4-Hour Work Week author Tim Ferriss just discovered what regular readers here already know.  Clips make for great content. But for promotion?  Eh, not so much.  He’s seen 50 million+ clip views, but none of them led to long-form podcast listens.

He’s also freaking out as his book sales collapse.  His catalog of self-help guides is down 80% since the dawn of modern AI in 2022.  Why?  Ironically, people looking to do more in less time favor quick answers from chatbots over spending hours and dollars on one of his 400 to 600-page titles.

Ferriss’s answer?  Core down to 10,000 true fans and hope to make up the revenue via deeper, pricier products.

But there’s another way.  Jay Shetty built a licensed digital version of himself on Delphi, offering Shetty-on-demand 24-7, thus bypassing ChatGPT’s propensity to make stuff up. At my VivaTech session on synthetic creators last week, Delphi CEO Dara Ladjevardian told me they train each digital twin to say only what the real person would actually say, not improvise new opinions on the fly.  

The guy who wrote the book on working four hours a week just got out-hacked by an even bigger shortcut.  He’s got his head in the sand as chatbots build a better interface to his own ideas.  Shetty gets high-value, deep human connections with super-fans, and an always-on interface to his brain for everyone else.

Ferriss just bet his career on storytelling for superfans. Shetty’s expanding his reach by cloning himself. Which bet will you make? (Tim Ferriss)

This was one of 44 different themes I presented at SXSW a week ago.  Look for a new theme each week (mostly) as we explore the creepy, weird and ultimately hopeful future of creators in our new AI economy. 

Grab the full deck free right here (drop me a tip if you want): THE WEIRD AI FUTURE FOR CREATORS

We’re moving to a world where AI agents buy stuff for us.  Not everything but lots of things.  That’s going to disrupt a big chunk of creator-led shopping as purchases will be made before the person gets involved.  Two new reports, one from Bain and the other from VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners, mostly agree on where agentic shopping strikes first: purchases we routinely restock.  These will get handed over to the agents because the consequential decisions have already been made. Expensive, complex products will still need a human in the loop.

How does that impact creators?  Those recommending or selling high-consideration, high-touch products should be OK, as we will still need advice from human experts before that big purchase.  I think authoritative trusted creators have a bigger opportunity here, as they’ll likely influence the agents as well as their peeps. But creators focused on habitual repurchases and small-ticket consumables are in trouble.  You don’t need an affiliate link to reorder printer paper.

Interestingly, neither report talks about creators at all.  For two firms that mapped the disruption for clients and portfolio companies, it’s a curious omission that shouldn’t be interpreted as reassurance.  (Bain, Bessemer)

Meta continues to screw over creators.  The latest?  Many established creators in Meta’s Content Monetization Program are seeing a 70-90% reduction in revenue.  Virtually overnight.  They are posting the same content at the same cadence, but their payouts have evaporated.

Many speculate that Meta is moving money to AI, bringing in new creators via the Creator Fast Track for a tiny flat fee, and embracing AI-generated content.

As @Simon Owens points out, this is simply business as usual at Meta, yet another cycle of luring creators in with lucrative payments, only to pull the rug out.  I was with some friends from Jellysmack at VivaTech last week, and privately they told me similar stories from a few years ago.  The lesson is clear.  Take what you can get from Meta but don’t count on it.  Shift your focus to moving your audience to your owned platforms, and build on platforms like YouTube that value creators.  (Simon Owen’s Media Newsletter).

Fantastic week in Paris at VivaTech 2026.  If you haven’t been you should absolutely go.  Much of the world’s tech, and the world leaders, are on display.  And now (with a little of my help), the creator economy has arrived too.  Here are my top hits.

I love reading Evan Shapiro’s research, as he tends to blow up preconceived notions.  And his latest report is no different.  ESHAP found that time spent viewing video on mobile is outpacing the big screen by 2:1 which flies in the face of the commonly held belief that more viewing happens on the big screen than the small. 

The study also found that the bed and the toilet are significant locations for video consumption, which means we need more mobile-first channels formatted specifically for potty-viewing (Poobi?).

Yes, YouTube beats Disney overall, that’s old news.  But in another shocker, all five legacy TV companies (Disney, Paramount, NBCU, Fox and WBD) pull more hours of attention from the 55+ crowd than all other demos combined.  TV owns the olds, and YouTube, TikTok and Instagram dominate the under 55 crowd.  Want to reach 55 and up?  Facebook and traditional TV.  Under 45? TikTok and YouTube are pretty much neck and neck. 

When I was running print computer magazines 25 years ago, I used to call this the Reader’s Digest problem.  When your median audience is 65, and it gets a year older every year, your business will be dead in 20 years.  I’m not saying this is what’s happening to TV.  But the patterns feel oddly similar.

Beyond his speaking and consulting business, ESHAP doesn’t have a dog in this race (apart from getting messily divorced from NBCU in the last decade).  The data is split between survey data and a model that applies “exact demographic balance” to a blend of data from other panels.  The survey data is likely predictive, but individual demographic and model data more directional.  (ESHAP)

LinkedIn’s new B2B Buyer Report makes the case better than I ever could: buyers trust expert voices more than brands, and they spend most of their research time reading the people who actually understand the space. That’s exactly my audience: marketers, media execs, founders, top creators and operators who shape budgets and make decisions. 

A weekly sponsorship puts your company inside a trusted, high-intent environment, shows up repeatedly where it actually matters, and aligns your brand with the point-of-view content buyers say moves them. If you want to speak to the people building the next wave of media, creators, and AI, this is where they show up every week. 

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!) and AI was very lightly used for editing.

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Let me know what you think – email me at [email protected]. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.