The Clipping Economy: Why Every Band, Brand & Startup Is Faking Organic Growth

And welcome back to the Meme Team Podcast. I'm Sonia Bashez, and this week I'm joined by Jason Levin, the founder of Memelord Technologies. He raised $3 million to make memes and hit $100K ARR in 9 months without spending a single dollar in ads. Hi Jason, welcome.

Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here.

Awesome. Okay, so we've got a really big, um, topic for the, for, for the first one. It's kind of bringing together 3 different things that I saw happen last week. Um, one of them is that Wired article talking about the band Geese that seemed to have like, you know, come out of nowhere. They had the biggest breakout year last year in 2025. Their fourth album was added to all of the year-end lists. They were on SNL. They just played Coachella. The Guardian called them the new saviors of rock and roll. And then the TikTok backlash started calling them a fizzop, an industry plant, and questioning why everyone liked them all of a sudden. So the Wired article comes out and basically explains that a digital marketing firm called Chaotic Good Projects is running what they call narrative campaigns or trend simulation for Geese, where they have built out a network of TikTok accounts to play the background music using Geese, sharing live clips, engineering, basically engineering ecosystems where people are engaging with the band's music and having that music then filter out to the wider population. And it's working. So the co-founder described it on a podcast saying, "We can drive impressions on anything at this point. We know how to go viral." And it was called out by another singer-songwriter calling it fake fans, where she basically traced the connection and said, "If 100 people think your song sucks, Chaotic Good will then scrub all the mentions and get 200 people to create TikToks saying that they love your song." So the question here is like, does that count? Is it organic? Do people actually like your music or are they kind of building buzz around you? Yeah, that's kind of how marketing works. You figure out what's working, where the people are at, and then you find those people and do your best to get in front of them. So you kind of do engineer most of, you know, the traffic, the audience that you're trying to do if you're good at marketing, right? I think what's different here is that it's a little bit more of like how the sausage is made. And people don't like feeling as if they're being tricked into liking a band. But my thing is like, you're discovering a band that you might never have heard of ever if they hadn't been creating these, um, engagement circles. Um, and you like the band, so what's the problem? You know? Um, but Jason, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I would completely agree. It's the fact that like people have been doing this forever. So one of Memelord's biggest users actually is record labels. So record labels use Memelord to break new artists using meme videos and doing it secretly by putting the music behind meme videos. So I'm very well aware of this and have been on the phone actually with record labels, a bunch of them the last 3 weeks, because they, you know, this is a huge use case right now is you need to break music hypercompetitive. Um, right now, today actually, I saw the news that Sunoo is now the number one, uh, music app on the App Store. So it's a very hard, sneaky time to be an artist. Uh, you've got to be clever, and this has always been true. Like, yeah, if you think the meme pages or the fan pages on Twitter for artists are real, like, I've got really bad news for you guys. Like, yeah, like, like, those are all created by the record labels. Like, the second they sign an artist, like, they start creating pages for them and they're run by 16-year-old interns who like are working for free because it's music and like they just treat you like shit. And that's just how the music industry has always been. It's how the sausage was made. Some of the best artists did it. Some of my, you know, my favorite artists growing up, you find out later, oh, they bought YouTube views. Who cares? Like, I love their music. And look, you know, marketers are gonna do marketing-y things, right? The real problem here is, is actually the, the distributors. So things like Spotify, there was an article that broke 2 years ago called Ghost in the Machine. There's like Spotify playlists of lo-fi beats or whatever, and it's like there's no lyrics. So what did Spotify do? They just used AI that way they wouldn't have to pay artists as much on their playlist. So artists are just like reacting to the times.

Yeah.

And you're doing whatever they can by any means necessary. And I don't think this is anything new. Look, this is just astroturfing 101. What they're not not even talking about is just like the phone farms that people have, like, you know, the straight up like—

yeah, you tell that on Twitter, if you're Twitter, YouTube, everything, or it's like you have circles of, um, things. Like, one thing I want to add to that is like, I remember when, um, you know, MySpace like first came out and you had like bands figuring out how to get, you know, how to figure out how MySpace works so that they can be the music that, you know, people are featuring on their pages. Um, Justin Bieber, who just had that his performance at Coachella, right, became famous because of YouTube, right? Like they discovered him there. He figured out what he needed to do, started uploading videos of himself singing, or his mom did. And all of a sudden he like gets chosen by Usher and it worked, right? So it's like artists need to do that, right? Taylor Swift, right? A huge reason why she's so famous is because she interacted with people on Twitter, on Instagram, um, her fans. She was like genuinely building those relationships. So it's like, it's not surprising to me that the next iteration of this is TikTok, right? I think where it gets a little tricky where it's like, well, all those people were doing it by themselves. Now we have, you know, digital marketing firms that specialize in doing this. The singer-songwriter that called this out on her Substack admitted that she would totally do this, like, for herself.

Anybody would if they had the money. And that's just like the sad part is like, you know, I even look at people like Clavicular or whatever. I'm like, oh, those, like, they're spending hundreds of thousands per month on clipping. And you look at some of these new, you know, media orgs and like, I'm like criticizing, but at the same time, like I've paid for clipping and I would do it in a heartbeat again. I have like very controversial takes on this because of my background as like creating YouTube creator. I've done the clipping and now I'm seeing all these like companies doing it.

Mm-hmm.

And like, it really works if you're trying to be famous or like art or music, but like, if you have a different kind of product, it doesn't always work. But, uh, the point I'm trying to say here is like, this is nothing new.

Like, yeah.

Like the whole clip economy thing is, it's not new. It's decades, years old. Like they've been doing this forever. It's just like, this is the final form. This is late-stage capitalism where, you know, you could be in a group chat or a Discord with 30,000 kids getting paid pennies. And like, that is just what the labor market is now of like the internet. And like, you know, before it was just, you're in a record label backroom, everybody's smoking weed and cutting up videos or putting up flyers. And now it's, you know, 30,000 of those kids doing it instead of 10 of them. Right? Like, yeah. Nothing changed.

Yeah, yeah. So this is a perfect segue into the other two things that I wanted to bring up in this topic, right? Where last week marketing writer Rachel Carton talked about interviewing two agencies behind brand accounts that are popping up that are brand adjacent but aren't the brand themselves. And I have a lot of thoughts on this. Yeah. And one of them is called Arby's Boys, where you basically have them pretending to be like Arby's employees. And then Not Spirit Airlines, where, you know, you have You know, similar, right? And so they aren't like official brand accounts, but they're bringing more views actually than the brand accounts because they're funny. They're able to say a lot of things that the actual brand accounts can't say. So it's become far more effective to be popping up all these like fan accounts than it is to put the, um, energy behind the actual brand accounts. Um, and this kind of led to another thought that we'll talk about later here, but this whole idea of like, having in-house influencers that like are pretty much just, you know, creating under your own brand. And we've seen this kind of, we've talked about this actually here where we had the Staples baddie, right? So that was like an employee that kind of was doing these ASMR like videos all on her own, right? She was just like doing it for love of the, for love of the game, right? And now we're starting to see that like companies are realizing, oh, people want organic content that is coming from regular people. Well, how do you create organic content without trying to find, you know, like the person that's gonna do it? You start bringing in like content creators that will like do the work for you and put it in their own voice so that you are kind of getting their personality and their character and their, their allure, their audience, and not messing up your brand account, which kind of has to stay a little bit boring, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So, 100%. I mean, we've been doing this for brands for about a year actually, and running fake pages or secondary pages, we call them, because it allows them to take a lot more risk. And so if you're running a serious brand and you want to leverage humor, what do you do? You don't do it on the main page necessarily. You do it on secondary pages that subtly feature your page. So we've been doing this for a few different unicorns, having a lot of success, you know, for the last year actually. And it's a lot of AI, it's a lot of sauce around that. And and, uh, people love the accounts, they love them.

Mm-hmm.

And at the end of the day, it's just leverage on the main brand account and the main company. I think like something that a lot of people mistake and like, for anybody listening to this, like memes won't save you. Yeah. You'd think I'm the guy who's like memelord.com raised $3 million to make memes, but like you still need a good business and like it's not just about virality or starting like 20 accounts. 'Cause like I see some of these kids on, on Twitter who like start 40 accounts and they're just selling like an ebook and it's like, dude, like if you took that time and like built a software, you'd be like, you'd add another couple zeros in your bank account. Like, and that's why it's so powerful for businesses that do have good businesses, right? Like, you know, something like Arby's or something in a boring commodity business that's been around forever or that has a solid business, like they need humor. The last way to stand out is to be unhinged. And you can't just do that on your main account. You need the secondary accounts, whether you're a rapper and you have, you know, a secondary account dedicated to cars. I've seen that. Whether you're, you know, a compliance brand and have a fake European VC, right? You've seen that on Twitter. Whether you're, you know, whatever industry, like you need multiple accounts. And it's also just about like reps now where it's like we're no longer in the follower economy or follower-dominated timelines. I think Twitter's like the best at it. And still people complain every day about like growing their following and like not getting access, but like, Bro, you see TikTok, right? Like the followers doesn't matter. You see like, yeah, you know, a bad video just doesn't pop. And, um, you know, it's something I think everybody's reckoning with. I think a lot of like, I feel bad for the early YouTubers that spent like 10 years growing to 3 million subscribers and then they're just like, what do I do now? Um, so I think that's why they started secondary accounts, right? Right. Like MrBeast has 10 accounts. Like every big YouTuber has niche accounts, right?

Right.

We're all just like, you know, doing similar things. It also like, I don't know, I, I think we're going to start seeing a lot more of this is all I'm going to say. Oh, totally. Secondary, third, tertiary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the thing is you have to go where the customers are. And the biggest thing that customers are doing these days is they don't care to follow brands. They just want to be in the ecosystem. And if they see a funny brand video, they'll like it, but that doesn't mean that they'll like go and follow your brand to follow the rest of like your, you know, your content. And I think that a lot of brands are missing that because they're like, well, why isn't our brand growing? It's like, it doesn't matter. We're playing the algorithm game now. And what that means is you have to be creating content that people actually want to see and come back to, right? The other thing is that like, because of the way that the algorithms are working, it doesn't matter if they follow you anymore because as long as they interact with you or engage with you in some way, they're gonna get your content, you know, popping up in their feed. Um, and as long as they don't just like automatically swipe, you're gonna keep going until like their feed— I have so, you know, so many clients are like, well, why is my follower count not growing? And it's like, okay, but your engagement is growing, your likes are growing, your impressions are growing. Like, let's look at that because those are like the bigger things that like affect, you know, the outreach that you're gonna be having. And the more that people like see you pop up. Maybe eventually they'll convert, but you have to like, you know, continue putting out that content. The last thread is this whole idea that I'm seeing of, I mean, we talked about a little bit, but the clipping that's happening with like podcasts, TV, films, and music. Obviously we've seen a lot of this in podcasts because that's a lot of, you know, how they get out there. But the change that I'm starting to see is the movie studios are starting to put out what are essentially summaries of their films or TV shows directly onto like TikTok and Twitter. And I, I'm just like, I'm watching like the whole thing. Am I actually gonna go and watch the Netflix show? No. But I'm like interested in like the, you know, minute clip that they've, you know, put out for like the, the show itself. They, they, they're starting to think it's more of a Gen Z thing. I quibble with that. Like I, I'm gonna find like entertainment where I'm gonna find it. And this is kind of like a way for me to, you know, see what's going on in terms of pop culture without actually having to spend the, like, you know, 6 to 10 hours to watch a whole season of a show that's not actually gonna make it into the monoculture, you know? And the other one is what I am seeing the difference in is the types of shows that are doing more of the clipping, right? Like for things that are getting into the monoculture, like Project Hail Mary, The Pit, all these shows that like people are watching, you know, Game of Thrones and everything. You see more of like the teaser style trailers and fancams and all to get you to actually go watch the show instead of the ones that are giving you the summary. And I think that that's like a difference of like the company starting to realize, okay, this is a show that people will actually watch, will actually spend the time to watch, watch with everybody else. They want to participate in the closest that we get to monoculture. And then these other shows, you know, Netflix shows that, you know, they've got like one season or whatever. Are the ones that like we want to clip. Um, and this is an idea that they started taking from the fancams that are coming from fans that want to get people to like watch, you know, their favorite shows, and then in order for them to continue actually making the show later. Um, so would love to hear your thoughts on this, on clipping in general, what you think, like what you kind of see, like the progress and like the future.

Yeah, I think it's very similar to memes in a sense of memes are the oldest form of marketing. It's just funny marketing, right?

Yeah.

Uh, that's the oldest form. I mean, maybe sex is the only thing older than humor marketing. And like clipping is nothing new either, is like where my head's at. It's just we finally have software to do it at the speed of light and internet to connect everybody. Like clipping has been around, you know, like whatever, 100 years. Like there were TV, like mini TV clips that like got shared, you know, people watch those or radio, you know, people would listen to segments on repeat or whatever, like early days of YouTube, CDs, like That's just clipping, right? Like it's just making content shorter and distributing it. We're just entering a very weird time. So I have a group chat of 40,000 kids on WAP, right? If you've heard of that, right? And so when I was growing my YouTube channel, I invested, you know, $10,000 into clipping and I would just drop in a Google Drive folder of all the videos of me. I'd tell 40,000 kids, here's $2 per 1,000 views you get. Go clip it. Right. And these 40,000 kids would do whatever they want. And it comes down to the fact that creativity from the masses is way more powerful than me hiring 3 kids here. Right.

Yeah.

And like, look, the, the clipping economy, like it's, like I said earlier, like clips are really good if you want to be famous or viral or YouTuber influencer. And like, I was going down that path of creator influencer, then I went and raised and like, I am not sure, like, does it also work for startups? And I think we've seen a couple. I'm not going to name any names because I'm friendly with them, but like, we've seen a couple who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into clipping their startup and it's failing miserably because it doesn't work. Want to know what works is like, go in your fucking CRM and find people who have a lot of money, contact them and book a call. Like, they're like, it works if you're trying to be famous, but like, you shouldn't be raising money if you're trying to be a famous influencer. And I think people are always really surprised when they hear me say this because of my background and like, because, you know, because of like my work. But like, if you're building a startup, like, I'm just saying, like, you, you can ignore things. Like, um, when it comes to music or movies, go clip, go crazy. Like, your entire job is views.

Like, right.

Um, and you know, that's also part of why we raised for Memelord was like every move stood, every movie studio, uh, who, who releases a comedy movie or any movie, right? Those screenshots turn into memes and meme videos, right? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a place where people could edit them and immediately get them on the meme pages they want, right? That was part of the thesis when I got our first angel check was because our investor was working on a movie, right? If you're going into clipping, just be careful and like, don't expect it to just be like, like that. And also, you know, if you have a product that isn't just you, like it might not be the right way to do that. That's all I'm saying on that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I see a lot of companies like interested in, oh, we should be on TikTok. And it's like, okay, but is your audience on TikTok? Is the, are the people that are actually gonna purchase from you on TikTok? If not, then you'd be better like served going to LinkedIn, you know, and being where your customers are actually gonna buy your product and setting up, you know, thought leadership campaigns that you can do there. I think a lot of the times, um, especially young startups and young founders have this like idea that, oh, you have to do like the coolest, like edgiest thing on in marketing. I mean, that's why we saw like the huge dearth of like launch videos that came out, you know, in the past 2 years. Um, because it's like someone started doing it, right? Someone started doing it, thought it was cool, and now it's like, okay, every, every company has to spend what, like $40,000 to do a like launch video? That's insane.

I spent, all right, I spent $300 on our launch video, got 1.1 million views, and it's cuz I edited it myself.

Mm-hmm.

And I loved every second of making it and it was so special. I raised $3 million. I could have spent 50 grand, but I'm cheap and I like doing stuff myself and there's no reason to. Everybody's just trying to copy Roy and Roy has sauce, but like that doesn't mean you have to go copy that. All right. Like I love Roy. Like I've supported him since since his early days when he was at Columbia. Um, but like, you don't have to go try to be the next Roy. You could just be yourself and like—

But that's the hard part, right? Everybody just sees, oh, that marketing is working. I should do that marketing.

But it's not working. That's the thing.

Right.

It's like, it's working really well for the people who get paid to quote tweet your company. Like, I know of an agency apparently doing $10 mil a year in just launch videos and the quote tweets surrounding them. Like, we are in such a bubble where all these kids are trying to copy Roy in order to get a fat VC round for a product that doesn't work. And it just, that is a really good way to get famous in the infamous, in the worst way possible and get blackballed from Silicon Valley. And like, we are in such a fucking bubble. Go take the time to go build a real product and then, you know, go make a video. But that doesn't mean you need to spend 50 grand on it. It just, you just don't need to. I could be wrong and I'm not taking, I'm not risk on enough.

I mean, we're seeing a backlash, right? We're seeing a backlash on— Yeah, we're seeing a lot of backlash. We're like— Where people are like, oh—

People are going to jail.

There's fraud.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of fraud.

There's all that for sure. I mean, we saw the Delve, you know, situation that happened like a month ago.

I'm talking like, even you think about all the unpaid promotion, all that stuff. Like, look, like, I'm all about growing your own meme accounts, everything like that, but I don't know, we're, we're getting into a weird timeline where, you know, everybody's vying for attention of, you know, people that might not even buy your product, right? And like, there are a lot of ways to get attention that aren't a launch video.

So lessons for, um, the last thing is this whole idea of like, what does it mean to be organic and create organic content? I think we're kind of past that in the sense that there's still authentic ways for you to create fake content that is organic because of the way that it feels to people who see it. You're just finding people that are more, you know, uh, are better creating, um, to create that Ugc instead of random customers that aren't good at creating that content, right? And even then, we create testimonials for customers all the time, right?

Yeah, yeah.

How much of it is real, you know? Um, and I understand the whole people not liking how— seeing how the sausage is made because there's so much of this, um, you know, anti-marketing bias, I think, like anti-ads, anti, like, just marketing in general. That people think it should be real and authentic. And it's like, that doesn't exist. It's the internet. And so that's where brands need to think about, well, how can we get as close as possible? You know, like we can find creators that genuinely love our brand to create content for us. We can, you know, help customers create better, you know, UGC or, you know, start working with like employees, right? We started seeing like a lot of, people in-house, like employees being able to talk, be subject matter experts about, you know, the product or the service that is far more interesting to people to learn about than it is, you know, something that's like a testimonial from a customer. What I mean is like we just saw with like Project Hail Mary, all like the cinematographers and the directors like come out and speak about how they're creating the shot and how they built like the actual sets. And that content got so many more views than just like the fan cams of like Ryan Gosling, which, you know, fine, we're gonna get get views 'cause it's Ryan Gosling. But showing the behind the scenes of how everything kind of came together made the entire campaign for the movie far more, um, viral than if it had just been relying on Ryan Gosling to be pretty and talk about the movie.

Yeah. I think that also comes down to the fact that everybody assumes everything's AI now. So if you show behind the scenes, then you're suddenly, oh, this is real. And I love that. Um, yeah. If you could prove that you're human in today's world, it's worth a lot of money. And like, people will love that. Uh, especially like, in the age of AI, UGC, and all the bullshit around that. That being said, back to your UGC, I had a very interesting call this morning with my team. So we sponsored this guy who does 5-minute breakdowns on memes and the etymology and nerdiness behind it. And I was like, I could never do this. Like, this is Adam Smith, division of labor. Like, oh my God. Like, I just can't do this. Like, It is a great way to get somebody yapping about your shit. And he did it in a great way where it just says sponsored by Memelord in the middle. Thank you for supporting. It wasn't like over the top. It wasn't shady. Like, I think, I think every brand needs to figure it out for themselves and like really think about what you want your brand to be.

I mean, that reminds me of the Subway podcast, you know, where it's like there's just two bros going back and forth talking in a podcast and then it's like a Subway podcast. Brands are figuring it out.

So I, rented out a movie theater to play Instagram Reels. Why? Because the internet is the new Hollywood. Everything starts on the internet. This is, you know, just obviously true. The weirdest ideas, the movements all start there. And so I also wanted everybody to feel comfortable with sharing their algo. You know, I think it's something that we all are kind of freaked out by is like, what if somebody sees something weird on my algo? It's like, no, like you can't control it. That's kind of the point. And like, yeah, you could kind of slightly alter it, but I think that was the most fun part. And again, back to this, like, how do you get attention on your brand without just like, A, blasting cold emails and B, like just spending $50,000 a month on clipping yourself? Like I spent $3,000 on renting out a movie theater in New York. Like it wasn't that expensive. And then I just invited like everyone in our CRM and everybody on Twitter Got a bunch of our, you know, big investors, famous influencers, like, you know, potential customers, current customers, everything in between. And look, like, yes, it's a clever idea. I'm in the business of weird, clever ideas, but like, I don't think like this is something so unusual that other people can't do it. Like, I was inspired by it because our VC hosted, rented out that same movie theater and brought in a finance whiz to talk about finance and play a finance movie. Like, I just remixed it. That's it. So like, if there's something in your brand that is, you know, you could throw on a movie theater, go do it. You're not stealing my idea. Go remix it in your own way. You know, maybe it's seeing the best, I don't know, fashion movie ever for a fashion brand. It's only $3,000. That's how much a terrible influencer or not terrible, like a mid-tier influencer costs, right? Is like $3,000. So like, you might as well go throw an event.

Um, and I just see that, um, a lot, a lot of, um, I saw, I think it was like, um, 5 different like companies and VCs hire out, you know, theaters to watch Project Hail Mary with like their employees and their families. So it fit like the brand of what they're trying to do. Like, and so they rent it out because their whole thing is like, we're, we wanna like, um, support, you know, science and technology and tech optimism, which right now we have such, you know, a need for. Um, so that kind of, when you popped up with this, I was like, oh, that's That's actually really cool because then, you know, the Instagram Reels fits within the Memelord, you know, brand. And I thought it was like a really cool like remix of, um, how you could, um, do it for your brand and still, um, get that like, um, get people talking about it. Um, so I guess, yeah, what were the results in terms of, um, how many people showed up? How long did it last? Like, what did you do before and after? Give us all the details.

Yeah, about 100+ people showed up, um, including two very big influencers in the marketing meme space. So that like really exciting, plus our investors, customers, everything in between. Um, we watched reels for about an hour after just like chatting, and then I gave a little talk about, you know, the internet's the new Hollywood, go make stuff. It's a lot more fun with your friends. The 3 biggest surprises, I'm gonna go with number 1 cuz it was off the top of my head, was as soon as people realized it was an ad, everybody started booing, which I found just fascinating. And like the also the other weirdest part was actually—

what was the ad? You talking?

No, it was just somebody else talking like like on the screen, on the, on the, an Instagram reel of somebody talking.

Oh, got it. Got it. Yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah. So was that all organic? Like you were just on somebody's feed?

Yeah.

Or like you guys were just scrolling, passing around the phone scrolling.

And, uh, that was one. The second was just like, the internet is just so unhinged and I love it. And it's just like the creativity of the masses. Like I was saying earlier, like you can't even believe just like the level of creativity is just, so much smarter than like the last 5 years of Hollywood movies because every like crazy creative is just making stuff on the internet, even if they're working in Hollywood, fine. But like they're still making weird stuff. And a lot of, I was really inspired, uh, to make my stuff weirder and like it actually inspired me as a creator. And like a few days later I like worked really hard on a video and it went viral. And 'cause I was just inspired by seeing such weird stuff. And so I would say like, Those are the two biggest things was like step up our meme game. Like we are Memelord, like, but like step, step it up. And like two is just like, oh, that ad thing was fascinating. It was like, oh, you gotta, you gotta sit back and like, that's why people do sneaky ads, right? Or why, why you scroll stop it. I think like the other big thing was, was the fact that like Meta reached out, which was very cool. The Meta Comms team reached out.

I'm sure. Yeah.

And yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's exciting for us. Like we, our investors are ex-Meta, but like like, you know, I've never like met with the Meta team or whatever.

Yeah.

And I just think that's, that's big for me, Lauren. So, yeah. All in all, like, look, if you're, you're, uh, thinking about renting out a movie theater, I would 10 outta 10 recommend doing it. And like going into this, it's way more fun than another dinner event. I wrote this viral thing about this because every tech company tries to host dinner events. All right guys, there are more things that tech bros like doing than eating. All right. I have hosted—

I mean, do they even like to eat right now? Not even like, I don't even drink.

I don't even drink. Like half the people are on Ozempic. Yeah, 100%. And it's like, like just take the extra 15 seconds, 10, 15, think of something else. Like for me, like I love playing ping pong with my friends. So I hosted a ping pong event. Another time I hosted a bug horror story for Halloween where engineers told horror stories of bugs in, in prod, right? Like, it's just not that hard to think of something that isn't dinner. And like, the funniest part to me is like, I found out some inside baseball from an investor is like, these dinner series events, everybody is copying one specific company that does this. But what they don't realize is that company is burning more cash than I have in my bank account currently per month hosting events. And it's because it is a, you know, a bank. Right? It is a tech bank, but everybody thinks they have to go be like that and spend $10,000 on a dinner. It's like, no, like they're doing that because they're spending $3 million a month, dude, like hosting events and dinners around the world and country. And it's like, you know, they do more than that, but they're hosting every city. It's like, you don't have to go do that. Be clever, be cheap. That's why I love memes is like they're fast. Like when I was, you know, as a broke, you know, young internet marketing kid, like memes were my way of standing out and they still are where you don't need a big budget. You don't need a podcast studio. You don't need to be clipping. You can make memes and grow a following and make money and grow an audience. And so like, I don't know, back to the point of if you're going to host an event, don't just throw another fucking dinner. Like tomorrow night I got invited to a fancy dinner at Dorcia. and you'd think I'd be really excited about it, but somebody else invited me to a different event and I'm going to that because I could, I could have dinner. I, I can eat by myself. That is my rant. Stop inviting tech bros to dinner. That's all. We, we, we don't even eat that much. You're right. Like, I barely eat anymore. I'm so stressed thinking about AI.

All right.

Rant, rant, rant.

No, no, I love that. So, no, yeah. So, um, when you did that rant, I like reached out and I was like, I wanna talk about this on the podcast because I see it all the time. I get invited to them. And it just hinges so much on the host because they need everybody to like actually wanna be there, but then also try to make friends with other people. And a lot of people are not there to make friends. Um, so sometimes it gets awkward. I like what you said about, um, you know, kind of thinking outside the box of like what you could do that is related to your brand, but then also will get people to do something else. Else, you know? And the bigger thing here is what I've also seen is that when you do something unique enough, eventually you have companies coming to you. Like you had Meta come to you, right? Like I've had, you know, press reach out 'cause they wanna talk about the story of like, oh, you went viral off of doing this, like, you know, different thing that like nobody else is doing. That's what's gonna get you more like people talking about it because now it's like you're talking about it, you're talking about like the actual event you're putting, you know, the people that were there enjoyed it so much that they're talking about it, then the press comes and starts talking about it. Going back to this, is this organic, you know, where it's like you're kind of trying to set up, um, like these moments that will go viral as much as you can, right? Like, you never know what's going to go viral, right? But it does remind me of, um, some— something else that like happened in terms of like the clipping. This whole idea that the moments are set up in podcasts for like the interviewer and interviewee to have that like moment go viral, right? Like, as much as people like to think, oh, these are organic— I mean, we're totally organic. I didn't tell Jason Levin at all what to say But, you know, for like the bigger, you know, everything is—

I got on another podcast this week and before we started, they're like, yo, I'm going to ask you questions and then pause. That way the editor could clip it better. I was like, bro, why didn't you just tell me that we were doing a clip farming session? I would have worn something funny or something. Like, I don't know, man. Like when I, when I, I guess that's just how it works now is like like everybody's clip farming and I mean, I get it.

Gotta get those views.

You gotta get the clips out, man. But like, if you're gonna do that, like, I don't know, at least for me when I was running a podcast, uh, it wasn't about that. Like it was actually like, and maybe everybody starts from a genuine place and it devolves into clip farming, but like, I just wanted to talk to smart people and like, I don't know, I guess maybe I shouldn't be on this podcast then because I, uh, you know, ain't, ain't the brightest, but you know, it's like, like it, you know, as a podcast host asking for me to come on is like asking, you know, the, the Super Unintelligence Lab, but like, no, it's like, no, but you know what I mean? It's like, I, I just like, I don't know. I feel like that is not what podcasts were meant to be, was clip farming. The point of a podcast was to have a long-form conversation and we are now devolving into clips of podcasts that could be taken in like 50 different directions, which is fine.

That's where the audience is, right? How many of us are listening 3-hour-long podcast, right? Most of the views for that are coming from like the clipping that gets put on Twitter, gets put on TikTok and everything, right?

Lessons to be learned is throw a banger event that isn't dinner, for the dear love of God. Throw something. It's actually not that hard. It is actually easier sometimes to host an event that isn't at a restaurant where you have to go talk to the restaurant manager, call this person and reserve this room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Go think of something else, dude. Wanna know what I love? Bowling. If you want to get me to an event, it's like, I've loved bowling since I was 15 or 10, 10 years old going to birthday parties. All right. Who doesn't like bowling? All right. Invite me to a bowling event. Stop inviting me to Dorsia. That's all.

Well, there you go. You heard it here, folks.

There we got the clip farming. I'm tweeting.

I'm tweeting that clip.

All right. You know what? Maybe I'm gonna embrace my clip. I'm on my clip farming arc. Fuck it.

There you go. Okay. And then, yeah, a lesson for me, learning that you're going to be doing these unique events is like a great opportunity to then, you know, be getting that extra press and that extra, like, you know, content that you can, you know, talk about. That's not just the event itself. It's like, how are you repurposing how you're talking about it, right? Like, can the founder go out and say, hey, this is why we're doing this type of event. These are the results. This is what we've seen. Jason Levin did this with his, um, you know, AMC event, right? And it's like, that gets you more views than like the 100 people that went to the event because people are interested in hearing about new and novel ways that they can like do marketing. So for my last topic, I saw a tweet go viral, um, where they're talking about, um, each platform is different, different culture, different timing, different humor. You need someone who knows what works at 9:00 PM on a Tuesday on a specific app. One person, one platform, full-time. Native to the culture. Brands figuring this out will look like geniuses in 3 years. And most of what I saw from other marketers in this space was that like, oh yay, um, Twitter has discovered social media managers. Um, and I thought it was just like funny that that was like the main thing that like people got out of that. Maybe I'm wrong, but what I think is, you know, something that we can talk about here is like the idea that you're gonna have people that are native to the platform that are like creators on the platform creating content for you that they know what works best. They know like how to use themselves to talk about your brand in a way that's authentic and not, you know, salesy. Um, one of the things here that like, um, I always think is like important for like marketers is to kind of be paying attention to these like trends and like what people are saying online because by the time it gets to more of like the mainstream audience, that means you're kind of a little bit too late if you hadn't already been thinking about how how to approach that, you know, direction. And I think where the social media marketer is gonna be able to come in here is to be basically the manager of these influencers on the different platforms. I saw somebody else tweet about how you're gonna have like a social media manager for each channel and then have that be like the one like thing that they do. And I think like it makes sense because it's like, like we already see so many like social media people complain that they're expected to do, you know, every channel, they're expected to do video editing, they're expected to do, you know, events and then other marketing on top of that, that like, you know, as we've been talking about here, social media in general, like all these channels are their own, like, um, have their own audiences, their own algorithm. And so like you need someone that's like able to specialize in that type of like marketing in order for like the company to, you know, reach the people that they're gonna, you know, and it's okay, you know, it's good to be like a generalist, but at some point you are gonna need like a specialist to kind of come in and like do that work for you. Did you see this tweet? Jason Levin, your thoughts, just kind of like how you guys think about it in-house, um, as like a company.

Yeah, so I've always believed this, that you need a different social media manager for each platform, or at the very least you need to split it up into writing-first platforms and video-first platforms. And so what that used to mean and what it still basically means is like Twitter and LinkedIn are writing first, whereas Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are video first. And it's very hard to do both well. It took me, you know, a long time just to build up my Twitter audience to 40,000 plus. And I've been going for a while. It's taken me a while to build up my LinkedIn. These things don't happen overnight. And a lot of these SF engineering brain and MFs assume that marketing's really easy or it's just like something you could quickly optimize for or, you know, use AI.

I mean, there's an AI CMO that comes out every week, right?

Every week. Or just like the new disgusting thing is the AI ABG CMO where it's just, you know, hire a fake Asian AI girl, which is very weird. I haven't seen that yet. Yeah, very confused. Very confused by that. But yeah, I mean, look, every platform's super different. The language of it is extremely different. And you know, how we do it in-house is we have Jovian, who you had on the podcast. He's kind of manning Instagram and YouTube. And then, you know, we have another guy managing Twitter and LinkedIn more so. And we all are like in-house creators as well. All of us are building our audiences from my team to the engineering team. We're all building in our own aspect. We have one guy, you know, 65,000 on Instagram, another 2.4 million on Twitter. You know, our engineers, like, a little less because they're actually engineering, right? So, like, this is nothing new, and I've been preaching this for 3 years now of, you know, I could look back at my tweets of you need somebody on different platforms because they're so different. You as a founder, as a startup, you don't need to be on every platform. So don't feel pressured to hire ahead of every platform. Platform, hire the ones that make you money and then the rest you could kind of like put on autopilot or like try your best on. But like at the end of the day, like we don't have a Bluesky audience, so I'm not posting on Bluesky, right? Like we don't, we don't really even— I think they have dozens of users worldwide apparently, but like, you know, it's, it's crazy. So I don't know. I think like hire, especially for platforms that make you the most money, like you need platform specific. If you wanna stand out. But for the platforms that don't make you bread, like we're barely, like we're not touching Reddit at all cuz it's just a cesspool and like, you know, yeah, there's money to be made on there, but like there's just so much more money other places that won't like, you know, ban you for just posting normal things.

So are you on Threads yet? Because Threads is growing.

Yeah, probably should be. Like I was on Threads, I was on Threads the day it came out and then like, yeah, same. Every time I'm on there, it's just so boring.

Yeah.

And like, I hate to be like, I like Substack too. I was on Substack in 2021, but there's something about both of those platforms that like, I don't know, maybe people are just too mentally healthy or like happy, but they're just so boring.

There's a lot less like fun.

There's a lot less fun. I just scroll through.

No, like jokes.

It's just so, it's painful and like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fake. It's painful. It's so boring.

It's funny because like LinkedIn, people are finding humor there, you know, like, um, I'm having fun.

LinkedIn is better than Threads. Reads. That's like a weird take where it's actually like, also like if you go to substack.com right now, and you're not logged in, like it will show you like where I, I, I know, sorry to Nathan. I know he was early at Substack. Um, but it's, it's, it's getting strange. Like I was on Substack, you know, 5 years ago and now it's like, it's just strange right now where like, like the first thing I see is a guy like rocking his baby to bed as a picture. I'm like, I thought this was like the intellectual, blogging platform and like Threads is even worse where I just see like brands like cheering each other on with like, uh, and like Taylor Lorenz, like they're both just terrible. And like, I, I miss the old Substack where it was just people writing blogs, to be honest. I loved that.

Mm-hmm.

That was actually really nice, but not as good for the valuation. So I get it.

Yeah, no, definitely. One shout out I will say though is, um, their NASA team. Is creating really great content on Threads. I mean, on all channels, but they do have one person that like, you know, deals just with Threads. Um, so it does show you that some companies are taking it seriously. Um, a lot more so than, um, I think—

Yeah, maybe, maybe I should be taking, I probably should be taking both of those more seriously. Mm-hmm. Um, again, it's just like a time thing. Like when all your money comes from, you know, a couple platforms, you know, it's, it's hard. It's a challenge.

No, definitely. I mean, and that's like a lesson, right? It's like you have to be where your audience is gonna be and it doesn't make sense to spread yourself thin across all the channels because if you're not actually, you know, getting returns from, you know, Blue Sky, Threads, you know, um, even Instagram, right? If like you're getting more people from like TikTok because the views are coming from there and the algorithm is working in your favor a little bit more than like, you know, focus on TikTok. I think, you know, overall lesson here is like, you know, try to hire the people that are platform native, that know those, you know, particular platforms as best as you can, right? Like, obviously things change all the time. Like Instagram is changing right now, right? Like they're doing trial reels where it's like you're now able to post content to— just letting it go like, like going like God with like, you know, the trial reels like where it's like nobody that's following you gets the content. But then, you know, you also can have the different channel for just like the people that are following you. So that's something to be like testing out if like video first is a mandate that you want to have at your company. The other thing here is this whole idea of like, what does it mean to be a social media manager versus like a social media creator, right? Like usually social media managers aren't the ones that are actually like the face of the brand, though we are starting to see some of that, right? Like Morning Brew has like, you know, there are people that are like, you know, they're like writers, right? Or like in-house content creators that are like, you know, doing like the skits and, you know, bringing people on. And we're seeing that with when you see like journalists join, you know, in-house teams but bringing their audience along, right? Like we saw that with CNBC, a journalist um, is joining the team but is still doing her own, like, vertical. Um, so you're kind of gonna see, like, more companies kind of bring people in-house without having them be employees because they're able to be a bit more free and, um, create things in a way that they would want to that they probably wouldn't be able to do if they were in-house, um, at the company. Um, and then, um, ideas spread when they hit a new audience. Um, so this is like using that as a testing ground. Um, the channels that like, you know, like TikTok, Instagram, like trial reels where you can try your ideas with like a more, um, um, I guess like an audience that doesn't actually follow you and then work that backwards into like your actual audience in order to grow that engagement and potentially grow your following so that, you know, you start getting new followers.

I mean, at the end of the day, like you need people who are experts on different platforms. You don't hire like the cook to clean dishes. You don't, this is not like an expertise thing, but like like you just need people with, you know, Adam Smith was right, going back to that is like, you know, there's division of labor for a reason. Yeah. Like I'm not the best at TikTok in the world. I'm very, you know, top, top notch on Twitter, but like, you know, that's why you hire out. And if you aren't ready to hire for like a full-timer, like you hire influencers or you hire part-timers or you just skip the platform entirely and, and you could still have an extremely successful business. I think that's what people forget sometimes is like you can just, you know, ignore what is going on on the timeline.

Yeah. Well, one thing that stuck out of a couple things that you mentioned here were, um, you went off the fly for a couple of like your most viral posts where it's like, it was just like randomly like, oh, I just, you know, felt passionate about it. So I like, you know, busted out at that moment.

That's how my best posts are. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I recently went viral and it was like, uh, you know, midnight thought that I had and it's like, oh, it's never the ones that you think are gonna go viral that go viral, you know? And it's certainly never the ones that you like actively plan for. And I think that takes us back to takeaways for the whole podcast about what does organic mean, right? Like a lot of the times the organic content that goes viral is hardly ever thought out, which is like, you know, funny to think about because like those are the things that you don't plan for, right? So I'm, I'm more like thinking here that it's like, how do you kind of create create as close as you can get to like that organic content, um, which has kind of been like the through lines with this whole episode about like, you know, um, Jason Levin was creating like the event where, you know, you would then have like organic content that came out of that because like the people that attended were going to put out the content. Um, not that, you know, Jason Levin was paying for it, right? Um, and then like, you know, having like the in-house creators for like each of the platforms, they're more likely to go viral because they know the platform, they know what works. And then, you know, in terms of like, you know, film and music and, you know, brand marketing, some of my favorite content now are these like, you know, user-generated, like, you know, fancams of like the summaries of what happens in movies. Or like, if it's like, I think it was like the heated rivalry you were having, like the fancams that ended up getting more people to go, like, look at the show. And then that person ended up getting hired by HBO because they were putting, you know, putting together such great content. Content. So that's what matters now, is like the type of content that you're putting out being organic to the platform that you're creating, um, and as authentic as you possibly can without it, you know, um, being like fake. Though we're kind of getting to that thin line of, is it fake if someone is actually putting it together, you know? But ultimately, what does it matter if it gets you the views that you want?

Exactly, exactly. I mean, everything— we're on the internet, it's not a real place. And I think like, I think we gotta remember that is the internet is not like— it is a real place, but it's also like, you know, have you ever just like— all right, so when I was getting hit pieces on me, I was very, very stressful time in my life. It was very, very scary week. I was also in the middle of raising $3 million the same week, and I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was gonna get killed because I was getting death threats and, you know, nonstop. And also like, you know, back and forth with VCs. And then I just went for a walk through Central Park work. And wanna know what? It was fine. There was nothing, there was, there was nothing going on in the real world. It was just a normal place. And like, you gotta touch grass. Like, and, uh, also as like for creators out there, um, it's like crucial to like just touch grass and like be bored. Like, I go offline every Saturday, every single week for the last, um, ever since Charlie Kirk I started taking off Saturdays because it was just such a— the internet can be such a repugnant place. And so, I've been offline every Saturday and like, you gotta, you gotta take that time off because the internet's not a real place. And like, I guess that's why we're seeing, you know, the rise of events. But like, again, if you're going to host an event, don't invite me to Dorsey.

That's all. Awesome. Well, thank you, Jason Levin, for joining me. Where can people find you? All right.

Find me at @iamjasonlevin or just go on memelord.com, send your death threats there, uh, so my engineers read them and build better software.

So, awesome. And then you can follow me @soniabaschez everywhere and the podcast @memeteampod on YouTube and then Meme Team Podcast on Spotify and TikTok. Thank you. All right, cool. Bye.

Thank you.