CATCHING FIRE: Manufactured virality, the Hallelujah trend and AI backlash
Do keep up!
Hello! This is the first letter I’m posting since highly flammable turned three. I marked the milestone by sharing my subscriber and revenue stats because I wish more writers would be transparent about the realities of Substack.
The ONLY reason that highly flammable continues to exist is because nearly 100 beautiful souls pay for a subscription. That support means I net about $400/£300 a month, and helps to justify the many hours I pour into each post. If you can join my paid angels in helping to fund my work it would be the best possible anniversary gift…
In today’s letter we’re taking the temperature of:
The TikToker who rage baited her way to a book deal
The teens being ‘bribed’ by brands
Engagement rumours that surround a celeb power couple
The streamers spending millions to go viral
Alix versus Alex drama theories
The creators being sued by their staff
Reese Witherspoon’s massive misstep
Prediction markets face predictable insider issue
As ever, paid subscribers get the lot, free subscribers get a preview. Let’s jump in…
Going viral
Manufactured virality… The rise of paid clippers - people who are literally given money to post clips online - have had a major impact on what we see on feeds, and who breaks through to the mainstream. While we’ve known about the practise for years, we’re only now understanding the scale of clipping operations and how much they’re swaying algorithms.
In the last week, N3on, a big-time Kick streamer, admitted to Business Insider that he shelled out $1.4/£1 million to 303 clippers over the course of five weeks to boost his profile on platforms like Twitter/X and TikTok. And YouTuber Devin Nash dug into the clipping industry’s marketplace and says that Kick’s biggest star, Clavicular, is paying 1,610 clippers over $600/£444k a month to push highlights from his livestreams.
Nash claims that clipping campaigns can make almost anything get traction online but major virality is reserved for videos and personalities that are provocative and outrageous, which is why Clavicular, and his bone-smashing looksmaxxing ways, has become inescapable.
Everyone’s talking about
Reese Witherspoon’s weird AI post… Last week the actress created a firestorm after she posted a video to Instagram telling her female followers that “it’s time to learn about AI”.
She claimed that women risk being left behind if they don’t use the new tech. While some in her comments agreed, many did not and took exception to her assertion that AI should be embraced and that she hadn’t considered the myriad of reasons that some may consciously chose to avoid it. Some even accused her of betraying the book community and pushing the tech because she was being paid. Witherspoon has since denied that her post was sponcon and clarified her comments…
While she still seems set on an educational series, Witherspoon and others would do well to remember that AI is up there with the hottest of hot button topics. New AI witch hunts pop up each week and anti-AI sentiment is so strong that brands are making a point of saying they don’t use it. If you’re in the public eye and asked about AI, tread carefully.
So hot right now
The tradwife comeuppance story… Caro Claire Burke’s novel Yesteryear has got so much buzz around it that the movie rights were snapped up before publication and Anne Hathaway has signed on to play the lead.
Hathaway will play momfluencer Natalie Heller Mills who wakes up in 1855 and has to live the life she’s pushed to her millions of followers. In classic fuck around and find out style, her new life is not as blissful as she imagined.
RELATED Tradwife TikToker and rage baiter extraordinaire, Nara Smith, has unveiled the cover of her first cookbook…
Smith, 24, who made her name, and acquired over 12 million followers, by making wildly elaborate meals “from scratch” says it took her two years to develop the recipes. Homemade drops in October.
Lena Dunham… still. Her feed-dominating press tour for Famesick, crafted by Dolly Meckler, will be studied for years to come.
Need to know
Alex v Alix… The beef between TikTok queen Alix Earle and Call Her Daddy podcaster Alex Cooper appears to have reached an extremely disappointing impasse. Despite promising us that she was “on it!!,” Earle has not yet responded to Cooper’s demands that she air out her grievances after she reposted a highly critical TikTok, that pretty much called Cooper a vulture.
The comments section of Earle’s TikTok is now full of complaints that she hasn’t delivered what many hoped would be piping hot tea about what created a rift between the former business partners.
Some are speculating that Earle might be saving her response for her forthcoming Netflix reality show, and that the drama has been manufactured to create hype ahead of the launch.
Meanwhile Cooper has not had her sorrows to seek after Bloomberg dropped a brutally timed report on how her company, The Unwell Network, is a hot mess. They revealed that:
