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What’s up Publish Press readers! Did anyone else spot Emma Chamberlain on the red carpet with Vogue at the Met Gala this week? It’s the second time the fashion mag has pulled in a YouTuber to interview celebs, and she crushed it. In the four days since the event, her interviews have amassed over 33 million views on the Vogue Channel across 32 different Emma-related videos.

 - Max Lowenthal

In Today’s Issue 💬

→ The details behind MrBeast’s new $10 million production studio

→ Explaining the hype around Shaan Puri’s ‘5-Minutes of Fame’ NFT

→ Unpacking why Instagram might be bad for our mental health

MrBeast Is Spending $10 Million on a New Production Studio

The Bank of Beast is never-ending. The YouTube giant announced a new production studio worth over $10 million dollars earlier this week in an exclusive interview with Colin & Samir. The studio sits in the middle of a 100-acre plot in North Carolina, and will serve as the new home base for his team to work and film videos.

The space is Jimmy’s third, and largest, content-focused building, coming in as the biggest sound studio on the eastern seaboard. MrBeast told The Publish Press the new space will give his team the resources to maintain a weekly cadence for their elaborate viral videos, and will be large enough to hold the sets for multiple videos at the same time.

By The Numbers:

• 20,000 square feet → The amount of space in the new studio that MrBeast plans to dedicate to offices alone. That’s nearly the size of 3 tennis courts put together.

• $48,000,000 → The amount of money MrBeast spends on making YouTube videos each year. That’s more than the annual salary of players like Steph Curry or LeBron James.

• 700,000,000 → The number of views MrBeast has earned over the last four weeks. That’s more than the population of the US, Brazil, Russia, and Japan combined.

Our Take

MrBeast doesn't spend money to make more money, he spends money to make better videos. His motives make him one of the most unique creators we've ever seen, and allow him to push boundaries that no one else will push when it comes to storytelling online.

Shaan Puri Is Selling 5 Minutes of Air Time as an NFT

Advertisers beware, crypto is coming. Earlier this week Shaan Puri, founder and co-host of the My First Million Podcast, launched a special NFT. The 1 of 1 token gives the owner 5 uninterrupted minutes to chat with Puri and co-host Sam Parr about whatever they want, and can be redeemed at any point in the future.  

The duo’s podcast, which is expected to bring in 10 million downloads this year, recently stopped accepting new advertisers and sponsors, making the NFT one of the only ways to get in front of the pod’s audience. In a tweet thread explaining the token, Puri noted that the buyer could hold onto the token for as long as they wanted, hypothetically trading it in as the show continues to grow well into the future. That uncapped upside has already driven up the token’s price, which is currently going for over $17,000 on NFT marketplace OpenSea. 

Our Take

Pricing a creator solely on the number of views they get often undervalues a creator. Crypto allows for an auction-based pricing model which theoretically will find the true market value for a creator.

Instagram is Bad For You, and Facebook Knows It

Instagram is hurting teens’ mental health. According to an exposé from the Wall Street Journal released on Tuesday, the social media company has long known that its photo-sharing app is negatively impacting teens' perception of topics like race, self-image, and beauty. 

According to data in the report, which comes from an internal presentation at the company, 32% of teens who struggle with body image issues find that the platform makes them feel worse. The company released a blog post in response to the news, focused on mitigating the platform’s responsibility and instead highlighting the dangers of social media and how Instagram has been working to combat them. 

Our Take

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri points out that when you connect with people, both good and bad things happen, whether you’re in person or online. The real question Instagram needs to grapple with is whether or not their algorithm-driven connections are intensifying the bad, and if so how they can ensure the safety of their users without breaking their business.

✨ Staff Picks

Keep up to date with the trends, content, and creators that our staff are tracking 

This week our Writers’ Room was buzzing about ToTouchAnEmu, a TikToker who has leveraged a single trend into over 900 million views in a month and a half. His original video, which features him dancing while a drone flies around him, is now the platform’s 4th most liked TikTok, and has led to collabs with creators like Jason Derulo and Bella Poarch. The key to his success is the variety in his execution - the song and dance don’t change, but every new video features different characters and backdrops, which make for a great contrast against the dance we know and love.

🔥 In Other News

• The Pope is collabing with YouTube (seriously)

• iJustine chatted with Tim Cook following this week’s Apple event 

• LinkedIn is launching a $25 million creator accelerator 

• YouTube is launching a podcast about The Creator Economy 

• 100 Thieves signed streamer/artist Tina Kitten