Markiplier at the Movies, Keke Goes Live, and the Dogfight Against Deepfake

0:01Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. Yes. When's the last time you were in the movie, Beaver? Over spring break. I saw Mario 2. Did not like it. Mario 1 way better. Go on. Really? Yes. Hands down. Not even a question. There was no Peaches moment. Jack Black. They barely used Jack Black. I got in a whole... I had a business meeting the other day and we both got nothing to do with anything to do with Mario. And me and this one dude just got into it, this whole thing, totally agreeing. It was like a TED Talk. I'm like, it was such a lazy sequel.

0:35It wasn't funny. They didn't have a song. They barely used Jack Black. Questions? Lauren, those are reasons not to like it. It seems like the public is liking it, though. Worldwide, it's grossed$755 million to date. Sure. Just slightly trailing behind. Yeah. The first installment of this new Mario franchise that got$1.3 billion globally. Yeah. Yeah. My problem, I'm not surprised, but it's like a layup because the first one was so good. But I also just feel like if you went, did you see the first one? Of course. It was fantastic. It was fantastic for kids and for parents. The second one was like not funny.

1:08There was no big musical number. They barely used Jack Black. I mean, anyway, what are we talking about anyway? You want to talk about movie theaters? Not as much as a viral phenomenon for sure. But Lauren, basically what I want to ask you was an entree into this story about Markiplier and Iron Lung. Okay, talk about it. Yeah, we know. And so Markiplier, a.k.a. Mark Fishback, who is an incredibly prolific and popular YouTuber, released this indie movie based on this video game called Iron Lung. It cost him a few million dollars to make in the box office overall. It grossed over$50 million worldwide.

1:40And so now that it's done with its box office window, Markiplier was like, yo, I want to put this up on YouTube to sell as a VOD that people can buy just like they can buy other movies on the platform. Sure. And so he went to go do that. And he said, quote, as a YouTuber, I figure the really convenient thing to do is I could put Iron Lung up on YouTube movies for sale. But the problem is you can't just take a video and put it on YouTube and sell it as a movie. You'd think it would work that way. I thought it worked that way because I'm a YouTuber. and I'm like, I do this all the time. I just put it up and release it.

2:12But that's not how it works. So basically, because they don't have like a one-off, like, you know, sell one video kind of a thing. You either subscribe to like a channel effectively, like you pay, because they have a pay subscription for a channel, like you can upgrade, but you can't do just like a one-off. Is that? You can, you can totally go on YouTube and buy, like watch Ace Ventura Pet Detective now, presumably, or Happy Gilmore. So why can't you do it on YouTube? I'm glad you asked. Oh, great. This is what Fishbach said. He said, quote, he basically said, the problem is that you as a normal person can't just go to YouTube and put up a movie that other people can buy.

2:47Okay. They need to go through this process of becoming an official aggregator, an official studio within the YouTube system. So only like studios can sell individual kind of movies, if you will, right now. Right. So he's basically creating like a quote unquote sort of creator studio in order to and then YouTubers can sell underneath this sort of banner. Yes, exactly. Or they could just change the product and allow people to sell like individual kind of assets. But I understand that's maybe more complicated. I don't know. Yeah. Right. Seemingly more complicated. There's probably a lot of video secrecies, both from a technological perspective and from a rights management perspective that we aren't thinking about.

3:21And from a like revenue perspective and which funnels does that flow through on the YouTube back end and more. And so usually what would happen is someone would be done with their movie. They would sell it on Apple TV, Fandango, YouTube, and more. Markiplier is going to forego that, put it exclusively up on YouTube as part of the arrangement that he's making with YouTube in order to become an aggregator for indie creators in the future. So he's got to find more indie creators that want to make full-length features. And then what's going to be the threshold by which they, like, does the movie have to be good?

3:54Like, how do you get into this? Like, I have a lot of questions. I think he's going to be the curator. Exactly. He's going to be the curator of that. It's going to flow through him and he's going to decide kind of like what equals a certain level of quality that one he wants to be associated with and two would be good for the plot. I wonder if it's going to be genre specific like it's going to be horror. I think it would probably start like that just because that's what a lot of people are making these days. But I don't think it would need to be genre specific in the future. I don't think a lot of follow up.

4:19Well, maybe some people have some ideas of who we can get on to talk about that. I think this is fascinating, though. And it's I mean, I feel like I didn't realize that you kind of couldn't do that either. And I feel don't feel that bad about that because Markiplier didn't know either. so totally totally we don't have to feel like whatever he didn't know how's I supposed to know and yeah I think this is gonna be really good PR for YouTube in the long run and then for Markiplier he can become this mini studio mogul I love it I think this is great I mean this is like it's all media Josh this is what it is it's just all media it's all media alright well keeping on the YouTube train I want to talk about how YouTube is sharing its deep fake detector with studios so you know So it's really interesting because Google's actually making it easier to make AI content, which is really like not the Hollywood fath is in and of itself.

5:08An entity does not like love that because a lot of obviously talent feels like that they could be exploited and all that sort of stuff. But just to give some context here and some history. So in 2024, YouTube announced its plan to team up with CAA to develop a likeness detection tool that would combat the rise of deep fake images and video on social media platforms. So there's been years since this happened. And so YouTube has been testing this anti-deepfake technology with partners. And first it was sort of a small group of creators. And then journalists and celebrities are sort of trying it out.

5:37People who spot deepfake versions of their likeness on YouTube can request access to this tool even if they don't have an active channel on the platform. So Mary Ellen Coe, who, of course, is the chief business officer at YouTube, says, We've been working on this for quite some time since the genesis of thinking through AI tools and the implications of the platform. Frankly, we've not seen the vectors that are even possible. And we're working very closely with talent agencies and third-party management companies to make sure that public figures can actually get ahead of this before something negative happens.

6:03So they're basically rolling this out to sort of anybody. You don't have to be a YouTuber to sort of use this to sort of combat deep fakes. And so, again, what's interesting about this is that, like, YouTube is honestly part of the problem. But they're sort of like part of the problem and part of the solution here because they're rolling out products that make it easier to make deep fakes. but also they're trying to combat them. So some folks are thinking this is some sort of an olive branch for YouTube to this sort of Hollywood, again, at large. But other folks are very sort of skeptical because they're like, they're part of the problem.

6:36Totally. And one thing that Mary Ellen Coe told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview about this is that this is, quote, fire insurance, end quote, for public figures. And that's really how YouTube internally is pitching it. I think it could be viewed as that as well. I mean, it is definitely beneficial for YouTube as a company and an ecosystem to ingratiate itself to the Hollywood class and the stars in that ecosystem and just create another touch point for them to have a positive relationship with the platform. Also, this just goes to show like the incredible amount of data, video data that YouTube has that really no other entity in the world has that they could create something that could actually be useful for this particular use case.

7:24Like the amount of data that YouTube has, the hundred millions of hours of video that's uploaded every minute or so is this incredibly valuable corpus that I think we're going to see utilized in many different ways in the future. This is just one of them. It shows just the incredible scale where any given celebrity or public figure could potentially in the future go to them and be like, okay, I want content ID, but for my likeness. And YouTube says like, okay, no problem. We got you. Yeah. It's so crazy. I mean, I mean, we'll see if it's, if it's going to be effective. I just, I don't know. It feels like a runaway train.

8:01Totally. And you could see in the future, another content ID like system or this being put into the content ID system, which is already there for a lot of music and just straight up video copyright use cases. That being applied to the likeness of these public figures, where if I am some kind of celebrity or journalist or politician, I could log into some type of interface on YouTube, see all of the deep fakes about me, and then choose which ones to just strike down, which ones to monetize and which ones to say, hey, I'm cool with. Which is exactly what content 80 is. Exactly. It used to be like, you know, just to give some context, like, you know, when everything sort of first started it was like you know obviously we were talking mostly about sort of the music industry and the thought was immediately take it down take it down and I mean I was involved in so many things with uh like when I was working with Shane like you can imagine he was doing all sorts of parodies and like that was technically like fair use but like I mean there were so many instances with certain you know music publishers and companies that would um and labels that would want to take it down I had like a I had like a girl like uh Universal that like I would email directly that would help me out a lot.

9:07Like I'm just, I'm having like a deja vu. But that was like the thought process is like, take it down, take it down. And then one day everybody was like, wait a minute, instead of taking it down, I'm going to claim it and just take the monetize it for myself. And they realized that like, you know, sort of music labels slowly, I mean, this was decade plus in the making that like, instead of taking it down, you could actually benefit more from like other people using your music, whether or not you sanctioned it, like it gets you and like, it makes your music popular. And that's basically like what musically was and and became TikTok.

9:35And so it's just the whole thought process around this completely changed and altered. And like, I wonder if we're going to see something similar with like likeness of people. To give you some context on the amount of revenue content ideas generated for the company to YouTube stopped reporting on these numbers specifically a couple years ago, not because of any rationale that I can see, but just because other types of numbers became more important for them to get out into the public. But in any case, back in May of 2015, the amounts that content ID had generated over$12 billion in revenue for copyright holders.

10:07With, in 2024 alone, $3 billion paid out. Yeah, that's crazy. So like, what are you... It's wild. So like, I wonder how that's going to work with my face. I think your face specifically. Specifically my face. Yeah, Lauren, you could be generating a lot of revenue in the future with all the deep fakes about you. Like billions of dollars just for my face. Okay, up next, I want to talk about Kiki Palmer. So Kiki Palmer, who of course well for all intents and purposes is like your sort of mainstream celebrity she sort of rose to fame with akila and the b years ago but she has like 15 million followers on instagram she joshua is launching a show a talk show on twitch um and like what am i argue she could definitely do this with like a mainstream sort of network whatever you know and so i think this is like it seems like maybe oh who what's the big deal but i think you have some who's a like a total sort of a-lister who's like deciding to like launch a new venture on a platform and so this is basically going to be she said and i quote you y 'all know your girl kiki likes to inspect every corner of the interwebs this is a place that come talk laugh and live baby what do you have to say about this i think this is super interesting because it is emblematic of a bunch of converging narratives that are happening in the ecosystem right now the first of which is celebrities are doing their own thing and they want control of their own thing yeah this has been the narrative since we've been in this industry together lauren but now there seem to be like actually financially viable methods for big celebrities to go do things on their own in the way that they want to and make maybe not the kind of money that they could make if they were doing it with a traditional partner but definitely some more money than they could have even like two or three or four years ago.

11:51Yeah. Something that's way more meaningful to them than it would have been even like six, 12 months ago. So Kiki wants to have her own show and her own schedule and do it her own way. And this gives her the ability to do that. What I think is also interesting is that she's doing it on Twitch and she's doing it live. So she's had history with Twitch before. She's been a guest on Kai Sinat's show during his Mafia-thon stream last fall. So she's seen the power of this live streaming firsthand. And she's not the only one either. Other big celebrities, both in the traditional and the online space, have been intrigued by live programming recently.

12:33Mr. Beast is one of the best examples. He had this traditional Mr. Beast YouTube vibe where he trapped 50 streamers in a box, the one that lasted there the longest, got some kind of prize money that they could keep or give to their fans. He filmed a regular YouTube video that he posted on his channel. And then for the last couple hours of the actual video, he made everyone go over to a live stream where he streams it live. Yep. Got tens of millions of views, peaked at a million concurrent viewers on that actual live stream on YouTube. This is for somebody that doesn't go live too. So people are thinking about this and people are realizing the power that live has and how kind of like fun it is and just a different way to interact with their audience and i think palmer saw that firsthand other creators are seeing that as well and she's really diving in also i think it's interesting that like twitch has been a hub for black creator content too you have kaisenat you have your age you have rakai you have druski you have lots of creators that have gotten really big and cultivated an audience on the platform and i'm not saying they couldn't do it in other places i iShowSpeed started on Twitch.

13:46Then he moved to YouTube after he was banned from Twitch and built up a very big streaming audience there. But it is interesting that lots of the biggest streamers in the world who are not gaming related are Black creators. And I think if you look at the history of entertainment, it's kind of no surprise if you feel like you're not being represented in the way you want to be represented in your culture and being represented in the way you want your culture to be represented in these traditional entertainment platforms and you have the ability to do it yourself, you're going to go do it. And that's what these creators have done.

14:17And they kind of tredged the path that Kiki's following now. I'm really excited to see how she does with this, how long it lasts too, and how successful it is. Well, I think what's funny to me is that we always talk about everything old is new again. And cable is cable. The most watch surface on YouTube is connected TV. But now we're at a phase where what's old is new again within the digital ecosystem, because we're talking about live again. So live was a huge deal when I was at Facebook. One of the last where they call them lockdowns. So they used to have this thing at Facebook, Meta, whatever, where it was like all resources, everything go to this one thing.

14:55So famously, years and years ago, Mark Zuckerberg went in front of the whole company. It was like, if you're not working on a product that can be mobile first, literally stop everything. Everything has to be mobile first because he saw that Like people's the usage was, you know, slowly but surely, you know, not even so slowly, but going more towards the phones than desktop. And like arguably off many analysis has sort of stated that this is the reason that sort of the company like, you know, thrived and like really like succeeded because where so many other sort of platforms did not do that. And so it was called like a lockdown.

15:28So it was this famous thing kind of internally. And so live was the I think one of the last lockdowns they did. And it was when I was there probably like 2015, 2016, where every single initiative, every single person was working had to be around live now. And so like all of my like incentivizing internally was like getting celebrities to go live. And it was really hard because a lot of celebrities being going live is really hard. It's like it's really can be terrible if you're not good at it. And so I had a lot of success with it because I worked with comedians and YouTubers who like kind of know how to do that.

16:03But then a lot of folks were like, like comedians were like, I don't want to put that whole set online. You know what I mean? Like there was also like that sort of like struggle. But there was also a lot of negative things that went on about it. Like there were like there was a lot of violence captured live and things that like, you know, we don't we don't want to talk about. And so there are a million reasons why, but the whole sort of lockdown initiative sort of thing in general just kind of went away. There's a lot like people think of this lockdown sort of mentality as a very negative thing.

16:31So as far as I know, like they don't kind of do that anymore. But it's just funny to me because I cannot tell you. I mean, we went live like I remember when I first got to Facebook is like, you know, we had to learn how to like do tasks because like things break on the platform and you have to like, you know, you know, report it. And I was like, what? Like, this never breaks. Shit breaks all the time on these platforms. And we went live with a very, very big celebrity, like, early days, and the whole thing crashed. And it was like a disaster. And that celebrity, like, you can imagine, was not happy.

16:59And it was a whole thing. So I'm getting, like, as you're saying all this, I'm, like, twitching PTSD of, like, 2015, like, all the live initiatives. It was crazy. Peak Live was April 8th, 2016. This is from a CNBC headline. the future of TV, 800K people watch a watermelon explode. Yeah. This is when BuzzFeed tied rubber bands on a watermelon for a couple hours on live. It was captivating. Captivating. We've come so far since then. Oh yeah, no, really so far. So totally fascinated that live is like a thing again. Me too. And I like how it's not the main thing. It's a component of things. Like it can definitely be the main thing for creators, but it's something else that people are interested in and putting it into their arsenal.

17:43I think everyone just realizes that there's something different about doing it live from live sports being the only thing that gets any moderate amount of decent ratings on television that's reliable in any capacity to these different types of streamers who are able to have a very good living as a creator by only getting a few thousand people turning into their streams to TVPN selling to OpenAI for nine figures by getting only like 10, 20, 30 ,000. concurrent viewers per stream. Yeah. But that was like, not to be honest, that was like a sweetheart deal. That was, as a buddy of mine said, that was a bro deal.

18:20To be clear, yes. But it's just in the meta. If our bro was St. Altman, like we would have also like gotten our billion dollar deal. Just saying. Can you get some rich friends, please? Sure. I'll work on it. Okay, thank you. Uploads, downloads. I'm going to start. Jesser, who is of course, Jesse Rydell, is the founder of, you know, the YouTube channel, Josser, they have sort of done this really interesting reorg. Our buddy, Zach Miller, came into the organization a couple of years ago and some really exciting stuff has happened. So they've sort of reorgged and I'm familiar with these kind of organizational changes where they've created something called Jesser Co, which Jesse will be the founder and CEO of.

19:01Zach Miller is then going to be the president. Under this will be Bucket Squad, which is sort of the apparel line, apparel business. They already have, of course, a shoe line and then they have these sort of basketball focused products. And so they brought in somebody named Eric Wise, who's the former GM of global basketball at Adidas to sort of lead these efforts. I mean, that sounds like a pretty major hire. I would say that that's an upload. You're getting somebody who comes from like a storied, very mature, big sort of well-known global brand to sort of take your company to the next level.

19:30I mean, that's your products. I mean, I think that's pretty, pretty excited. So it'll be the new president of Bucket Squad. and he said what stood out to me was the strength of the brand the connection already has with its audience and the opportunity ahead bucket squad sits at a meaningful intersection with sports and culture and the opportunity to lead it as part of jester co's broader vision made this especially compelling move excited to help build what comes next um this is really cool i'm excited to see what happens here bucket squad is currently being sold on their own website but they also have commercial relationships with dick's sporting goods they also have some nba crossover events Well, they'll partner with MBA for official Bucket Squad merch and more.

20:09But Lauren, my question to you is, why does a company reorg like this? Is it because they want to section off different areas of the company? So like this new hire can just be involved with Bucket Squad and get some incentives in the Bucket Squad line of business, but not necessarily have exposure to the overall Jester org or the content side? Yeah, I mean, there's sort of separating P &Ls, right, and having different sort of KPIs and different sort of level. There's a lot of reasons. There's like, like, you want to have like, like a hold co with different sort of entities underneath it is inherently like sort of more valuable and allows for different kinds of, let's call it investment strategies, acquisition strategies moving forward.

20:51And so it's from an accounting perspective, like I'm not an accountant, but I've been in the room with a lot of these meetings when you're dealing with like a holdco versus an and then you got to make it an S corp versus an LLC and all these different kinds of things. So there's literally basic accounting reasons for it, especially when you're thinking about my guess is in the future, they're going to be doing acquisitions and adding a lot more buckets, no pun intended, underneath this sort of holdco. And you can separate these P &Ls depending on how they want to do it. So it just it speaks to like the expansion of the business, basically.

21:23Yeah, totally. I love this. I'm excited to see where they go. Can I give a quick shout out to Dick Sporting Goods? I mean, what a fantastic experience I had this weekend. If they finally did the thing that I've been wondering why not every retail does it, were instead of waiting for the one person who's working on the floor with the shoes to bring out the shoes, you can just you can just zap it and somebody brings out the shoe for you. Oh, that's amazing. I was just like, what are we doing? Like this is this is and they're helpful when they come out. It's not like they don't answer a question for me.

21:48but I don't know, wait for the person to come over to me. I'm sitting there sweating. My kid's freaking out. Oh, what a dream experience. Just want to say it. This is not sponsored content, but like if they are interested, I'm available. Lauren, one more big item of news in the creator economy this week. So Fixated just acquired Studio 71. Fixated is a new fangled digital management company, creator economy company, Holdco. We had the founders on a few weeks ago. Yes, we had Zach Katz and Jason Wilhelm on to tell us all about it, where they want to assemble the, quote, Avengers, end quote, of the ecosystem.

22:27To do that, they raised$50 million from Todd Boley and his investment arm. So they have acquired gamer talent firm Elefy and creator subscription business Elevate. Now they're adding Studio 71 to its portfolio. With that, they get access to all the creators in Studio 71's network, in addition to their ad sales teams. Studio 71 also does scripted podcasts, merch lines, and more. I think Xated wants to expand and really take on the incumbents in the ecosystem. In order to do that, they're doing these acquisitions to make themselves as big as they can be in a thoughtful way. Well, they want to be a different kind of management company, so they say, which I highly encourage people to listen to that interview.

23:11I thought it was very interesting. You know, Studio 71, this is not the first time it's sort of turned over. So, of course, it started off as The Collective, which then became Collective Digital Studios, which then became Studio 71. And they were acquired by a German company called ProSieben. Lots of theories going on about why they decided to sort of unload Studio 71. should be noted that I believe they're retaining all the global kind of aspects of Studio 71. And this is just the sort of US that Fixated acquired. I personally have a lot of history with this company so that this was the collective.

23:42Again, this is four iterations ago. They were the first company, credit where credit is due, that really like, you know, call it traditional Hollywood company that recognized these creators. There was a manager there named Evan Weiss who represented a young kid named Lucas Cruikshank who had a channel called Fred Ficklehorn. And they put a, they pitched at Nickelodeon and he had a show on Nickelodeon for, I want to say like three or four years. I sort of started working with them right around the second, first or second season of that. And that is where I, I first, I was a producer for Hire and I worked for the collective and I did a few things for the Axis of Awesome, which was the time was a big Australian rock sort of comedy rock band that has a show a song called four chords which is still kind of one of the bigger music videos songs whatever it's amazing um and then they repped uh the annoying orange and i produced that pilot and then um i met my husband there and then oh that's so sweet it's true and then that's where max benader and i met like he started there like so many of us started there it was a wild they were wild days uh give me a drink and i'll tell you more um and they uh Initially, we're kind of working with Shane Dawson.

24:53That's how I got connected with him. So very familiar with the early days of that organization and interesting to see the evolution of it. Okay, Josh, I think we did it. Lauren, I think that's it. I'll see you on Kiki Palmer's live Twitch show. Now we're talking. What would be your pitch to get on there? Do I need a pitch? You had to have one. That's my pitch. Fine. We'll see if that works. That was like Gigi Gorgeous. when she, you know, they do the housewife lines, you know what I mean? And she was behind the bar at Watch What Happens and her was, her line, she turned around and she goes, they say I'm a bitch.

25:32It was so good. It was so good. Okay, thank you. End of thought there next week on Creator Upload. Today's show was produced by Lauren Schnipper, Joshua Cohen, that's me, and Adam Conner. It's edited by Adam Conner too. Original music is by London Bridge. You can check him out on Instagram at London Bridge Music. make sure you subscribe to Creator Upload right here on YouTube on Apple Podcasts as well, Spotify or wherever you're listening. While you're there, give us a rating and leave us a comment. If you want to talk, hit us up at info at creatorupload.com. If you like our show, recommend it to a friend.