Welcome to Issue #6 of the Means of Creation weekly news roundup where we break down the latest news on the passion economy, including the happenings related to platforms, creators, startups, and trends.

Last Week’s Interview: Taylor Lorenz

This week we interviewed Taylor Lorenz, a technology reporter for the New York Times covering internet culture. Some highlights:

• What we can learn from creators about the future of entrepreneurship
• Why creators are finally getting the recognition they deserve among VCs and technologists
• The aptness of the term “passion economy”
• The tensions between tech VCs and journalists
• Citizen journalism and the evolving media landscape
• How privilege plays out in the passion economy

Find it as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Breaker or wherever you listen to podcasts, or as a video on YouTube here. Or subscribe to the Means of Creation YouTube Channel.

Top of Mind

AOC ON TWITCH
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Storms Twitch | WIRED // Cecilia D’Anastasio, Wired

What happened?

• Last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez live-streamed on Twitch playing Among Us, a viral multiplayer game with Mafia-like mechanics.
• Twenty minutes before she began, she had 50k live viewers and by the time she went live, she had over 260k followers. This week is the first time she launched her channel.

What does it mean for the passion economy?

• It’s a brilliant move by AOC. She’s unafraid to act casual and try streaming in front of her constituents. This allows Ocasio-Cortez to connect with her audience on a deeper level than other candidates who use more traditional (and formal) methods of communication like press conferences and TV appearances.
• Streaming humanizes people more than other social platforms like Twitter or Instagram. It’s unscripted: the creator’s personality shines through. As a result, the audience feels like they are in the same room with the streamer and it builds deep trust and rapport.

Included in this issue:

• Writers on Substack are selling ads despite the despite the platform making it difficult for them
• How games have a unique power law distribution compared to other forms of content
• “Queerbaiting” on TikTok: heterosexual creators, particularly young men, have been creating suggestive queer content to earn higher engagement
• A new book about TikTok & ByteDance
• Substack launching a new feature for writers
• Newsletter recommendation about tech & society
• The rise of Platformer and The Bitcoin Forecast
• Music tech startup Output raising $45m

What Readers Are Saying

This post was really awesome especially the news on David and on Triller. Amazing work team.

Newsletters are insightful and I never feel they are too wordy. Please keep this style. Sometime you feel some people develop simple ideas in too many lines just for the sake of writing or having a long newsletter. Yours are straight to the pint and enjoyable to read.

This is great! I love all the news about the Passion Economy, thanks for pulling it together. As a curator myself and someone who wants to be "in the know" about what creators, curators and builders are doing, I really appreciate this. Thank you!

Looking forward to more news from means of creation. More power to you guys :)

When you subscribe to Means of Creation, you also get:

1. The Means of Creation talk show every Friday at 11:00am PST / 2:00pm EST featuring founders and investors in the passion economy. Recent guests include Ankur Nagpal, Joseph Cohen, and Blake Robbins.
2. Passion Economy News (you’re reading it now!) where we break down the latest news on the passion economy — platforms, creators, startups, and trends.
3. Everything else in the bundle, including great stuff from Divinations (on strategy) Superorganizers (on productivity), Napkin Math (on investing), Praxis (from the inimitable mind of Tiago Forte) and Almanack (how to be healthy, wealthy and wise, from Nat Eliason). And we’re adding new stuff all the time!