The Barbell Era: AI Funds POV, Flattens the Middle and Now Everyone's Scared
AI accelerates what you already are: great work gets cheaper, mediocrity can’t hide. If we’re the industry of craft, let's act like it.
👋🏼 I’m in Cannes next week giving a keynote at MIPCOM. If you’re around, say hi!
The Fear Flip
In my last drop, I argued the “iPhone moment” for AI video wouldn’t arrive via a shiny new app but through an old pipe: YouTube on the living-room TV. Synthetic clips pass the sofa test, ads bankroll the compute, the format goes ambient. Distribution beats development; the pipe writes the rules.
Since then, nothing’s changed and, as always, everything did. Sora rocketed to #1 on the iOS App Store (and faster than ChatGPT) while still invite-only, forcing a live renegotiation of copyright, consent, and creator economics. OpenAI started shipping policy patches in public (likeness/cameo restrictions and new rightsholder controls) while framing the social video surge as an on-ramp to AGI-scale ambition.
Here’s the punchline Hollywood should enjoy: the fear flipped. For a decade, studios feared YouTube creators and their content and now the biggest YouTuber alive says the quiet part out loud: parity-quality AI video threatens creator livelihoods. “Scary times” (thanks, MrBeast). Meanwhile, his shop looks and spends like a studio: hundreds of staff, nine-figure opex, multi-million-dollar tent-poles. Provenance, IRL scarcity, and IP discipline are his moat. MrBeast is the legacy studio inside the creator economy. Oops.
YouTube itself (as a stand in for platforms as a whole)? Fine. It owns the couch; more supply only fattens the ad stack. The reckoning is human: creators facing an AI-accelerated attention market that rewards point-of-view and punishes algorithmic sameness.
So let’s talk about that today:
AI as accelerant: it amplifies the brilliant and the bad, but most importantly, mediocrity gets exposed at scale.
Algorithmic flattening: sameness rises; engagement-chasing “slop” swamps feeds unless you stand out on concept and craft.
Auteur advantage: point of view is the moat — originality, storytelling, and IRL scarcity beat button-press output.
Barbell outcome: top “studio-like” creators and niche auteurs win; the mid-tail gets squeezed on discovery and RPMs.
Pipes vs people: YouTube (the pipe) is fine; the reckoning is human; all creators must adapt or sink, whether you’re legacy or emergent.
What to do now. Because, you know, act now.
The Double Inversion: Creators’ Reckoning, Not YouTube’s
YouTube ≠ endangered; creators are.
On the sofa, YouTube is the default pipe. It already commands ~13% of U.S. TV viewing and drives a billion+ TV hours/day. More supply (including synthetic) simply fattens that pipe and its ad stack. The platform that owns the living room writes the rules. To be clear, again, “YouTube” here is shorthand for the distribution layer. Swap in TikTok, Instagram, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, or whoever sits between creators and the living-room screen. The incentives are identical: maximise watch-time and ad yield, not creator welfare; AI video is simply more fuel for the ranking machine.
Supply shock → discovery squeeze.
Sora’s great week, while still invite-only (let that truly sink in), is a clean signal that near-zero-marginal-cost video is about to flood feeds. When output spikes, mid-tail discovery and RPMs compress first.
So what?
We’ve entered a new phase of infinite content. Attention is the scarce thing, not video. When feeds overflow, the algorithm flattens nuance into sameness and ranking whiplash follows.
That’s context collapse: your best work sits beside ten near-clones. If you don’t have a clear point of view, you disappear.
Money splits into two lanes: a human-premium lane (verifiably IRL, sponsor-safe, higher RPMs) and a synthetic lane (cheap, labelled, lower yield).
The mid-tier gets squeezed first: watch-time softens, sponsors pause, and copy-paste formats die (THIS IS ACTUALLY GREAT NEWS, BTW).
Platforms aren’t resisting this wave; they’re wiring it into the plumbing.
Google is surfacing Veo 3 inside YouTube’s own tools and Shorts, which tells you everything: AI video isn’t a rival to YouTube, it’s a feature that feeds the ad stack.
Of course alarm bells are ringing.
Barbell Economics: Hollywood × Creators
It’s a barbell: Top Hollywood and top creators now play the same game (capital, IP, distribution, brand safety). Niche curators/auteurs win on taste and POV. The algorithmic middle gets flattened and, yes, it’s the middle that gets fucked.
Top end: majors × mega-creators (same economics)
The majors monetise franchises, access, and trust; mega-creators monetise the same, just faster. MrBeast’s shop is a studio in all but name: ~450 staff, c.$450m 2024 revenue, >$110m loss, $3–4m per tent-pole video. That scale works only if you sell what AI can’t mass-replicate: hard-to-fake IRL (logistics, stunts, time-boxed constraints), provenance discipline, and brand-safe IP you can extend into worlds and products. In an AI flood, human-premium is the moat.
Edges: A24-style curation × auteur channels
On both sides, the taste layer gets more valuable. Curated slates with clear point of view (our A24 discussion we’ve had) and creator channels with distinct authorship cut through because AI accelerates craft and exposes mediocrity. Use the tools as accelerants (pre-viz, alt-cuts, world-building), not the product. Casey Neistat’s Sora video is the model: denounce slop, use Sora inventively. (Result: originality travels; button-press output doesn’t.)
The middle: beige, copy-paste, exposed (studios and creators)
Same disease, different logos. Infinite content + algorithmic flattening = context collapse. Your mid-budget franchise-lite film sits beside ten look-alikes; your mid-tail channel sits beside ten format clones. Result: ranking whiplash, RPM/CPM squeeze, and a creeping sense that the work is interchangeable.
Hollywood’s middle: Four-quadrant “safe” bets, test-screened to sameness, neither tentpole nor auteur. Streamers throttle spend; ad tiers push for cheaper impressions; audiences shrug. No POV, no pull. And most important for Hollywood: no downstream.
Creators’ middle: Trend-chasing, derivative edits, voice-over B-roll, “we can do that too” energy. The slop backlash bites, disclosure kicks in, sponsors hesitate, and RPMs slide first for channels with no defensible identity.
So what?
Pick a side: scale or singular. Either earn studio-grade advantages (access, logistics, brand trust, provably IRL) or go full auteur (distinct taste, community rituals, craft the algorithm can’t fake). The beige centre is getting hollowed out and this will only accelerate.
How to Operate Within Infinite Content and Context Collapse (without losing the plot)
Five rules:
POV is the product. If someone can’t describe your point of view in a sentence, the feed will erase you.
Make it obviously human. Live stakes, visible constraints, BTS/process. If it’s easy to fake, it’s hard to value. If it’s hard to make, you’ll be rewarded.
Use AI before the camera, not after. Pre-viz, mood, alt-cuts? Sure. Don’t ship button-press sludge.
Build for the couch; clip for the feed. Programme for the living room session; use Shorts/Reels as on-ramps, not the destination.
Own your relationship. Email/membership/community rituals > praying to the algorithm.
Everyone’s crying about AI and I get it.
Here’s the truth: it’s a mirror and a match. Across culture, politics, and markets it accelerates what you already are, making great work cheaper and mediocrity impossible to hide. If we’re the industry of craft and talent, let’s act like it: take a stance, make the unfakeable, show your true work, keep receipts. Do that and the pipes carry you; don’t, and they flatten you. This might actually be good news after all.