term he uses is to ascend. To ascend in culture and society.

[Host 2]

So the lengths that this community will go to and that this guy clavicular will go to are bone smashing for a better jawline. So literally, with a hammer hitting your jawline so that the bone grows back, like, bigger, bigger jawline. He has microdosed meth to suppress his appetite. He's taken a lot of testosterone, all sorts of things he has ingested or done to his body for the purpose of sharing with the looksmaxing community how you can become more attractive. Now. It's incredibly misogynistic, racist. It is, without a doubt, you know, something on the fringes. He is a character from the fringes that rose essentially first via Reddit, and to use the looksmaxing vocabulary, has ascended to cultural stardom in a way. Not stardom, but just like. Yeah, I mean, exposure and relevance.

[Host 1]

Yeah, well, I think that's the important thing of, like, is. Is visibility and relevance. Like, what is it? What does it mean in today's world? Because it happens really fast. Andrew Callahan did a. Did an interview with him, and I would suggest, if you're interested in this or if you've heard the name and you don't really know still what we're talking about. I would watch that interview. To me, it's like a result of many things, you know, one of which I think is honestly, like, the loneliness that came from the pandemic and the chronically online isolation from a lot of people. Like, a lot of what we're seeing now, I think is like the slingshot of that experience that we all had. But the pace at which someone can become a face and a name with a following on the Internet has. Has increased. Now, I think the half life of fame has also gotten shorter, like, in terms of how quickly someone's famous. And then will we say this name at the end of this Year? I don't think so. Will we say Clificula at the end of the year? I don't think so. But a lot of this has to do with two factors when it comes to live streaming. The first is just to put some data around the growth of live streaming. Because this guy Clavicular is live every single day on Click on Kick, not Click. This guy Clavicular is live every single day on kik. Well, he was when he wasn't in jail. But weekly livestream viewers, just to understand, like, the Internet's usage. This is a survey from Statista. 29% of all Internet users now watch a live stream every week.

[Host 2]

That's surprising to me.

[Host 1]

A third of all Internet users.

[Host 2]

Now imagine if that included something that originated from a live stream, because that assumes people are actually tuning into the live.

[Host 1]

That's too many.

[Host 2]

Extended that to just anyone who's seen a video clip that originated from a live stream. It would probably be way higher than that.

[Host 1]

The Twitch IRL category. So IRL means like somebody's carrying a camera out into the world, right? So a lot of Clavicular streams are like inside of a bar or like out in the world. So like somebody has a backpack on and they're streaming. Ishowspeed does the same thing. Twitch IRL category has had an 186% increase in hours watched since 2024. 186% increase in hours watched of IRL streams. Streaming used to be like sit in a chair, play games, just chatting, Ludwig Kaisanat. That kind of vibe. It is now like, go out into the world and experience the spontaneity of real life and provoke things to make it more interesting.

[Host 2]

It's primarily that it's the provocation of people that then becomes the clip.

[Host 1]

YouTube Live Over 30% of logged in YouTube users watched live content in Q2 2025, and TikTok Live surpassed Twitch in Q1 2025, largely driven by IRL content. So people are watching more live content. It is inherently more interesting because of how provocative the creators are and also because you don't know what's going to happen next. It is not predictable. It's live. Now, the second thing that has really dramatically propelled live streamers to stardom is the clipping economy. Now, again, I've never watched Clavicular's live streams, but I've seen a lot of clips. They're all over my feed. So if you're not one of these people, one of the 30% of Internet users that are watching a live stream Every week. You still can watch these creators because the clips are all over. And it's not necessarily them who's clipping, it's not their team. There's an economy of clippers. There's companies like wap, there's companies all over. There's a local company here in la, there's a startup founded by a guy named Anthony Fujiwara, and he pays editors anywhere from $300 to $1500 per million views that they generate. So now there's incentives for an army of editors to clip live content as it's happening. So this startup, by the way, has 23,000 editors on their roster as of 2025. WOP, which I mentioned before, is a creator focused platform with millions of clippers. Okay, so they're small, like companies with 10,000 clippers on their roster. WAP has millions of clippers. This is a claim from their side. They've helped generate $1.5 billion in cumulative sales for a lot of these creators. So if you've watched the into the Manosphere documentary, one thing you'll notice is that all those guys are IRL live streamers, but they're also selling financial products or like a course or something to help you ascend, you know, into. Into whatever, you know, version of society they're selling. And clips heavily help you sell those. Obviously, most notably, this kind of originated and started, I think, from the Tate brothers, Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, talking about, I don't even know what they were talking about. Financial freedom, escaping the Matrix. All this to say fame can now be manufactured through clipping and live streaming, gives the source material for clippers. This then creates the situation where while I'm live, I am trying to create insane, chaotic situations that will be clipped and will generate views.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I'm seeing a couple things happen here where first off, fame has always kind of started on the fringes. You have to be different.

[Host 1]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Host 2]

And stand out to even have, I think, the opportunity to be famous. Fame doesn't necessarily come from normalcy. If you look at, you know, I consider actually this quarter, Secret lives of Mormon wives. Yeah, those women to be some of the most popular, most famous, sort of new famous people in culture today. And that, number one, originated from, you know, Mormon culture and the Mormon community, which is on the fringes in many ways and started with a swinging controversy of people, married couples swinging with each other. So I bring that up to say that the formula for fame seems to be one start on the fringes, which clavicular was you know, having this ideology. And then two, lean into the fact that exposure over time will build trust, regardless of whether you are influencing people for the better or the worse. Like, a lot of times in society, we've seen that a cancellation or someone who gets caught committing a crime, some sort of shocking thing, is the impetus for the extreme differentiation of that individual that then leads them to have the ability to have a story that's amplified above other people's.

[Host 1]

Wow, that is really interesting. That is the story of Kim Kardashian. Yeah, yeah.

[Host 2]

Starting with a released sex tape.

[Host 1]

Yes. Yeah. So that's interesting. That basically, like, the provocative moment creates attention. And what we've learned is that attention can create fame, no matter good or bad attention.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

And then the repeated exposure over time just reinforces the fame and just makes you. You are now famous.

[Host 2]

Yeah. And in some ways, you are now trusted. Like, I would argue the. The Trump playbook has been. Exposure over time leads to trust. Even when we talked about the podcast election previously on this episode, the sheer number of podcast appearances that Donald Trump

[Host 1]

did and the time, yeah, he was,

[Host 2]

on comparison to Kamala Harris, it was like he did exponentially more and was available for far more time on the Internet. And so, yeah, I think that's what this showed me. Like, the rise of clavicular proves to me that this is, for better or worse, a model for fame that is being expedited now.

[Host 1]

Yeah. And when I talk about fame, like, there's Internet fame and then there's, like, crossing over to the mainstream. And I think that that's. That's up for debate how you decipher that. But one of the markers for me is snl, and he was spoofed on snl. Clavicular. They did a skit about him. He was in the New York Times. He had a GQ profile. He walked in New York Fashion Week. So even the fact that mainstream outlets are rewarding it or paying attention to it or giving it more attention, to me, that signifies, again, the only place that's happening right now is live streaming. I don't think we're having net new celebrities or net new stars emerge from any other platform outside of live streaming right now.

[Host 2]

Because the recipe for live streaming is do something crazy.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Get clipped. That moment gets exposure.

[Host 1]

And there's an economy around clipping. So, like, everyone's incentivized in this infrastructure. Everyone. The platform like Kik. Incentivized to push clavicular. Clavicular. Incentivized to do something crazy on camera. The clippers incentivized to get him millions and millions and millions of views and make him ever present on the Internet. Everyone's incentive. Incentivized. And then you also have, like, the New York Times incentivized drive clicks because this guy's controversial and crazy, and he has crazy terms like looks, maxing, and he's hammering his face. Like, all of it is good for business. Okay, so the clavicular story is a dark story. Just like, in my opinion, that's dark. It's not a success story. It feels like a cautionary tale for everyone. I mean, just this past week, he was arrested on battery charges for allegedly instigating a fight between two women and filming it for his stream. So, like, this, to me, is dark. There is a light side of this. The strategy we just said go live every day, have, like, an ideology clip to create relevance has been used by a group of creators who've been named one of Fast Company's most innovative companies of the year, and that's tpbn. We interviewed them on this show, and I think they represent the other lane of what we're talking about here. They represent, like, a lot of hope for me on the Internet of building small communities and making something fun and valuable. And show me the value of live streaming. So this is a daily technology and business show that's hosted by two guys named John and Jordi, and they stream for three hours a day. Their concurrent viewership can be anywhere from like, 3,000 to 10,000 people on YouTube and Twitter. They have 312,000 Twitter followers, 58,000 subscribers on YouTube. And by every traditional metric, they are small or niche in this. This world of the creator economy, but they are an absolute powerhouse media company. Like, reportedly, and kind of just by back of the napkin math, you can. You can estimate their revenue. They're doing around $20 million in advertising, and they're using the same strategy. They're live every day. They talk about things that they're passionate about. They create a space for an underserved community, which was, you know, the world of technology. The engineers at a lot of the companies that are building tech, people who wanted to have, like, a cooler place to talk about tech and business, and it's working.

[Host 2]

Yeah, I like this story because these guys are not necessarily provocative. They might be provocative in the way that they reimagined tech news, tech and business news, but they are by no means going to extreme lengths to create clips that are universally interesting to anyone in the world, because they are shocking. You know, they are Streaming three hours a day. And for them, the provocative clip is maybe something that a tech CEO says about a new product. Right. And it's provocative and interesting to that community that they are serving.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I'll say. Like, some of the more recent clips have been like Mark Cuban talking about this moment for young people and jobs. There was a very big moment on Twitter, which was Travis Kalanak, the founder of Uber, his first interview since Uber was on tpbn talking to these guys. And like I said, the concurrent viewership is not huge, anywhere from like 3 to 10 to 20,000 people. But daily viewership of TPBN is large because of the quantity of clips. I think they said they do, like, I don't know, probably 20 to like maybe 30 clips a day across all platforms. It's like everywhere. So if you're in this world of business and tech, you cannot be on the Internet without TPBN in your feed somewhere. And it's showing me how valuable live streaming is and how valuable it is that, like, again, they emerged really fast. And I think if you're live every single day and your clips are new and fresh every day, you are exactly what you just said. Trust is built by exposure over time. And adopting the, you know, like the live streaming playbook for a different context has proven to work. There are countless copies of this show now in every category. Everyone wants this to make this show now. Everyone. I think everyone's dream is to. To go live. My dream is to go live. I think it's easier to go live as a company.

[Host 2]

That's what I think is appealing about it, is that it takes the pressure off of the editing, the value per second that you feel you need to jam into a video. Yeah, it's just, yeah, I can exist and be myself for three hours and even if I say one good thing or one interesting moment happens, it was worth it.

[Host 1]

So I think if we're looking forward here, I think we will continue to see a rise in live streaming. I think there's an appetite from the audience, and then again, I think it provides amazing source material for clipping. And the clipping economy is not going anywhere. You know, people getting paid to generate clips on your behalf, that to me is like the gig economy of our world and it is only going to increase. And so I would imagine that we're going to see a lot more launches of live streaming shows.

[Host 2]

My hope is that it continues in the vein of live news in every different industry and sector. And live news, live sports, it's going to Be interesting to see where creators truly innovate in a lane that is not just provocative for the sake of eyeballs.

[Host 1]

Yeah. I hope we see more TPBNs, more innovation in the space. But the positive will always come with the negative. There's going to be chaos as well. You know, I think my hope is that there's more of a crackdown from the platforms in terms of what you can film.

[Host 2]

The problem is the sheer mass of clips that come from the chaos will always overpower the clips that come from.

[Host 1]

It's more interesting to look at a car crash.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Plain and simple. So who knows what'll happen? But I think live streaming will continue to shape what happens next. I'm really curious if we're going to see any of it in the context of political campaigns and elections as we get to the midterms and considering we saw different media strategies used at different elections. Podcast election for the presidential election, Instagram election for the New York mayoral election. Are we going to see a live streamed campaign or somebody who's like, every day leading up to, you know, the election, they're live.

[Host 2]

It's pretty dangerous strategy.

[Host 1]

That's a very.

[Host 2]

I say that dangerous meaning, like, powerful strategy to. The problem is it's going to be whoever adopts that will perform better with a more provocative.

[Host 1]

More provocative content. Content. Yes. Yeah.

[Host 2]

So we'll see what plays out, but I. I think that's a pretty solid prediction that the next election will have some live streaming. Yeah.

[Guest]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

The second thing that feels like we can't not talk about it is the insane evolution of AI video over the past three months, where we started on January 1st with AI video to then the launch of Sora and like the weird ability to use everybody's face and see Jake Paul all over the Internet and Sam Altman all over the Internet to then the launch of Seed Dance, the Chinese AI platform, or AI model that was able to generate like insane movie quality, you know, Higgs Field and all these. All these AI platforms that just emerged and flooded our feeds all have resulted in like this really insane kind of acceleration of what's happening in video and what's happening in content, leading us all the way up to. At the end of this quarter. Within the past week, one of the most bizarre things I've seen, which is AI Fruit Love island. Catching steam, maybe you can expect.

[Host 2]

Catching steam. It's already over.

[Host 1]

It's already over. But it was like. It was like maybe the most popular show of the quarter. It was like heated rivalries and AI Fruit Love Island. Those were like, the two biggest shows.

[Host 2]

Wow. We didn't even bring up heated rivalry. This is the first time we're bringing up heated rivalry.

[Host 1]

I brought it up. It's up now. Consider it being brought up.

[Host 2]

Okay.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Great.

[Host 2]

Yeah. AI Fruit Love Island. First off, if you haven't seen Love Island, I would recommend you actually truly watch a season of Love Island. Probably Australia season one or UK season two, if we're just getting started.

[Host 1]

I love that you are an encyclopedia of Love island seasons.

[Host 2]

I truly believe it is one of the best reality TV shows. But that's not what we're talking about on this episode. AI Fruit Love island is scripted, short form made with AI skits, largely about interpersonal relationships and drama, Very much like Love island was. Instead of people, the skits are played out through fruit personified as people. And it is also kind of a car crash that you cannot look away. It was launched on TikTok March 13, has 3.1 million followers, or had, I will say. And the viewership ranges from 12 million to 40 million per episode.

[Host 1]

Now there's storylines of an apple falling in love with a mango while being jealous of a banana.

[Host 2]

That's a great retelling of the story.

[Host 1]

Yeah. I just want people to understand what the narratives are that we're following.

[Host 2]

So what happened here is actually there have been takedowns of the channel. Specifically, there was a takedown of the channel on YouTube. TikTok took down over half of the episodes, largely without explanation, as far as we know. And the creator of this franchise kind of lashed out and spoke out, angry at all of the hate that they were receiving in the comments, you know, these platforms. Taking down his AI series and pledged to come back even stronger, which apparently he did because he launched a new channel very recently, actually, where they're not personified as fruit. They actually look like humans. Okay, so everyone's still with me?

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still with you.

[Host 2]

I swear, there's a point here. So this. I keep calling it a franchise because I think that's actually what matters. So traditionally, we're used to seeing viral moments on short form feeds. The hawktua girl, like Haley Welch became a viral moment, and we're used to humans being the viral moment that then takes off. And like you said earlier, there's a shelf life normally to that fame. If you look back even to the Ellen show, Ellen always had the person of the moment. Remember, like the damn Daniel kids.

[Host 1]

Damn Daniel kids.

[Host 2]

Yeah, yeah. So she would always have the person of the moment on the Internet on her show during that time. And that's kind of what we're used to. If you want to build a franchise that gets popular traditionally, you can't really do it in a viral form in a very short amount of time. Like this did, being launched only in March. This feels very new to me that this is a viral franchise. This is new ip. That was the thing that went viral, not just a moment. And I think that's what's interesting here, and that's what we're going to see more of because of AI video. We will see people build entire worlds and franchises in very short amounts of time that are able to get popular very quickly.

[Host 1]

I think the other thing that happened in AI this quarter is Sora launched from OpenAI again. We saw like these cameos of creators like Jake Paul and people using each other's faces. And it was a social feed of AI Video. And at the end of this quarter, about two weeks ago, they announced they were killing the app, shutting it down. So some stats around Sora, the burn rate was roughly a million dollars a day to run this thing, to run this app. Their peak users were around a million and collapsed to under half a million by the time of the shutdown. They saw a Download decline of 66%. So 66% drop from November 2025 to February 2026. And the biggest news around this was that there was a Disney deal attached to this, that Disney had given their ip, licensed their IP to Sora, and they were set to invest over a billion dollars into OpenAI. And that was a really big deal to go. Okay, this major movie company is saying you can use our characters and people can use our characters to create video with. Now, I think one thing that's important to talk about here in terms of, like this sophomore year of AI Video, as I think about it, is the question of if we enjoy consuming it or not. Like, for real, do we enjoy consuming it or creating it? And Sora was this feed of AI video. Once you did it, once the novelty wore off, in my opinion. And I like when I was playing with it, I just thought it was interesting to create. And then I thought it was interesting to download my creations and text them to my friends. I didn't care that there was a feed.

[Host 2]

It was a tool. It wasn't an entertainment feed, but it

[Host 1]

was built as a. As a social feed and a social platform. But I think it's a completely misguided assumption. Like, I don't think we actually enjoy consuming any of it more than we enjoy creating it. And if we're creating it, it's mostly for private consumption, mostly to show our friends or to laugh. To me, AI video, again, is the equivalent of an inside joke. So wherever an inside joke can go is where it would go. Sometimes inside jokes become big on the Internet, like AI Fruit Love island, but the majority of AI video is built for private consumption. So I think if the first three months showed us anything, it's that there's only going to be an exponential increase in this type of content across platforms. And some of it is going to be enjoyed by audiences, some of it's going to be bizarre. But the platforms are going to have to reckon with policies. They're going to have to reckon with also. Just like, what do you do with this much content with YouTube? Like, there's no clear policy that covers AI fruit Love Island.

[Host 2]

Right.

[Host 1]

Like, it's not impersonating a real person, it's not mass produced spam. It's actually original, it's weird and it's creative AI content. So there's, there's like. It's almost like the policies in January that Neil put out in his letter are, are written for one era of the Internet and we've already moved on to the next era. Yeah, that's what feels crazy to me right now. All right, so the third trend to me feels like the memeification and the gamification of everything. So when I think about the early days of the Internet, the Internet was kind of a place that was originally understood by people who played video games and people who were into computer science. I remember my uncle, who's an engineer, he would play these games and he would show me how to play, but you had to know code to play the games. And he was really good with computers and that because that was the first crop of people who started using the Internet, there was like a language to it, jokes to that, that. I think the Internet has actually just carried on over the past 35, 40 years of like, like memes and jokes and stuff that you find in like Reddit threads and Discord servers. Right.

[Host 2]

I mean, the term looks maxing.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Actually even has its origins in gaming.

[Host 1]

Oh, really?

[Host 2]

Yeah. You know, when you've ever played maybe Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and you'll get a certain amount of coins or money to put towards your character and you can either buy a new board or you can increase the height of your ollie looks. Maxing in a game is just taking all of those funds and coins and putting them towards your physical Appearance in the game. Huh?

[Host 1]

That's really interesting. Yeah. So I've kind of always said that I think everything that becomes successful on the Internet is kind of rooted in video games. And to cut to the chase here, I think the thing that we all kept bringing up is how memes have entered into the world of the White House. And largely under this Trump presidency, we've seen like memes be like a primary language tool to explain to the public what's happening or like hype up the public what's happening. And something that we saw most recently is after three days after the US Strikes Iran, the official White House Twitter account began posting videos that were mixed real war footage with clips from video games and TV shows. And they were like hype reels that were memes and mashups of what was happening. It was almost like fan edits that you'd see on TikTok, but from the official White House account. And to me, that feels like the sensitivity to absurdity has gone up because the past 40 years of the Internet have been mostly based on memes, jokes making everything light hearted, joking about anything absurd. And our capacity to watch something that is absurd and just accept it has gone through the roof. And now we have the, you know, the White House, the like, government of the United States putting out video game style edits of real war footage. This reminds me of like when Call of Duty was becoming a big thing. Like you go back to YouTube, the early days of YouTube was people playing Call of Duty. Right. Like war edits, but from a video game.

[Host 2]

This is like, yeah, it's a bizarre new world that we've entered into where this language of the Internet of these edits is being applied to something like war. Because traditionally war was covered on the news in a certain type of way. Even the military, the way that the military interacted with culture, whether it was a military parade or when you see the jet planes that fly over, you know, before the Super Bowl.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Like those are, those are, in a way, that's the language of the era, that of media that they came up in, of people are going to live entertainment. Let's have the military fly over. So it's cool and it's, it's.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 2]

Accessible to these people. Let's have a military parade so people come and enjoy this. Right. Like those were. That was the medium for the time. The news was the medium for the time. And the storytelling language today are these edits and to see it adopted. And it's really the storytelling language of, of young men on the Internet.

[Host 1]

I think that's what I was going to say is important is, like, whose language is being spoken right now and what is it telling us? Right. And it is that, like, the White House is trying to speak the language of, like, the most important group of people to them. Right. And that language is. Is video game edits.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

And it's the language where, like, you show something and. And somebody goes, oh, that's sick. Or, oh, that's cool. And. Or goes, that's funny. And you're noticing that, like, this kind of thing of, like, that's funny is the way to communicate something, no matter how serious it is.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

And I think this, what the signals to me is that, like, the Internet will increase in its absurdity over the next couple months, that the things that we see, we will be like, whoa, I didn't know that was going to be something I saw today. And then you'll move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I think to contrast this where, like, the memeification of everything is something, you know, we're seeing across the Internet back to the KitKat thing. That's been a very funny version of a meme where, like, KitKat had 12 tons of KitKat stolen. But, like, it's made into a funny thing. Everyone is like, that's funny and adopts it as a funny thing.

[Host 2]

It's not serious.

[Host 1]

It's not serious. But I think that is what the memeification of everything is. It's like taking everything and making it less serious. The other side of this, or the additional side of this, of, like, the video gamification of everything, I think is looking at, like, if the meme layer has turned reality into, you know, comedy and absurdity. We saw the other side, which is prediction markets turning the Internet and turning life into, like, a casino. And that casino, by the way, is, like, booming. It's one of the biggest businesses on the Internet. So prediction markets are mostly led by two companies called Kalshi and Polymarket. And they've exploded from $1.2 billion a month in activity at the start of 2025 to over $20 billion a month just one year later.

[Host 2]

I mean. I mean, I've even noticed it just, you know, at this, watching the super bowl this year, like, most of the people around me were placing bets on these platforms or were talking about it, whereas, I think, you know, sports betting, some of these websites were more specific to sports betting. And now it's just like Kalshi and Polymarket have become universal for just betting and gambling on absolutely anything.

[Host 1]

I mean, kalshi, by the way, it's an Arabic term that means everything.

[Host 2]

There you go.

[Host 1]

And the CEO of the company said his plan is to turn everything into a financial asset and allow you to bet on everything.

[Host 2]

Yeah. And to take a step back and talk about why we think this is happening. As the world gets more absurd, you have to go to more absurd lengths to capture people's attention.

[Host 1]

Yes.

[Host 2]

What better way to capture someone's attention than putting real stakes on the line as they're watching to win or to lose. Truly, by the end of watching this experience, which is why sports betting became so popular, because you could win or lose watching a game you actually don't even really care about. You might not even care who these people are who are competing against each other. You may have no skin in the game, but it gets infinitely more interesting if you can win or lose by the time it's done. So apply that to anything.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

Whether Mr. Beast is going to upload a certain video that's going to get a certain amount of views war, it all becomes, unfortunately, more interesting and more fun and more fun. Like a video game when you can win it or lose it.

[Host 1]

Exactly. And this has crossed over into our world, where we saw an editor at Mr. Beast was charged allegedly with insider trading because he had placed a bet on something Mr. Beast was going to do. And obviously he edits the video, so he had knowledge of it. And it feels like a crazy thing that's happening in our world. But all this to say where I want to go with this is I think what's happening as a result of all of this absurdity on the Internet is the inverse effect of people doing two things. One, finding smaller spaces on the Internet, like the public square is getting too crazy, and then also just being offline. And the first is something I'm noticing is, like, Johnny Harris, great example, launched a community on Circle called New Press, which is, like, all about his community coming together to talk about the news and write about what they care about. And I'm noticing that movement a lot more. There's another creator named Jay Clouse who has a community called in the Lab. I've met a ton of people from this community. There's 500 people in this community. They all love it. They've met their best friends in that community. They hang out in that community every day. I've talked to some people, like, why don't you leave? And they're like, I like it there. And I'm like, oh, what's happening here is almost like you live in Las Vegas and there's the Las Vegas Strip and the chaos of the lights and the casino, and everything's like, everyone's coming at you and it's all crazy. But down the street there's a cool coffee shop, and your friends hang out there and you want to go get some fresh air and go hang out there. That's what's happening with the Internet is like, the Internet's getting so absurd that our Slack, our company, Slack Channel, is a safe space for me. And it's fun and I get to make a joke and people thumbs up it, and I'm like, that's cool. I like that.

[Host 2]

Yeah, you're the boss, though.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's true. They have to like that. But you know what I mean. The group chat is more fun, of course.

[Host 2]

I mean, I think about being a creator. There are many different spaces right now that I share. The easiest, most carefree, flowing space for me to share is probably my Instagram DM group with my buddies Marty and Ben from college.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Host 2]

It's like, it's just flowing. I don't think about it. It's just a safe space to share. And then sometimes the hardest place to share is our YouTube channel, where everyone potentially could see it.

[Host 1]

Right. And where there's so much happening on the platform, like. And again, the rise of just the

[Host 2]

context that you're throwing your video into is this noise. It is loud. It is hectic.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Host 2]

And that's what. When we make a video for the main channel, you know, it's existing in that landscape. And that's very different than making something for five people in a group chat or 100 people or a thousand people in a specific online community.

[Host 1]

And again, I think that's the second outcome of this, is people going offline. There was some quote that said, like, offline is the new luxury. And I think that's really true. I think people seeking out opportunities to be offline is a major thing. It's also why we've invested in putting on more events, which, by the way, we have one coming up May 28th in Los Angeles. Press Publish LA. We're just looking at the branding for it right before this, which will be out soon. But if you want to come, press publish la, get offline, feel luxurious. Feel luxurious. Yeah. Feel the luxury of being in person with 500 creators of the absence of the Internet. That's funny. Yeah. But, yeah, I think this absurdity of everything is having some positive outcomes, which is people finding smaller spaces, people valuing smaller spaces, and people valuing being offline because it's like, it's a crazy place right now. All right, thanks, everyone, for listening again. If you want to come hang out in Los Angeles Press, publish LA is happening May 28th. And if you have thoughts on things that we missed, I really love reading the comments on Spotify. So if you're listening on Spotify, leave a comment. All right, see you next week.