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Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space.
Every Monday through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
I'm your host, Lauren Meisner, the founder of the youth digital
media brand Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini Scroll
everyone. OK, some exciting news.
Some of you guys might know because I've talked about it
here and there, but we do some behind the scenes consulting for
brands who want to bring in house podcasts to life.
So these are not podcasts that live on our network.
This Is Us consulting from like a production editorial scripting
perspective. And one of our clients, their
podcast is launching tomorrow. It's been quite the labor of
love. We've had such a good time
putting it together. It is a 10 episode founder new
series. It's by our client Recess, which
is an Australian sustainable office furniture company.
And the podcast is called the Anti Work podcast because it's a
podcast about avoiding burnout and how to set boundaries as a
founder, the mental health toll that being a founder and
building a business can take on you.
So if you guys care about that kind of content, I'm not in the
podcast, Annabel's not in the podcast, but obviously we have
very much touched the podcast. So I will put a link down below
in the description so you guys can subscribe because the first
episode is going up tomorrow and I'm very excited.
It's a been a really cool project for us to work on.
All right, before we get into the stories for today, as
always, please rate, review and subscribe.
Please Spotify star rate US. We're still trying to get to
1000 Spotify star ratings by the end of the year.
OK, the first story that I have for you guys is there's this new
viral TikTok creator called Olivia Unplugged.
And it's been revealed that she is actually a brand account.
So Olivia Unplugged is this new creator and she's been, I mean,
at least all over my For you page.
I'm sure some of you guys have seen her as well.
It's a creator named Olivia. And her most viral or like
famous videos are her standing in front of this green white
board where she explains topics to the camera.
The content that she's explaining is usually centered
around mental health and scrolling culture.
But the way that it's presented like really fits in with the
zeitgeist right now, right? Like that whiteboard explainer
content. It's so popular.
It's way more popular than like a TikTok green screen.
I would say at this point. Anyways, after the account
garnered over 100,000 followers and millions of views since it
launched just at the end of June, so just a few months ago,
it has now been revealed that Olivia Unplugged is actually a
brand account for the app Opal, which helps users focus.
It's not that this account was hiding that.
I wouldn't say they were hiding it at all.
Like she mentions Opal Opal here and there in the content.
If you go to their page, it says powered by Opal and then you can
like Click to download in the link.
So they're not hiding that. It was like a brand account, but
there was no overt branding like the profile picture, for
example. It wasn't the logo.
It's Olivia. There's no like product
placement, things like that. So Rachel Carton of the Lincoln
Bio newsletter, she interviewed Olivia about the account and the
strategy behind it. So Olivia is a real person.
By the way, it is her actual name.
She is a social media manager for Opal and it seems like this
concept came to life partly through her and in collaboration
with other people on her team. This is what she said to Rachel
Carton quote. When I applied for the role, I
submitted a video essay alongside my application sharing
how Opal changed my life and what I do with their socials.
TikTok has always been a space I've loved, so she encouraged me
to return to what felt natural storytelling straight to the
camera. We decided to test it out as
brand owned account and I challenged myself to post
everyday for 30 three days. My very first video was about
starting a quote UN quote cult, have people obsessed with focus
and reclaiming their time and that is still the same message
in every video. The infamous green board.
The funny thing is we never even bought it.
It was literally sitting on the street in Paris after a
neighboring VC fund moved offices and somehow we got the
heavy thing into ours. It's objectively a terrible
board but somehow it has magic. I first used it after seeing a
video I loved that was concise, educational and compelling and
thought, why not try it? I didn't expect it to resonate
in the way that it did, but it makes the message feel instantly
digestible, even if you can barely read what I'm writing
now. We even get comments like my
show is on because people recognize the green board and
know exactly what's coming. And yes, it definitely came out
of experimentation. I had already posted around 40
videos before that one took off. And it's proof that persistence
pays off. OK, Yeah, I love this.
I love that it shows that experimentation and trying new
things pays off. That's something that Annabelle
actually was saying about me recently as we were talking
about like, what is a superpower that we each have when it comes
to like working in startup culture?
And she was like, you're never married to an idea.
You're really like agile. And I'm really open to trying
different things. And I hadn't really considered
that, but it's so true. And like, that's what you have
to do, especially when it comes to content, right?
When you're trying to build a presence on any social media
platform or figuring out your content style, whether you're a
media brand or, you know, just like a brand brand itself.
I mean, I guess a media brand is also a brand, but you know what
I mean? Like a company that sells a
product or whatever, or even a service.
So yeah, I think it's so important.
And you will never know what works unless you try a bunch of
different things. I also very much subscribe to
that mentality when it comes to like careers.
That's what I tell the girls all the time because all the girls
that work for me for the most part are in their like, early to
mid 20s and they're always like, I don't know what I want to do
with my life. I'm not sure what's going on.
And I'm like, you just have to try a bunch of different things.
I had like 100 lives in my 20s and it led me to Centennial and
realizing that media, you know, at least for what I presume will
be the foreseeable future, is the place that I'm meant to be
in my career. And it's something that I love.
And you won't know that until you just try a bunch of
different shit. OK, The next story that I have
for you guys. Well, I'm sorry.
I know that people are always like, stop talking about Mr.
Beast, OK? I haven't talked about him that
much. Maybe in the second-half of this
year. I know that there were like,
honestly, at one point, like weekly updates about him.
But this is a pretty big story. It's made it everywhere.
Like, the BBC is covering it. Like everyone is covering it.
So Mr. Beast is facing backlash for trapping a man in a burning
building in a new video and then defending that decision.
Mr. Beast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is no stranger
to posting videos that rely on spectacle, and he seems to just
be pushing it further and further. 2 days ago, Mr. Beast
posted a video titled Would You Risk Dying for $500,000.
In the video, the contestant, whose name is Eric, had to get
through a variety of death traps to win the money.
Side note, Eric is also a professional stuntman.
In Jimmy's words Quote, he could win $500,000 if he completes 7
fire traps, including getting shot out of a cannon into fire,
jumping through death defying rings of fire and surviving
massive fiery explosions, and so much more.
The video begins with Eric having to pull bags of money out
of a room that is entirely set on fire, which obviously is
intense to say the least, and at some point he even catches on
fire. He completed the challenges with
a haul of $350,000. Now naturally there was a lot of
backlash to this video, mostly out of safety concerns, and
Jimmy has since responded to the backlash.
So in a comment underneath the video he wrote in case there's
any concern about the safety of the stuntman contestant.
I just wanted to mention that we take safety extremely seriously.
Every challenge was tested by multiple stuntmen.
We have a full rescue team on standby with firefighters, EM,
TS, and drivers equipped with an ambulance and fire truck.
We also had a pyro team controlling the fires and
multiple fire suppression methods on every challenge to
ensure we could essentially turn off the fire if there was ever
an issue. But our stunt coordinator did an
amazing job as always and none of these systems were ever
needed. Just wanted to be transparent
with you all since I saw some concern and then like I said,
this started to get mainstream media attention.
So then he took to X and he wrote this blew up.
If you're curious. Obviously we had ventilation for
the smoke and a kill switch to cut off the fires.
We had professionals test this extensively, and the guy in the
video, as stated, is a professional stuntman.
I take safety more seriously than you could ever imagine.
OK, if this is a professional stuntman and there's all of
these things in place to, you know, prevent it from actually
being that dangerous, my first question is like, why?
Why even make it then if if this is actually not a dangerous
video to make, why would you even make it?
What's the point then? I guess you think if you think
about his target audience, OK, the point is actually because 6
year olds will watch this and be interested in it and not fully
understand what's going on. And then when you think about it
from that perspective, you're like, Oh yeah, that's why people
hate Mr. Beast because he's posting these videos and he's
branding himself as just like a regular Jaguar YouTube guy and
he's making these crazy stunts that are super dangerous.
And we saw what happened with Jeff Wittek in the vlog squad,
right? With his accent, with the
excavator, Like we have seen how these stunts for views and
engagement can go horribly wrong.
I think one of the biggest issues though that people have
with this video, aside from all the safety stuff, is that Mister
Beast is currently facing allegations of fostering an
unsafe work environment and exploiting contestants during
the filming of his TV show, Beast Games.
And then coming out with a video like this is kind of like you're
not beating the allegations, buddy.
OK. And the last story that I have
for you guys, I've never actually spoken about this
creator before. I really like them.
But creator Brett Miller, he is a tick tock creator.
He makes mostly like skit content.
His handle is Britney Spears for anyone that knows.
And he's opened up about how monetizing has become
increasingly difficult as an LGBTQ plus creator.
So he made a recent video literally just a couple hours
ago where he starts by talking about how being a content
creator full time has really impacted his mental health.
And then he went on to explain how part of that is because
monetizing has become harder and harder.
And now, obviously, this is from a very anecdotal perspective,
OK, But I think it's an interesting and important
perspective to note and something for us to discuss here
is obviously like an Internet culture podcast.
He said that he noticed a cultural shift when it came to
like paying creators, like brands being willing to pay and
work with LGBTQ plus creators after the Dylan Mulvaney Bud
Light campaign. In case you missed it, Dylan
partnered with Bud Light in 2023.
Many Internet users were happy to see a company like Bud Light
make a move for trans visibility.
But right wing political pundits were quick to criticize the
campaign. And Dylan experienced a flood of
transphobic vitriol, which she later opened up about and said
the brand didn't really do anything to help her.
So Brett explains, says, like, it's not Dylan's fault,
obviously, but for some reason that was kind of the catalyst
for all of these, quote, right wingers to be really aggressive
in the fact that they do not like LGBT people promoting
products. He says from his own personal
experience, he has received increasingly less sponsorships,
even though his account has grown substantially.
And his comment section is filled with support.
And there are other creators in the comment section who are part
of the LGBTQ plus community validating this, saying they
feel this, and they're experiencing similar things,
too. And I think it's a really
important conversation right now in the creator economy that I
haven't really seen a lot of people talk about.
When I reflect back, the Dylan Mulvaney situation with Bud
Light actually did feel like a cultural reset, almost like a
culturally, very culturally impactful moment.
Not in a good way because, you know, it was one of the first
times that I think we've seen a brand, you know, align
themselves with a very progressive view, progressive
stance and then getting backlash.
And instead of saying like we stand by Dylan, we stand by this
decision. We support trans people, we
support the LGBTQ plus IA community, all of that.
They basically went back on that stance and caved to public
pressure and kind of like low key threw Dylan under the bus
publicly. And hearing from a creator like
Brett how a moment like that and just how things have been going
culturally and politically these past couple of years, like how
all of that is genuinely having real world consequences on the
people who are shaping the creator economy and shaping art
and culture and content and humor.
It's actually so horrifying sometimes.
I don't think brands understand how important it is, or at least
the people at the top understand how important it is to align
with progressive values and how beneficial that can be to your
brand, especially in the long term.
Because pendulums, they swing. I mean, this is like what I have
to believe, OK, Pendulums, they swing.
And we're going to remember in like 1020 years when hopefully,
knock on fucking wood, things have come back to more of like
an equilibrium. We're going to remember the
brands like Bud Light. We're going to remember the
brands that caved under that, like right wing public pressure
and stood for nothing basically, and went back on everything that
they previously said. They're fucking like rainbow
logos, every pride and shit. Like we're going to remember
that. So yeah, I just thought, I know
it's an anecdotal story, but I thought it was an important one
and I think it has a bigger message attached to it.
Even if a brand only cares about the bottom line, I feel like
kind of caving to the cultural and political pressure right
now. It's short sighted and I think
it actually will harm the bottom line in the long run.
All right guys, that's it for Mini Scroll today.
Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys.
Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
Please Spotify star rate US and I will actually, I won't talk to
you tomorrow. Annabelle will talk to you
tomorrow and then I will talk to you on Thursday.
Bye.