TED Radio Hour

How the creator economy is making you talk like the internet

I started noticing how I would reroute my language around platform constraints. Can you give me an example of that? Like, what? Yeah, well, you can't say the word kill on TikTok. I mean, I guess you can, but it's suppressed. Your video's gonna be shown to fewer people, so people turn to alternatives like Unalive.

It's Been a Minute

The influencer era is dead. What's next?

Attention is just like a supply and demand business. At some point, there is going to be too much supply. And so, what we're seeing is a lot of these lifestyle influencers that, you know, 5, 10 years ago would have, you know, you know, with enough consistency, if they post something that looks aspirational and cool enough, people will find their audience. But now that kind of everyone has to be everything to everyone and everyone has to be reaching new For You pages all the time on every single platform, what worked 5 years ago is not working anymore.

TED Radio Hour

How the creator economy is making you talk like the internet

I think what I'm doing is actually uniquely suited to studying slang etymology because to really understand what it means for something to spread online, you have to be online yourself.

TED Radio Hour

How the creator economy is making you talk like the internet

I started noticing how I would reroute my language around platform constraints. You can't say the word kill on TikTok. I mean, I guess you can, but it's suppressed. Your video is going to be shown to fewer people, so people turn to alternatives like Unalive.

TED Radio Hour

How the creator economy is making you talk like the internet

I started noticing my own speech being restricted a little bit. I started noticing how I would reroute my language around platform constraints.

TED Radio Hour

The price of creativity

right now we find ourselves more people than ever creating. More demand for content than ever, yet less support systems than ever. And there's this very acute pressure that every artist and creative person feels right now of like, I feel like I'm falling behind. I don't even know what to do, you know.

TED Radio Hour

The price of creativity

More people than ever creating. More demand for content than ever, yet less support systems than ever. And there's this very acute pressure that every artist and creative person feels right now of like, I feel like I'm falling behind.

It's Been a Minute

The hidden money financing your favorite songs

It's getting harder and harder to trust online taste makers because they might be getting secretly paid to show for labels. This is not a conspiracy theory. It's real.

It's Been a Minute

The fame and (mis)fortune of family influencing

Those early mom blogs, the mothers were the main characters. And now with family influencing on Instagram and on YouTube, really the kids became the main character and they became the draw and the mothers kind of faded into the background.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Inside the big business of the creator economy, with Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky

the stars of today are going from making media to making products of their own. Not all of them can do it, so I wanted to know how Raina and Ali help their clients make the jump and what makes them successful at it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Inside the big business of the creator economy, with Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky

The bloggers at the time were people who were building these communities directly with their audience. I'd come from fashion and marketing and I was used to the top-down relationship with the consumer, and it was so exciting to see at the time all these street style women who were building this relationship with their audience and who were essentially the next generation of editors and the next generation of media properties and they just didn't know it yet.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Can Patreon fight fire with social media fire?

AI and platform shifts have stolen creator content and decimated artists' reach and revenue streams, and Patreon has made some pretty existential changes to the way it works in response.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age?

The creator and influencer economy works very differently than journalism does. If you take a high-level look at the business of most creators, they all kind of look like little ad agencies, doing brand deals and negotiating rates in a way that has always felt incompatible with journalism, at least to me.