I want to start off by saying if you’re new here, welcome and thank you. Odds are, you’ve probably been watching my videos for a while, and now with this newsletter, I can connect with you in a way where I won’t be censored. The format for this thing goes as follows:

Some pieces of current news

A blog I write just for you guys.

I do this because if you scroll to the bottom of any of my first fourteen editions, those blogs still hold up. Meaning anyone joining this community later than all of you can play catch-up quickly. While today’s stock market will be different than tomorrow’s, the stories I write about our pedophilic politicians will remain relevant. Except not today, because today we will discuss the newest tech bubble. Now, take the gun out of your mouth and start reading.

The Newest Internet Bubble

The human species is a funny thing. There’s not much difference between podcasting and the radio industry; the same goes for paying for a cable bundle package rather than paying for a number of subscriptions. And isn’t TikTok a lot like a certain app that blew up a bunch of sixteen-year-old boys who went on a tour around the country doing nothing?

We take ideas that we’ve already liked, repackage them, make them slightly better, and then take them to the market. This will be my most important newsletter send yet because I’ll be telling you about the next boom and why it’s no different.

About eight years ago, everyone and their Mother (sometimes quite literally) entered the podcasting space, which was only elevated because of COVID. Being White or Asian without a podcast was like being the only kid on your bus route without a DS, and because of that, there are podcasts about everything. From tech to murder to music and anime, there’s no shortage of people who have at least tried creating podcast content.

While podcasting became oversaturated quickly, it was a gold rush, and a lot of people bet, some won, and many lost (including your friend who spent two hundred bucks on equipment for a short-lived podcast about fantasy football). Spotify invested over a billion dollars for exclusive rights to podcasters, and Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper were the only gambles the company made that proved successful. 

The truth is that people would much rather listen to Matt McCusker talk about his battle against the nog than listen to Michelle Obama talk about motherhood and leadership or Megan Markle speak about STEM. As it turns out, most (not all) actors, athletes, and politicians are fucking retarded, too rich to appeal and connect to the masses beyond doing what they’re already known for doing, or they’re so locked into the corporate world and government that they can’t say anything interesting for fear of losing money.

In many ways, the podcast industry has hit its ceiling in America (this isn’t a bad thing). The number of new podcasts dropped by eighty percent over the past year compared with the two years before, and the number of US podcast listeners only increased by five percent in 2022. The industry of podcasting will still be huge, and new talent will funnel in and out (just like any other medium), but it’s not getting much bigger than this in America. 

Over the five years, shit has happened. TikTok became one of the fastest-growing companies in world history thanks to an algorithm personalized to each user (a strategy every other platform has subsequently copied); the US government was caught infiltrating social media content standards, I surprised everyone in my life by getting a hot girlfriend, and employees have been told that they need to return back to the office. This has posed some interesting predicaments for social media companies and creators. 

We’ve known for a while that most young people are learning, laughing, and engaging with content on social media far more than the likes of TV and other traditional mediums. The biggest problem with social media is that it’s inconsistent and can change on a dime. While working in Venture Capital, I watched Outkick, a company owned by the firm I worked for, lose ninety percent of their Facebook traffic in a single day. Years ago, I was also in partly responsible for our company losing a one-million-dollar Instagram handle because Meta decided to change its community guidelines on a dime. Both of those things were detrimental to how much we made within those quarters and led to financial consequences for all of those involved. Those included layoffs, tighter budgets, ect.

More conservative or comedically raunchy companies now do their best to live on X, Rumble, Patreon, or their own website in fear of censorship. They do this because they know those companies value freedom of speech, and, in turn, they won’t have their business destroyed (like I’ve seen countless times) in a day. BUT, those platforms take years of hard work to build an audience on, and their algorithms aren’t that great for up-and-coming creators. Many top Patreon podcasts and Conservative Twitter personalities built their audiences by going viral on mainstream platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok with creator-friendly algorithms before their audiences to platforms where they don’t have to hold back in fear of retribution.  

Algorithms and community guidelines don’t just affect raunchier companies; they affect everyone. One little tick to the TikTok algorithm can make winners and losers- this is why you see so many accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and no views. TikTok and Instagram reels may be the best way for anyone in the world to build an audience fast, but it far from guarantees loyalty. Most TikTok followers are rentals, people who like to engage with your content every once in a while but would never go out of their way to buy a product you make or promote. The last account I ran, I got up to over one hundred thousand followers; this one has almost fifty thousand. I would say I have six thousand people who care enough to do something small that would support me financially (like buying a cool tee shirt or something). That’s why most TikTokers try to get their followers to head over to YouTube, where they can make longer-form content that grows loyalty and monetizes meaningfully. People not only become bigger fans of personalities based on long-form podcasts, vlogs, ect., there’s also more money in it. 

Another issue that comes with TikTok is that, just like Instagram, it can fuck you over without a rhyme or a reason with vague community guidelines policy. As of right now, TikTok is refusing to publish a majority of my content. Because of community guidelines violations? Nope, I play by the rules (except when I’m drunk on live). Most videos I try publishing now say processing and then never upload. No reason as to why is given. I think this might have something to do with the politicians and companies I’ve made mad. See:

Vivek Ramaswamy

Apple

The Clintons

Obama

The CIA

Media Institutions 

The CIA a million more times

The Bush Family

The Bidens

The list could go on and on….

Point being, ninety-nine percent of influencers who can’t get their followers to engage with them on something long form won’t pan out in the long term (unless they’re really hot). So, if podcasting is an oversaturated market for long-form content, YouTube, Twitter, and Rumble accounts are really hard to build, and Instagram and TikTok have crazy algorithms and inconsistent community guidelines policies, what’s the tool people can use to avoid pesky algorithms that will insurmountably change how many people see your content or censorship? It involves a man named Tyler….and no, not the kid I used to buy really shitty carts from. 

Towards the end of my tenure at Total Frat Move, about fifteen months ago, I was tasked with doing their newsletter. In my mind, newsletters were a way to reach an audience with Alzheimer’s or for companies that have seen better days to inform you about a sale. But that’s all changed. My newsletter for Total Frat Move was sent out to fifty-thousand people three times a week (because those emails were collected from tee-shirt sales), with over half of them opening up each email. It was the first time in my life that I realized I could say whatever I wanted and I wouldn’t get shadowbanned. Even better than that, I wasn’t reliant on some crazy algorithm to reach people; all they had to do was open an email. I ran that newsletter until my time at Total Frat Move ended last February, and then I ran a much milder sports newsletter after that, which was again successful. And in the wake of years of censorship and inconsistent social media algorithms, I wasn’t the only one interested in newsletters.

99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking twenty times a day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning. This is why every company in the world is scrambling right now to found a newsletter and why Tyler Denk, who co-founded Beehiiv, is racking in cash. Beehiiv is the first newsletter hosting platform that makes your emails look good and is easy to operate. For the first time, an email doesn’t have to look the same as it did for Eric Harris. 

On average, email drives an ROI (return on investment) of $36 for every dollar spent, higher than any other channel. The retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods business has an ROI of $45. That’s fucking insane. While sending a newsletter doesn’t get your company viral in forty-eight hours, email marketing drives consistent results no other algorithm-based platform can promise. Spending a company marketing budget on a TikTok push is playing the lottery. Sure, every once in a while, you see a story about Keith Lee going into a small barbecue joint and increasing their sales by two thousand percent, but that’s not the case for most businesses (big or small).

It’s not just companies; influencers are getting into email, too. Anyone who’s ever taken a microeconomics course is familiar with Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV). If a business is somehow able to create email content that’s mildly interesting, its sales will explode, especially in e-commerce or content. The most competent famous people in the world know something that most of us don’t, having a message people like + a good product= a lot of fucking money. It’s why Rihanna, Kyle from NELK, and a few others are richer than their peers. They know that with the loyalty of their audience, they have low customer acquisition costs, and they stay involved in the products they sell to make sure they’re quality, ensuring their fans get Lifetime Value.

The same goes for newsletter and email. You see, no government agency has the power to shadowban an email from hitting an inbox. Lighting or captions to reach more people in an algorithm don’t matter at all; it’s simple, and because people are stuck going back to work, they appreciate it. The days of people scrolling TikTok during a two-hour lunch between Google Meets meetings are over (sadly). Now, all of the poor souls going back into an office (which eight out of ten of us will have to do by this time next year) have to look like they’re being productive. Reading funny or interesting emails gives them the chance to break up their day while still looking productive to their boomer boss. And as the ROI shows, it’s the most cost-effective medium for brands and advertisers (not to mention you can also put it behind a paywall). 

The newsletter market is where podcasts were eight years ago. It’s a bubble. As we see fewer and fewer people starting podcasts and more people returning to the office, the TikTok influencer market is crumbling before our eyes. Having a company newsletter or writing one as an influencer is the smartest thing you can do right now before it too becomes oversaturated, like everything else. Whether you’re a conservative using email for free speech reasons, a brand looking to acquire customers at a low cost, or an influencer looking to build something long-term, email is the move to make.