Happy Wednesday!

I hope everyone had an awesome holiday yesterday and is feeling rested and ready to get back to creating!

I’ve reached my goal of 1000 LinkedIn followers last week, so to celebrate I’m giving away another Audio Technica mic pack, but I want to let you amazing newsletter readers get in the know first. 😎

To enter, shoot me a message on LinkedIn to let me know you’re an email subscriber and I’ll add your name to the running, and I’ll also add it again if you follow the instructions on an upcoming announcement post on LinkedIn 👀

-Luke

Paying Attention to Parasocial Relationships 😬

If you haven’t already heard, one of the worst creator apology videos dropped last week. And before you get upset by saying it was bad… check out the details.

Colleen Ballinger, better known by her YouTube persona, Miranda Sings, has recently been accused of grooming her younger viewers. From sending super weird texts to minors, to trauma dumping on her fans (mainly young girls), Ballinger has been under fire and thought it might be a good idea to release an apology video.

Instead of the addressing the allegations and giving her take, Ballinger instead SANG her apology, denied everything (while also confessing?), and then essentially called out her viewers for not being perfect… honestly just watch it for yourself. But you’ve been warned, it’s peak cringe. 😅

While this whole situation is terrible and Ballinger most definitely didn’t do herself any favors, I wanted to talk about something that Ludwig brought up in his reaction to this video.

Ludwig brings up the parasocial relationship that popular creators have to navigate. To provide some insight before we dive in, a parasocial relationship is defined as “a one-sided relationship formed when one party extends energy, interest, and time and the other person doesn't know they exist.”

Now, definitely check out Ludwig’s video to see his takeaway, but I’ll give my takeaways below:

While so many creators deal with the parasocial relationship of their viewers feeling like they have personal relationships with them, Ludwig brings up the point that there’s a rising trend of creators feeling like they know & are friends with their own fans.

Lud brings up the point of this being an even bigger problem when the creator is an adult and has a majority of young fans. While it’s ok for a creator to be personable, the problem arises when the creator is over-personal with all fans.

Taking this a step further, Ludwig says it’s just plain weird to respond to hyper-personal DMs or be active in group chats with your fans, especially when they’re literal children.

While Ballinger dug herself into a hole with this one, it absolutely brings up the important point of separating art from an artist, and fans for friends.

Creators, how do you navigate the balance between engaging your fans, and keeping them at enough of a distance to allow them to realize that you don’t know them, even when they feel they know you? Any tips for other creators who may be experiencing this? Let me know by replying to this email so I can share your tips with other readers and creators alike!

Creator Economy News 🚨

This week in the creator world, YouTube lights the fire under ad-block users, the NFL is essentially using creators in attempts to regain public interest in football, TikTok launches a new way for creators to earn, and more.

• Still using an ad-blocker for YouTube? Welp, watch out for the three strikes or prepare to lose your access to videos. YouTube isn’t messing around anymore, I guess I’m FINALLY gonna have to get YT Premium.

• The NFL figured out that it’s not as entertaining as TikTok, and to solve that problem, they’re going with a “helmets-off” approach for content. Aka using creators to make them free content… just watch 😅

• TikTok launched a new way for creators to make money, but honestly, this seems like a push for free marketing as well. I like the approach allowing for creativity, but let’s be real, it’s likely that only top creators will make money from this feature, not the creator middle class.

You should see these 👀

• ChatGPT probably knows more about you than Google. OpenAI has been accused of accessing personal data across the web and specifically on apps such as Spotify, Stripe, Slack, & Snapchat.

• TikTok apparently has some rules in place for journalists covering news that may place the brand in an unflattering light.

• I tried my hardest to get to all of the sections before today’s newsletter release, but I couldn’t quite make it (sorry this is a few mins late ❤️)! So, I’m covering the weekly creator spotlight in a bullet point below!

• Creator Spotlight: Meet Breck Rice, AKA Healthcare Disruptor! Breck is on a mission to inform patients who use prescription drugs on what the actual effects on the body are! Breck’s series “scary drug facts” have amassed hundreds of thousands of views and even over 100k followers on TT. Breck is absolutely crushing it and is getting important information on healthcare out to the masses, for free! Definitely be sure to give Breck’s channels a follow and stay tuned to see if you may be able to replace your daily doses!

Want to go even further? 🚀

If you’d like to keep learning about topics like the ones shared above, stick around! But more importantly, check out the links below to further your development as a creator. 😎

1. Sign up for CreatorPad

2. Join our free creator community

3. Find a personal mentor to learn from