Good morning. Timothée Chalamet has officially mastered the Christmas hype cycle. Last year, Chalamet promoted his Bob Dylan biopic, which came out on Christmas. This year, Marty Supreme is…say it with us, “out Christmas Day.” Dare we call it a tradition? Santa, take notes.

P.S. This is our last regular newsletter of the year. We’ll be back on Friday with a special series to enjoy during your down time. Have a happy and restful holiday season!

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Ever since we were little girls, we knew we wanted to go to the first US TikTok Awards. Last Thursday, we got our wish and got all dressed up to attend the event at the Hollywood Palladium.

While en route, though, we got a notification that TikTok’s fate in the US is almost sealed—TikTok signed binding agreements to form a new US joint venture that will be majority-owned by American investors. Here’s what we know →

Once the deal is signed, the new TikTok US will operate as a standalone company with authority over US user data, content moderation, and platform security. Oversight will come from a seven-member board with a majority of American directors. 

The apparent reaction from creators? Muted. After a tumultuous year of potential bans, white knight investors, and plenty of existential worry, TikTok seems to be…totally through it. At the TikTok Awards Thursday, attendees (like Katie Fang, Paris Hilton, Josh Richards, and James Charles) and staff weren’t debating TikTok’s future—they were in party mode. 

A few of the big winners: Keith Lee was named creator of the year. Mariah Rose, in a custom football-themed dress, won MVP of the year, and Alex Warren won breakthrough artist. And we were winners, too—largely because Ciara performed.

After the end of the 90-minute awards stream, which topped 1 million views in its first hour, we thought: After five years of heated ownership battles with the US, is TikTok ending 2025 with a silver lining? It’s not necessarily what we expected for the platform in a year that started with a 14-hour ban across the US.

2025 was a big birthday year for OG internet staples—Smosh turned 20, YouTube turned 20. And today, the progressive political channel The Young Turks (TYT) is celebrating 20 years with a livestream on its website.

TYT, founded by Turkish-American commentator Cenk Uyger, was YouTube’s first partner channel and an early source of online political discourse before other political outlets like The Daily Wire and Crooked Media entered the fray.

How it got here→

Big picture: The Young Turks laid the groundwork for progressive online commentary. Streamer Hasan Piker (who’s also Uyger’s nephew) got his start on the network as an intern, fill-in commentator, then host of The Breakdown before leaving in 2020 to run his own streaming channel.

“Everywhere you went on the internet, accelerated by Fox News, the left was seen as hysterical, emotional, blue-haired social justice warriors,” Piker told The NYT. He said his work and time spent at The Young Turks was meant to disrupt that narrative.

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Music charting is about to change. Starting January 16, YouTube will no longer deliver US music streaming data to Billboard.

Context: In a blog post last week, YouTube shared that Billboard “uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported.” 

Why it matters: Artists could now be disincentivized to release music videos since they’ll no longer count towards charting. 

As the world’s largest music streaming platform for ad-supported streams, YouTube is leveraging its impact on music charting to ensure all streams are being counted equally. 

“Not only is it gonna incentivize artists to no longer make music videos, but also it’s going to make the Billboard charts no longer the barometer for song and album success,” pop culture creator Pop Tingz said on X.

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