Good morning. After 16 years, Jennifer Lawrence joined Instagram with a short message to her followers: “If anyone says anything negative, I will quit.”

With 4.3M followers in the first 24 hours, the most excited of all is Syd, who started a (still-active) JLaw fan account in 2015.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Hannah here. On Wednesday, I went to YouTube and National Research Group’s Culture and Trends event, where they broke down their latest report on the biggest trends from the last year and why they took off—from Backrooms’ blockbuster run to the six-seven meme (typed without see-sawing my hands, I promise).

Why it matters: Creators who want to work with brands, as talent or consultants, should understand what’s capturing cultural attention and how it breaks through because brands track it for their campaigns and content calendars.

A few stats that stood out: 

The stats paint a picture that monoculture isn't dead, it's just changed. While the internet has fractured popular trends, the connection within those trends are deepening. And the moments that break through to the mainstream resonate because people are watching and participating together. 

“So much of what made Obsession a hit wasn’t watching it—it was watching it and being part of the discourse around it. Being in that conversation was a way to say something about yourself,” Fergus Navaratnam-Blair, VP of trends at NRG, said.

What I left thinking about: This was a big year for shared experiences—the World Cup, The Odyssey's box office run—often popularized through YouTube. But mainstream scale isn’t the end goal for most creators, and that’s the upside of fractured attention. It makes room for deeper connection, which creators can actually build on. 

As our own Samir Chaudry pointed out from making YouTube videos for over a decade, “The depth of connection creates a situation where we’re in lockstep with our audience. It’s intense in a way I never could’ve imagined as a kid being a fan of something.”

With 5.4M subscribers, over 600M views, and around 100 employees, faceless YouTube channel fern has built a reputation as a reliable source for animated documentaries. 

But this month, fern noticed that AI-run accounts were stealing its video ideas, running them through AI script writers and animators, and republishing them. Fern even received comments accusing its own original videos of being AI-generated.

For a faceless channel, the accusations are hard to disprove: “I think we have a weaker parasocial relationship than many on-screen creators,” fern’s co-founder Jonas told us. “And that can create a feeling that there's something ominous going on or that it might just be [AI slop]. I think it increases the pressure to explicitly spell out who we are and why we do this.” 

The solution: Alongside its main programming of documentaries, the channel now publishes videos about its own business practices, production process, and creator grievances—which include calling out AI channels that copy its work. By maintaining transparency about how their videos are made and where funding comes from, fern is building trust and deepening their connection with an audience that can’t attach itself to a single face.

Big picture: Livestreaming, IRL events, and vlogging are taking over as dominant creator trends, rewarding creators who feel authentic and present. Fern is showing a way that faceless channels can earn that same trust by being open about everything behind it.

Sponsored by Rare Days

Right to be picky, for one: your audience came for you.

Rare Days is teaming up with ElevenLabs for a live session on 5 ways creators can put AI voice to work without faking a thing. Your newsletter, turned into audio in one click. Your videos in 100+ languages for viewers you can't reach today. An assistant that answers fan questions while you make content.

The session is free, and ElevenLabs is also offering attendees a little something extra at the end.

Wednesday, September 23, 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT. Save your spot.

Earlier this week, comedy creator and Adults star Jack Innanen revealed that he's shut out of TikTok's creator rewards program, which isn't available in his home country of Canada. He was lamenting the fact after noting that lifestyle creator Victoria Paris—a US creator who is eligible—earns $13K a month on the platform.

Context: Each short-form platform uses different methods to pay out its creators (besides Instagram, which has no views-based monetization program).

Innanen’s video sparked conversation around our office on how much US creators are actually getting paid on short-form platforms. So we called up a few creators to learn about their experience:

Sports creator Justin Leusner earns more on TikTok than YouTube Shorts, making $55K from TikTok’s creator rewards program in the last year vs. $13K from Shorts over a similar time period.

Film education creator Adrian Per shared that platform payouts are a smaller piece of the picture— his TikTok revenue averages around $1K a month, with a best month of $7.8K. The majority of his revenue comes from brand deals and he treats platform earnings as close to free money, since he uses TikTok to repost content he makes on Instagram, which remains his primary platform.

Short-form creator Jenny Hoyos makes 75% of platform revenue from YouTube Shorts, almost 0% from TikTok’s rewards program, and 25% from TikTok sound promotions.

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.