It's Tuesday and Merriam-Webster didn’t go for subtlety when choosing 2025’s Word of the Year. The big winner: “slop.” (In case you were wondering, “touch grass” made the shortlist for phrases, too.)

Today’s News

YEAR IN REVIEW

Here’s what made YouTube YouTube in 2025:

The report: YouTube‘s latest annual Culture & Trends report is in—and its first few insights are unlikely to surprise frequent viewers. As usual, MrBeast ranked as the top-watched creator in the U.S. and most other regions. Roblox, meanwhile, proved to be the talk of the gaming town, and Labubus were also in vogue—but it was KPop Demon Hunters that led the charge as both YouTube’s most-talked-about topic and a YouTube Music chart-topper. Unsurprisingly, AI was another common topic.

But YouTube’s report also broke down some interesting region-by-region trends, spotlighting groundbreaking creator projects, the evolution of creator/fan connections, and on-the-rise formats—because as the platform pointed out, “the very top of these lists only tells part of the story.”

The global context: Here are some of YouTube’s most intriguing highlights from around the world:

• YouTube’s stateside insights focused on U.S. creators like Druski, who spent much of 2025 producing a variety of MTV-esque, YouTube-first reality series. Some weeks, his episodes were among the most-viewed sponsored content on all of YouTube, raking in millions of views.
  
  

• In Korea, high-tech human content rose above the flow of AI slop. YouTube nodded to creators like MMA fighter Choo Sung-hoon, who had the most subscriber growth in the region this year and stood out as an emblem of “unfiltered authenticity.”
  
  

• In Mexico, “combat as content” became one of the defining creator trends of the year. What started with Spanish creator Ibai’s La Velada del Año—a massively popular annual boxing event between top creators—has inspired a wave of similar tournaments. The latest and biggest, Supernova Strikers, organized by Amigo Telcel, drew millions of viewers and cemented creator boxing as a major cultural spectacle.
  
  

• In the Middle East and North Africa, fandoms went full-throttle. Horror games like Poppy Playtime, anime series like Blue Lock, and soccer were all trending topics.

For more 2025 YouTube insights, check out the platform’s full report here.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Five YouTube channels snagged at least one billion views during the second week of December. But only one hub topped two billion: CoComelon. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• OpenAI Chief Communications Officer Hannah Wong will depart the company in January 2026. (Wired)
  
  

• Snapchat is the latest platform to roll out an end-of-year recap, this time in the form of “a short video, individualized for every Snapchatter, with highlights from their Snaps, Stories, and Chats.” (Snap Newsroom)
  
  

• A new report alleges that Meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team earlier this year in an effort to continue collecting billions in revenue from ads peddling scams and banned content. (Reuters)

GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos of the Week: True crime, Zootopia 2, and tabletop magic

It’s been a while now since Gospel Stats’ ranking of most-viewed branded YouTube videos wasn’t topped by MrBeast—but here we are. In this week’s chart, cash-fueled challenges have been replaced by true crime, Disney movie magic, and Dungeons & Dragons.

🥇 #1. Dr Insanity x Outskill: How Police Captured Colorado’s Smartest Killer (10.6M views)
Lurid Netflix specials like Making a Murderer are popular fodder for true crime fans, but YouTube still has the speed-to-market advantage, with channels like Dr Insanity getting ahold of police and security footage within months of the crime itself.

Dr Insanity’s latest timely true crime drama was sponsored by Outskill, an AI company the creator promises will let viewers “dive deep into AI and learn automations.”

🥈 #2. NickandCarrie x Zootopia 2: Try the new lighting effects from Govee celebrating Disney’s Zootopia 2 now playing in theaters (5.4M views)
Disney might be filing lawsuits against Google, but that doesn’t mean it plans to forego YouTuber marketing. To pump up its latest sequel Zootopia 2, it tapped couple channel NickandCarrie. The video title spotlights both smart-light company Govee and the Disney flick as the couple decks out their pad in some sponsored lighting arrangements.

🎰 #3,442. Will Henry x Emberglow Gaming: A Real Life Bag of Holding! (140K views)
Tabletop gaming enthusiast Will Henry’s fanbase may be small in number, but it’s huge in passion. His viewers’ devotion to Dungeons & Dragons makes them the perfect audience for one of Emberglow Gaming’s top products: a real-life Bag of Holding that carries everything from gaming mat clips and a water bottle holder to pockets for dice and miniatures.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

TALKING POLITICS

Right-wing creators dominate online discourse. Can a new startup flip the script?

The startup: 2024 was the year of the influencer election—and whether you go by votes or social media traffic, right-wingers emerged victorious.

Conservative creators retained the digital spotlight throughout 2025, but a new startup is hoping to turn the tables ahead of the 2026 election. The Hollywood Reporter describes AND Media as a “venture studio” that will provide production assistance and funding for liberal creators pursuing serialized projects. Its initial slate features Kareem Rahma’s show Keep the Meter Running, a YouTube twist on author Hunter Prosper’s TikTok-famous Stories From a Stranger format, and a new video podcast from comedian Matt Buechele.

The context: AND Media is helmed by CEO Christian Tom, who served as Biden’s White House Director of Digital Strategy and was a driving force behind the effort to bring lefty creators to Washington D.C. In 2026, his venture studio aims to answer a hypothetical question: what would happen if the digital strategies of the Biden White House were divorced from that administration’s policies?

Along with Kamala Harris, the former president reinvented the playbook for collabs between creators and the executive branch. Biden’s White House creator summit was a landmark moment, and he also embraced memes on TikTok before that strategy received a MAGA twist.

The problem was that Biden and Harris couldn’t separate their novel approach to digital media from their political positions. A planned collab between Harris and Rahma failed to materialize due to differing views on Gaza, while Biden’s TikTok use made his attempts to ban it seem hypocritical.

Two years later, the political landscape has shifted. The biggest celebrity of the 2025 election cycle was incoming New York City mayor and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who showed that the left can leverage social media as effectively as the right. Now, AND Media is seizing on that shift to change the status quo.

WATCH THIS 👀

A mysterious Japanese rock band is climbing the YouTube charts

The mystery band: There’s a hot new music group on YouTube Shorts—but who exactly is Zutomayo? Few people know how many musicians compose the Japanese rock group, and the identities of its members are unknown.

That air of mystery has only increased the buzz powering Zutomayo’s recent rise. Although the group has been active since 2018, it picked up about a third of its lifetime subscribers during the second week of December. That seven-day haul—which totaled 1.15 million subscribers—put Zutomayo at #2 in the Global Sub Top 50, trailing only Alejo Igoa.

The typical upload on Zutomayo’s Shorts channel is a brief music video snippet, but that doesn’t mean the band is entirely absent from the long-form side of YouTube. A new track titled “Yushinron,” which pays homage to fellow J-Rock group Radwimps, has already received over 1.7 million views. Check it out here.

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