Keep scrolling for a new interview with TikTok’s “insufferable” queen Delaney Rowe.
MrBeast stokes generations of geopolitical tension with his new Squid Game-esque challenge video
MrBeast has come under fire for taking several controversial geopolitical stances in a new video released to his 178 million subscribers.
MrBeast— real name Jimmy Donaldson— published a YouTube video on Saturday in which contestants from “every country on earth” competed in Squid Game-like elimination challenges to win $250,000.
“Behind me is one person from every country on Earth,” he said. “We’re gonna see which country’s the best. Because I flew all of them here to compete in the most extreme version of the Olympics ever created.”
Fans immediately took issue with two things about the video:
The countries that were not included in the competition.
The map used in the video and its divisive borders.
For example, MrBeast included a participant from Hong Kong but not Taiwan or Tibet, which were included inside China’s borders. He gave Canada sovereignty over islands that are part of Greenland and Norway. And he lumped Crimea in with Russia.
The billionaire YouTuber also had trouble identifying flags. For instance, he used the U.S. state of Georgia flag to represent Georgia the country. He also identified Afghanistan with the black and white flag adopted by the Taliban in 2021 rather than the tricolour flag used up until the fall of Kabul.
Read the full story via TechCrunch.
A new creator labor union is set to launch
According to a report by The Information, a new union to protect digital creators will launch next week.
The Hollywood strike has highlighted the lack of protections within the creator economy. New efforts are emerging to change that.
Backed by creators such as iJustine— real name Justine Ezarik — the Creators Guild of America “aims to protect the rights and promote the interests of digital creators”.
The group is set to launch on Thursday.
The union plans to provide its members with “benefits such as accreditation for their projects, education, career mentorship, job opportunities and networking events.”
It also plans to launch a database to record its members work, like IMDB.
Read the full story via The Information.
The many faces of Scooter Braun
Some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities are parting ways with notorious talent manager Scooter Braun. While the reason for this mass exodus is still in question, a 2022 investigation by Anna Silman for Insider sheds light on Braun’s business practices and industry reputation.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, J Balvin, Idina Menzel and Demi Lovato are leaving Braun’s management stable SB Projects.
Though not all parties have confirmed the reports, there’s no denying that something is happening within Braun’s empire.
Silman’s investigation uncovered a few major findings about Braun that may explain his (possible?) downfall:
Unlike other talent managers who function behind-the-scenes, Silman’s sources claim that Braun has always craved the limelight himself. His obsession with power and fame have made him “ruthless” in how he conducts business.
"I've never seen anyone burn so many bridges with so many people," a person familiar with Braun's business dealings told Silman.
Braun doesn’t just want fame, he’s also obsessed with being liked. This preoccupation with public perception has helped him exceed in managing talent. But it’s also allegedly led to Braun developing a reputation among industry executives as two-faced.
Behind the scenes, some said, Braun bore less and less resemblance to his nice-guy image. "Other managers have public personas directly in line with the way they behave. They're known as tough guys on behalf of their clients, and they'll say, 'I'm a motherfucker, but I am this way because that is my job,'" an entertainment insider said. "That's the open secret about Scooter in the industry. He personifies hypocrisy at the highest level."
Braun has a “reputation for litigiousness” and he will go to great lengths to preserve public face both for his clients and for himself. According to Silman’s reporting, this sometimes involves throwing other celebrities under the bus to protect his money-makers. For example, rapper Lil Twist claims that Braun repeatedly planted negative stories about him in the press to deflect attention from Justin Bieber during Bieber’s wild years.
An aggressive approach to reputation management has long been part of the Scooter Braun playbook, but it might not be working as well for him as it once did. "I don't think you can pretend to be the nice guy on social media but, behind the scenes, be one of the most cutthroat people in the business," one industry player said. "This is a very small business. You just run out of people to screw."
Read the full investigation via Insider.
Delaney Rowe isn’t trying to be cringe
Journalist Tyler McCall interviews TikTok actress Delaney Rowe in a new profile for Vanity Fair.
Delaney Rowe has amassed 2.2 million followers on TikTok for creating wildly realistic “cringe sketches.” Some of her most popular sketches feature female characters written by men and as she put it, the “absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie.”
“When I look at my videos, and what I thought about when I was making them, it’s not like I’m trying to be cringe. I’m trying to be authentic, and then hopefully that induces discomfort,” she tells Vanity Fair. “What I’m doing is actually just really specific and accurate and it’s eliciting some uncomfy reactions.”
Delaney has wanted to be an actress since 2004. She moved from Idaho to L.A. after high school and despite “gathering a team of agents and managers to help get her acting career off the ground,” Delaney struggled to get traction.
In the meantime, Delaney worked in hospitality and picked up some work doing meal prep for a mother.
This led the aspiring actress to consider becoming a personal chef.
She mocked up flyers on Canva, lied about going to culinary school, and stuffed them in mailboxes around Beverly Hills.
The late Stan Lee became her first client. After that, her famous clientele kept coming, and she ended up working for several professional football players who were staying in L.A. in their offseason.
“Now I’m far enough away from it to be like, ‘Yeah, I never went to culinary school, I fully lied about that,” she laughs.
When the pandemic hit, Delaney found TikTok and decided to use the platform “as one big self-tape to show anybody who wants to watch that I can be funny.”
Now, the 27-year-old is a full-blown TikTok star. While continuing to pursue acting, Delaney is also writing her own material and in the process of putting together a book of essays— Eve Babitz style.
“I was talking to a girlfriend of mine, and she’s like, ‘Are you so excited to be on the [Variety Young Hollywood] list?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am super excited, but most of my brain capacity right now is dissecting the nuances of my situationship,’” she says while laughing. “I am trying to be excited about everything that’s coming, but I’m in my late 20s, and I’m also interested in creating a really rich personal life. It’s girlhood!”
Read the full profile via Vanity Fair.
Madeline Argy apologises for saying she wanted to live in a “sundown town”
The biggest controversy on TikTok this week occurred when creator Madeline Argy joked about her racial ignorance. She has since apologised.
In a recent TikTok video, Madeline recounted how she used to tell people that she wanted to “live in a sundown town” when she was older because she didn’t understand what the term meant.
“I told, like, 100 people that I want to live in a sundown town when I grow up because I didn’t know what the fuck that was. I thought that they were, like, the tiny little American towns like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls or, like, from Paper Towns, when it’s, like, it doesn’t exist on a map for some reason,” she said in her video. “The cute American towns where there’s, like, literally 20 people and they all drive pickup trucks, that’s what I thought a sundown town was.”
Sundown towns are all-white areas in the United States that practice racial segregation by excluding non-white people via discriminatory policies, violence, or intimidation.
Some of these towns historically had signs that told non-white people to leave before sundown, hence the term.
While the number of sundown towns has decreased since the civil rights movement, these practices are still in effect throughout many integrated areas in the United States.
Madeline, who recently signed to Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network, was immediately met with backlash for joking about her ignorance.
Though Madeline is British, many Black Americans have shared why her video was offensive, regardless if she understood the meaning or not.
Others argue that it would’ve been unusual if Madeline heard the term “sundown town” without the context of what it meant.
One day later, Madeline removed the video and posted an apology on TikTok.
Madeline clarified she’s been saying this “to other European people who don’t know what they are.”
She went on to say that she understands it would be distressing for someone to hear her say that, given they did know what the term meant and that sundown towns still exist— a fact she also claims she did not know until her video got backlash.
In response to a user questioning how she heard the term “sundown town” without context, Madeline said she has “no clue.”
Read the full story via Centennial World.
The evolution of superfans to “famous fans”
This week’s infinite scroll podcast explores fandom culture from a new angle— the fan-to-”famous fan” pipeline. While “famous fans” are definitely not a new phenomenon, the category has been a growing in recent years as virality becomes easier to obtain. We look at some recent examples of “famous fans”— like Johnny Silvestri, Ashley Leechin, Adam McIntyre, and Paige Neimann— and what this says about fan culture online, including the traits of fan communities that make it easier for individuals to rise through the ranks and become celebrities/objects of the fan culture themselves.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.