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Hi, Publish Press readers. Has anyone watched Addison Rae’s He’s All That yet? The movie cracked the #1 spot in 78 countries and has already been watched over 55 million times on Netflix. With numbers like that, it’s no surprise the streaming platform signed the TikTok superstar to a new multi-picture deal where she’ll get to help have a say in her future projects. It’s a huge win for all the aspiring creator/actors out there.

 - Max Lowenthal

→ The details on David Dobrik’s new travel TV Show

→ How FaZe Clan is collabing with DC Comics

→ A deep dive on Communities - Twitter’s latest product for groups

David Dobrik is getting a new TV show. Following his return to YouTube earlier this year, the vlogger announced this week that he’s releasing a 10-episode travel series for the newly launched streaming service Discovery+. The series, titled Discovering David Dobrik, will showcase David and an assortment of fellow Vlog Squad members traveling to locations around the world, including Paris and his home country of Slovakia, which the YouTuber hadn’t visited since he left as a child. 

The series is particularly poignant for Dobrik, who lives in the U.S. thanks to the country’s DACA program, which grants residency to children who were brought into the States unlawfully. While the program had previously prevented David from leaving America, the YouTuber announced in a recent vlog that he finally obtained a green card, which now allows him to travel freely outside the country. 

The series isn’t Dobrik’s first stint in television - he was previously featured in a limited-run Shark Week episode and co-hosted a dodgeball-themed obstacle course show too. But this will be the first time the vlogger takes center stage as the main star. With an episode lineup that includes visiting his home country for the first time in 15 years, the show promises to give fans a more personal, long-form look at Dobrik and his friends. 

In his usual vlogs, David Dobrik is behind the camera setting up scenes and directing his cast members. Putting David and his friends front and center in a long-form format will be a real test - do people love the Vlog Squad, or do they just like David’s style of directing and editing?

FaZe Clan just doesn’t stop. Earlier this week the esports organization announced an exclusive partnership with DC Comics. The deal will land some of the team’s top creators inside a special, one-shot issue of Batman in celebration of Batman Month. Each of FaZe’s four founding members will also get their own “variant” covers drawn by professional comic book artists. 

The team is also launching a DC Comics-inspired merch line featuring a mashup of famous comic logos and FaZe icons later this month to celebrate the release. The collaboration marks the first time in DC’s history that a gaming organization has made an appearance in one of its comics and is the latest in a string of groundbreaking partnerships for FaZe, which included being the first gaming company to land on the cover of Sports Illustrated earlier this year.

While FaZe Clan members can come and go, the brand itself continues to grow using mediums that rely less on talent, and more on the credibility of the FaZe brand and the companies they work with. 

Twitter is making it easier to find your squad. Earlier this week, the company announced Communities, an alternative timeline that lets you connect and share content with people who Tweet just like you. Launching in beta on iOS, the product lets users join groups and share tweets directly with people that have similar interests to them. The content shared in communities will still be public, but only to others in the community, not the entire platform. The feature is starting invite-only and will be completely user-generated, focused on basic interests like dogs, the weather, skincare, and astrology.

There’s power in niche communities. By building a space that makes people feel connected and related to, you can get them to participate and open up more than they would otherwise.

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

Alice:  On TikTok in the summer of 2020, there was no escaping Claire Rosinkranz’s “Backyard Boy.” After posting a snippet, the 16-year-old artist disappeared for a month, only to return to 300,000 videos using her song. Now, the song features on over 2.2 million TikToks, and has 139 million Spotify streams. On the anniversary of her music video dropping, she’s been nominated for Best Breakthrough Song at The Trending VMAs. A lot can change in a year, so what are you waiting for?!

Max: I keep coming back to Captain Disillusion’s YouTube channel. A visual effects expert, CD’s content debunks the edits behind viral videos like trick shots or hologram bracelets. Despite not being someone who spends much time behind a camera, CD’s explanations of basic concepts like frame rate, color, and resolution are a great primer on how video content works behind the scenes, and why it’s not great to trust something just because you saw it online.

Colin & Samir: Alright, we watched The D’Amelio show… and it’s actually really good. The key to good reality TV is access and authenticity, and the show has both. We get to see the inside of what the D’Amelio business actually looks like, while also getting a realistic portrayal of what social media fame can do to a family. The whole goal of our YouTube channel is to give an inside look at creator lives and businesses, so we’re hoping to see more content like this in the future. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll produce a show like this. If you’ve watched the show, tweet us and let us know what you think.