If you were to put my content diet on a plate, it would be equal parts snacks and salads. I love my Ezra Kleins; my Ethan Mollicks; my Douglas Hofstadters. But I also love my guilty pleasures: random internet gossip channels on Youtube, and Instagram reels of regurgitated TikToks with no real substance to speak of. Just straight sugar highs and quick dopamine hits.
My favourite content, of course, is the “healthy snack” — high caliber research trussed up as sweet treats: edutainment at its best.
Not so much ELI5, but more so ELII — Explain it Like It’s Interesting.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trust in a post-truth society, and I’ve started to feel like it’s the folks who know how to ELII that equate the highest signal of trust. In the same way that we use ELI5 to assess intellect (if you can explain it to me like I’m 5, then you actually know your material), perhaps people who know how to take the content they consume and remix it for an entirely separate audience are the most objective in their thinking.
It takes fluency in multiple media languages for someone like
to distill dull economic insights and current events down to fast-paced TikToks for a Gen Z audience with absolutely no prior interest in politics. For video essayists like Milo and Pete Judo to capture my attention debunking archeological conspiracies and academic plagiarism, they need to know how to cite their sources — boring, academic papers — and put on a show. (Or “sensationalized reaction content”, as Milo puts it.)And becoming fluent takes venturing outside of your content bubble; it takes being open to challenging your own worldview.
In this conversation with
, talks about feeding her TikTok algo like a Tamagotchi: “I’m pretty obsessive about liking and bookmarking the TikToks that I want to see more of and manually punching the “not interested” button on things that I don’t want to see. As a result, my feed is very tailored to my professional interests.”She expands on this a little more in one of her own blog posts —
My approach to content algorithms is a little less nuanced, which is to say, I click on whatever piques my interest and see where it takes me.
People talk about avoiding “mainstream” media, whether pop music, or viral TikToks, or trending midwit memes — but that’s also how you get platform literate. The content formulas that work on Youtube are not the same as what works on X, or Warpcast, or Instagram, or whatever, and understanding how to shape your narrative within the construct of a specific platform dialect is how you get fluent at translating content across contexts.
Maybe simpler put: modern art appeals to a different demographic than baroque aesthetics do, and if you were to put up a Renaissance painting in a modern art museum, you wouldn’t be doing a very good job at catering to your chosen audience. Reinterpreting that work requisites multilingual proficiency, if you will.
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Recently, Angelika Oles — a drama channel I don't subscribe to, but whose videos I almost always watch when she pops up in my recommended — posted this video absconding Watcher’s decision to move their content off of Youtube and over to their own paywalled platform.
Typically when Angelika posts, I might not be invested in the drama, but I generally get her take. This time around, I found myself confused by her critique.
Watcher is a BuzzFeed spin-off trio similar to the likes of Try Guys (RIP that scandal). They produce a variety of high production shows. Formerly the co-hosts of Worth It & BuzzFeed Unsolved (with episodes still streaming on Hulu), their Youtube channel touts well-researched series like “Puppet History” and “Mystery Files”. They put hard work into their content — and it shows.
It didn’t seem all that weird to me that they would want more ownership for that work. One of the biggest reasons the trio gives for moving over to their own platform is that they want to be less reliant on ads and sponsors. That made total sense, I thought!
My intro into crypto had been this essay by
and (both of whom I later had the absolute pleasure of working with), which delves* into the ways that onchain rails empower internet creators through ownership and autonomy.*Ha ha, sorry PG — but also, check out this analysis on the whole “delve” debacle!
A core premise of the onchain creator economy is moving away from ad-funded models towards “direct-to-creator” revenue streams. It’s the 100 true fans theory on steroids. There’s something puritan about being supported purely by patronage, and for disciples of the passion economy (né creator economy), that’s the North Star of content creation.
And by disciples, I don’t just mean creators — I mean consumers, too.
It’s the basic economic principle of luxury goods, after all: higher prices signal higher quality; if you have the income to spare, you spend it on luxury.
That’s the signal that Watcher sends when they make the move from Youtube to self-hosted platform — that they are worth it.
But that’s not how Angelika saw it — nor was it Amanda’s perspective. For both of them, advertising and creating go hand-in-hand; it’s an incredulous thing to say that you’re above AdSense and sponsorships. And if that’s not enough for you, then make a Patreon, or go sell some merch! Don’t ask your audience to move over to an entirely separate platform just for you — not to mention, one that costs almost as much as a Netflix subscription. Affordable price point, my ass (that’s me paraphrasing, fyi).
Amanda adds an additional point: you don’t need high production videos to do well on Youtube. You can do well as a Youtuber just sitting in your room, talking to a camera.
In fact, Watcher already has a Patreon — with subscriptions ranging from $5-100 (yes, $100!!!) per month. If they were just looking to up their cash flow, the easier approach would be to bring better exposure to their Patreon page, and pad up paid perks.
But that’s not what they want.
Watcher describes themselves as producers of “television-caliber” (but un-scripted) content. In their announcement video, they make that very clear. Their goal has always been to produce a television show, and they started to feel like Youtube wasn’t the best place for that.
They had never planned to become “Youtubers”. Youtube was simply their distribution channel, for lack of a better platform.
I think Philip DeFranco theorizes it best in his recap: Dropout TV (formerly CollegeHumor) had switched over to paid subscriptions, and the Watcher crew probably figured there was enough overlap between the two channels (and their audiences) that this model would work for them too.
That they had planned to put all their previously free content on Youtube behind their platform paywall hints at more too, I think. With their own streaming service, they aren’t looking for a Patreon substitute. Watcher TV seems to be their first step towards becoming a full-fledged production studio — one that costs as much as Netflix, because it is a Netflix.
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Back in 2020,
wrote that the “creator economy needs a middle class”. In the era of TikTok dances galore, it was true that network effects favoured the socially rich. Those that got viral stayed viral, and those that didn’t were attention deficit.That’s still true today, to be fair. But since the release of that original essay, the landscape has become a lot more prosperous to smaller creators.
The main reason I see for this is the role of advertisers in supporting creators. I wasn’t as in tune — ideologically — with the passion economy landscape back then (granted, Li had quite literally just invented it, so to speak), but in 2020, advertisers were kinda the ticket to big name success.
In the same way that audience-led patronage marks “upper class” creators today, that was the difference between middling creators versus thriving ones back then: were you attractive to sponsors, or were you funded only by AdSense? In order to become a full-time creator, you needed to build enough of a following to move from the latter to the former; otherwise, like Li speaks to, the infrastructures offered by platforms alone weren’t enough to sustain a living as a creative.
But what we’ve seen since is a different kind of ticket to success. For creators today, like Sari and Jad allude to in their analysis, the golden ticket is not sponsorships, but rather, independence or interdependence from your distribution channel.
Here’s how
puts it:
Today, it’s a status game — one where status is tied to creative autonomy. Creators don’t just want consistent cash flow: they want to expand beyond the limits of the platforms they post on. Addison stars in blockbusters now; the D’Amelios have their own reality show.
What that means is that as viral creators get bigger, they post less on their native social media platforms: TikTok, and Youtube, and X are just jumping grounds for popular creators to leapfrog into the upper echelons of the creator society.
As the rich get richer, they reinvent themselves — and purchase new social property, in turn. Social property that they can own, and manage, and nurture.
Like Watcher’s new media estate.
Suddenly, all of the lots that had been previously occupied by larger creators on legacy platforms are left vacant…and along with these empty homes are advertisers left without creators to rent attention from.
As middle class creators graduate out of sponsorships and AdSense and into ownable “property”, there’s more room for niche creators to move into the limelight of ad-funded distribution channels. We’ve seen a massive uptick in outreach to micro-influencers, and while the 100 true fans ethos may still be out of reach for “middle class” creators, the 1000 true fans principle is not.
Colin and Samir say this too: ad spend is growing, and long tail creators are safe.
And it isn’t just that niche creators now have more distributed access to revenue — ads and sponsorships are a game their audiences are in on. While the problem with credibility and integrity is an ongoing one, it’s also a mass inside joke between Youtubers and their fans when a company like Raid Shadow Legends sponsors a video.
You’ll see this with most niche creators; they’ll introduce the ad roll and cut in a laugh to indicate to viewers that it’s an insincere sponsorship (not naming names because I’m not a snitch!) There are certain sponsors in the space that are known scams, and fans are all for their favourite creators “getting that bag” from these advertisers.
We talk a lot about how in social media, the consumer is the product, because advertisers are in fact the primary consumer — but this new kinship between creators and their fans is flipping the script. Now, advertisers are being exploited (in a good way!) and content consumers and creators share in that upside.
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Last month, Watcher jumped ship from Youtube and expected their audience to leap with them.
But what happens when your audience doesn’t want to leave — or can’t afford to?
If you’re reading this essay, I’m guessing that you’re a paid subscriber to at least a couple Substack blogs. SOTA, Newcomer, and The Generalist cost $10, $20, and $22/month respectively — subscribe to all three, and that’s more than the price of ad-free Netflix & Hulu combined.
And yet: the biggest backlash Watcher got from audiences was calling their $6 subscription “affordable”.
“Luxury media” is a term I’m appropriating from Steph and
, who memed the concept last year. It’s a step up from the direct-to-creator revenue models we spoke about earlier: by “luxury”, Steph and Jihad are literally comparing media brands and internet creators to prestige fashion brands like Gucci and Balenciaga.If audience-led patronage marks upper-class creators today, then community-led content/culture creation is what marks luxury creators tomorrow — the thesis here is that luxury online is defined by subcultures, and subcultures proliferate through content derivatives & remixes.
But I think there’s another component of luxury we don’t talk about enough: platforms.
Specifically, where you post content.
The luxury creator is post-platform; they’ve expanded beyond the confines of any centralized platform economy and are supported purely by their community…and likely onchain microtransactions.**
**This is a much longer discussion that I will save for a shorter essay!
The pre-luxury, upper class creator is cross-platform; they’re either making money off of multiple distribution channels, and/or moving everything over to a self-hosted site.
But the upper middle class creator — creators like Watcher, pre their platform decision — have built a following based on platform population. Here’s the best way I can put this: Watcher aspires to be a Renaissance artist, displaying their work in the Met. But Youtube — MOMA — was an easy early distribution channel, and luckily, it turns out that their Baroque aesthetics also appeal to a modern art crowd who frequent the Youtube locale. But they’re stuck making in-between content until they can find enough Renaissance consumers to reach that critical mass (ie 1000 true fans) and move off Youtube.
And the reception to their original Watcher TV announcement implies that so far, they haven’t met the market for that audience niche…yet.
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I don’t know what the right move for Watcher is. The compromise they made — to paywall exclusive content, and release free content earlier to paid subscribers — works well for their current audience. But to reach that critical mass they need to bridge that revenue gap, they’re going to need to figure out new distribution channels where $6 doesn’t feel like such a lift.
Because platforms come with status; there’s a reason that higher price points work on Substack and not Youtube. People connote content quality to where content is posted; Youtube, and TikTok feel lower class than Substack, or Warpcast.
And part of that, yes, is because early adopters shape the long-term culture of a platform. There’s a reason why “thought leaders” who make podcasts tend to share their Apple Podcast links instead of their Spotify profiles…even if distribution is the same on both. Spotify’s culture is music-oriented; if you take your podcast content seriously, you’re going to share it on a platform with less audience association.
But the other part of it too is that bifurcation between modern art versus renaissance work. There’s still a prestige that comes with written knowledge sharing over vlogs and video essays. That prestige influences who consumes what on which platform — that prestige separates the audience with the privilege to be a luxury consumer of internet content.
Watcher would have had better luck first releasing an exclusive series on Curiosity Stream or Nebula, I’d imagine. These are platforms where people are willing to pay for higher-quality versions of the content they consume on Youtube — not luxury consumers, but an audience that sits firmly in the upper-middle class range. An audience more likely to dabble in Renaissance work, and more likely to be open to following quality content cross-platform.
PS. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re probably a big reader who likes going down research rabbitholes — and most likely someone who writes as a way to synthesize and share knowledge. If that’s you I’d love to chat!
At Digest, we’re building a Git for social writers and research-oriented creators (eg podcasters, Youtube video essayists, etc). We’re always looking to talk to more users about where we can add the most value for you. If you’re down, hmu at aleena@publics.world :)