TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and the “sad beige influencer” lawsuit of 2024 has reached its end. The TL;DR: claiming rights to a “neutral, beige, and cream aesthetic” is (unsurprisingly) easier said than done.

Today’s News

BACK TO SCHOOL

Streamer University hit 27M hours of watch time. Is Netflix salivating yet?

The program: Kai Cenat’s Streamer University is officially a wrap. The three-day bootcamp—which was streamed live—brought 150 creators to the University of Akron to attend in-person lectures from pros like DDG, ChrisnNxtDoor, Agent 00, and Duke Dennis. Hand-picked students were permitted to stream throughout the program, giving the rest of the internet a taste of the action.

The result: Streamer University attracted over 719,000 peak concurrent viewers, 27+ million total hours of watch time, and (according to Cenat) inquiries from multiple major streaming companies. Per Twitch Tracker, content related to Streamer University was streamed across nearly 1,000 different Twitch channels from May 21-27, with average concurrent viewership of ~160,000.

The postmortem: So, does all that viewership mean creators can expect another semester of Streamer University?

Not necessarily. Cenat noted that the program might have been free for students, but it wasn’t cheap to put on. The creator also complained about receiving backlash over his attendee selections, commenting that “no matter which way I try to make sure things is good, I always get the bad end of the stick.”

Interest from major streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime (which previously paid $100 million for MrBeast‘s officially-renewed Beast Games) doesn’t seem to be a major incentive for Cenat to continue the program, either.

The creator made it clear on stream that he’s not interested in taking their money (despite “getting talks with different people”). Streamer University is “so original,” he said, that he wants to keep control of it and keep it on Twitch. That could suggest Cenat is still figuring out a comfortable way for the program to move forward. For nowwe’ll just have to wait and see if there will ever be another graduating class.

🔆 PRESENTED BY TRIBECA X 🔆

Join Paris Hilton, Lena Waithe, and more at Tribeca X: NYC’s definitive brand storytelling summit

It’s almost time to dive into the business of brand storytelling alongside the industry’s leading visionaries. At the heart of Tribeca Festival is Tribeca X: New York City’s definitive summit for brands and creators. 

From June 9-10, Tribeca X participants will hear from industry leaders like actor Bryan Cranston, Head of UTA New York Julian Jacobs, and Staying Alive podcast host Adam Pally at thought-provoking panels, including:

Timeless Trends, Timely Truths: Mattel and the Future of Cultural Storytelling
Listen in as Mattel CEO Ynon Kriez breaks down how the iconic brand has leveraged cultural storytelling to stay relevant for generations.

Building A New Media Empire: How Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media Is Rewriting The Script
Follow along as Paris Hilton unpacks the playbook for building a modern media empire in the digital age.

The Creator Era: Redefining Influence, Identity, and Impact
Explore the future of the creator economy—from authentic identity to measurable brand impact—with leaders from creator agency Whalar. 

From the prestigious Tribeca X Awards to exclusive festival premieres, Tribeca X is where brands and entertainment meet.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Karat Financial is launching Karat Banking, a multifaceted solution for creators who are building their own businesses. (Tubefilter)

• Spotify has announced a Podcasts Following feed designed to help fans “effortlessly stay plugged in and up-to-date with the creators you love most.” (For the Record)
  

  
  

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that the U.S. will restrict visas for foreign officials who “demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies.” (The Verge)
  
  

• AI company Anthropic has announced the addition of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to its board of directors. (TechCrunch)

20 YEARS OF YOUTUBE

In 2010, we hid our kids and our wives

In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

The throwback: By the end of the 2010s, YouTube’s homepage had become a well-oiled incubator for viral videos. The platform’s central hub highlighted trending content while also carving out space to showcase emerging creators. Response videos were still alive and well, laying the foundation for one of the era’s most quintessential hits.

“The Bed Intruder Song” reflected both the efforts of The Gregory Brothers—a creator group made up of siblings Andrew, Michael, and Evan, and Evan’s wife Sarah—and the viral impact of the news interview it drew from. In July 2010, Kelly Dodson of Huntsville, Alabama and her brother Antoine managed to fend off a home invasion. An ensuing interview went viral thanks to Antoine’s flamboyant retelling.

As Evan Gregory explained to Tubefilter, “for 2-3 days straight you’d open up youtube.com and the homepage was 40 different reuploads of the same interview. Every entry on the Trends page was a reupload of that interview.”

The Dodson interview was, in essence, a tentpole event that invited platform-wide participation. The easiest way to reach millions of viewers was to latch onto a video that had already reached a substantial audience—and that’s exactly what the Gregory Brothers did with their songified adaptation.

The fast-forward: 15 years later, the YouTube homepage is far more personalized than it was in 2010, response videos have faded into memory, and an exponentially larger number of creators now vie for attention, making the path to mainstream virality far less clear-cut. But for what it’s worth, The Gregory Brothers’ musical skills haven’t diminished a bit—and the “Bed Intruder Song” still resonates across the internet. Only last month, home security company Wyze teamed up with Dodson (who now has a presence on TikTok) for a cheeky sponsored video.

INDUSTRY BUZZ

CAA has tapped Brent Weinstein to “lead multiple business areas”

The new hire: After accumulating more than a decade of industry expertise, former UTA Head of Digital and Candle Media vet Brent Weinstein is headed to CAA.

As a member of the L.A.-based agency’s senior leadership team, Weinstein will fill an expansive role overseeing operations in “multiple business areas” (per a press release shared by CAA). In addition to steering strategy in categories like Digital Media, Podcasts, Games, and Talent Business Ventures, Weinstein will have a say in CAA’s investment activity, mergers, and acquisitions, and will co-manage its Intell data team and Technology division.

The context: To fulfill that wide array of responsibilities, Weinstein will draw from years of experience as an agent, executive, and business developer. The exec rose up the ranks at UTA over the course of nearly two decades by championing innovation in the field of digital talent representation. During his tenor, the agency became one of the first companies to work with creators to build offline businesses in industries like publishing and fintech. Weinstein transitioned to Candle Media in 2022, and ultimately played a pivotal role in the Moonbug parent’s mission to connect its digital businesses to real-world commerce.

Weinstein’s impact at CAA is expected to stretch beyond the world of digital creators—but that doesn’t mean he won’t have the opportunity to build upon a deep roster of internet-famous clients. Influencers repped by CAA include Reesa Teesa, who is adapting her TikTok series Who TF Did I Marry? into a scripted show, and iShowSpeed, who has embarked on a massive world tour.

WATCH THIS 📺

You can still go viral on Shorts without AI (especially if you’re a superhero)

The bunny-eared hero: AI may have seeped into most of YouTube’s biggest Shorts genres, but some lower-tech stalwarts are still going strong. In the superhero genre, a Mandarin channel belonging to a human creator called Officer Rabbit recently scored 518.9 million views across a period of just seven days.

Officer Rabbit isn’t exactly Zootopia’s Judy Hopps (regardless of any aesthetic inspiration that might be going on), but she does have speed to burn—and a young sidekick that helps her channel bridge the gap between superhero content and moralistic family skits. By tapping into those two genres, Officer Rabbit has managed to amass more than 10.5 million subscribers and an impressive lifetime total of nearly nine billion views.

Check out one of the channel’s latest viral Shorts here.

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Today's newsletter is from: James Hale, Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.