TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and if AI makes you crave a side of fries, we have good news: McDonald’s is teaming up with Google to generate “hotter, fresher food.”

TREND TALK

Instagram is already looking ahead to the biggest trends of 2024

YouTube and Spotify might be waxing poetic about 2023, but Instagram has already moved on. In anticipation of 2024, the Meta-owned platform teamed up with analytics firm WGSN to survey Gen Zers in Brazil, India, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S. about “trends that will drive global culture in the year ahead.”

So, what’s on the agenda for 2024?

First up: sustainability. According to Instagram’s “Trend Talk” survey, sustainable fashion will be all the rage next year, with thrifting, vintage shopping, DIY, and “repeating outfits” replacing fast fashion hauls.

Gen Z will place a similar emphasis on self-sustainability in 2024. Instagram says 33% of respondents defined self-employment as “the best way to achieve wealth,” while most chose “self-improvement” as the “top era” of the coming year.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Zoomers plan to spend all their time looking inward.

According to Instagram, Gen Z will use social media to follow friends, family, and trends in 2024—and they’ll keep up with their fellow fans-in-arms, too. Per “Trend Talk,” 75% of Zoomers say they belong to a fandom.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• A24 is venturing into premium content with its own pay-to-access Instagram account. (Tubefilter)
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• Meta reportedly leveraged “1.1 billion publicly visible Facebook and Instagram images” to train its free “Imagine with Meta AI” image generator. (Ars Technica)
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• Twitch announced in a Tuesday blog post that it plans to “shut down the Twitch business in Korea” on February 27, 2024. (Engadget)
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• According to TikTok’s 2023 wrap-up post, this year’s top video in the United States was a “simple and stunning makeup routine” from beauty creator @dollievision. (The Verge)

DATA • ON THE RISE 📈

Satan is totally killing it on TikTok

Nick Norcia didn’t set out to become the devil. In fact, before college, he was just “a southern boy from Alabama.” It wasn’t until Norcia moved out of his family’s “traditional conservative evangelical household” that he came to terms with his sexuality, began posting funny skits on Snapchat, and ultimately decided on a future in the entertainment industry.

At the time, though, Norcia was still planning to spend his career behind the camera—not in front of it.

After graduation, the creator moved to L.A. to work behind the scenes on TV and film sets. The hours were long (and the pay wasn’t great), but Norcia loved it anyway…and then he discovered TikTok.

It wasn’t long before one of Norcia’s characters (a shirtless version of Satan who made hilarious phone calls from hell) snowballed into a viral series. By the time the pandemic rolled around, 30,000 followers were tuning in for devilish content and political satire. Revenue from brand deals flooded in soon after, until Norcia’s TikTok side gig was paying better than his day job.

Fast forward to 2023, and Norcia is now a full-time content creator (and occasional devil) with nearly half a million TikTok followers. His Satan videos still kill, but he also plans to embody “Martha Stewart vibes” in the near future—meaning fans can look forward to watching craftier, DIY-style videos alongside Norcia’s more hellish creations.

DATA • U.S. TOP 50 🇺🇲

This wrestling icon is officially back in the WWE spotlight—and fans are loving it

It’s only been three months since C.M. Punk terminated his contract with All Elite Wrestling, but the Squared Circle champ is already bringing in tens of millions of views for the WWE.

Punk officially reentered the WWE ring during a Chicago event on November 25—an appearance that immediately triggered a dramatic reaction from onlookers. According to witnesses, the 45-year-old icon’s triumphant return generated “one of the loudest crowd pops of all time.”

The response on YouTube was exponentially more explosive.

One video of Punk’s re-appearance has now hauled in more than 6.3 million views—and fans are still flooding into the comment section every day. With all that commotion (and the wrestler’s upcoming appearance on a December 8th episode of Smackdown), it’s no wonder the WWE’s main YouTube channel saw a massive spike in views throughout our latest weekly measurement period.

• In total, the primary WWE hub scored 186.3 million weekly views during our most recent seven-day count.
  
  

• That wave of views added up to a 70% week-over-week uptick, rocketing the channel from #42 to #16 in our U.S. Top 50 chart.
  
  

• The result: the WWE’s main YouTube hub now claims 80.2 billion lifetime views.

WATCH THIS 📺

Slime is having a moment (again)

What do you get when you combine sparkly slimes, viral Shorts trends, and holiday cheer? If your channel name is cornwithslime, then the answer is 284.4 million monthly views and a 120% month-over-month viewership increase.

Slime is having a major moment right now, and cornwithslime knows exactly how to take that Gen A to Z popularity to the next level. The channel’s short-form videos incorporate everything from the “coquette era” TikTok trend to Christmas tree slime spills and—of course—a generous helping of ASMR.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.