The Garden Harvest: 11/21/25
Your weekly digest on the intersection of the Creator Economy and Legacy Media.
FRESH CLIPPINGS
The new buyers
This week, while talking with a legacy veteran about a potential book to series adaptation, I floated the idea of activating the author’s strong fan base, bringing them into the mix à la Robert Rodriguez or Eli Roth.
The response was: “We might alienate some of the buyers.”
But as Evan Shapiro points out so clearly in his latest note, there’s a new buyer in town: all of humanity.
In today’s market, those of us who create content can’t survive by relying solely on legacy buyers (if you were at AFM this year, or even just heard about how rough it was, you know exactly what I mean.)
This is what the creator economy is built on, and at this point it’s more than obvious how powerful a direct connection to your audience can be. So, why haven’t more legacy players shifted their focus toward selling directly to consumers?
The creator as CEO myth
Jim Louderback recently dropped a sharp reminder that cuts through all the recent noise around “creator MBAs” and accelerators: creators don’t need to become CEOs, and CEOs don’t need to become creators.
With a16z launching its New Media fellowship and YouTube hosting a Creator MBA event in New York, the industry is loudly signaling one thing: creators have become foundational to business (yes, legacy media business too). But, as Jim explains, there’s still a big misunderstanding underneath all this enthusiasm.
You can’t turn a creator into a CEO with an eight-week program. And turning an operator into a creator? That’s even harder. Building a business and building an audience both require years of lived experience that workshops simply can’t compress.
Which is why the future of creator-led companies won’t come from forcing hybrid roles, it’ll come from pairing them. Today’s strongest creator businesses thrive because creators bring the vision and CEOs bring the operational muscle.
Great companies happen when both stay in their zone of genius… together.
What we can learn from “6-7”
I love trying to draw deeper lessons from huge viral moments (such as the aura farming Indonesian Boat Racing kids).
Recently, I had been trying to find a good take on the “6-7” craze that has what seems to be every kid in the country participating in. Finally, I found this awesome analysis from Dan Porter:
What made “6-7” explode wasn’t its meaning, it was its flexibility. It worked as a sound, a caption, a punchline, and eventually a gesture. It was everything and nothing at the same time, easy to copy but impossible to pin down. The more formats it inhabited, the longer it lived.
And the confusion wasn’t a problem, it was the engine. Adults kept asking what it meant, but there was no real answer to give. That gap between knowing and not knowing is what sparked the spread. If everyone got it instantly, it would have died instantly.
The bigger lesson? Modern relevance isn’t built through control like it used to be, it’s built through participation (remember when everyone was posting themselves as Studio Ghibli characters?).
Every remix, every video, every gesture turned someone into a co-author of “6-7”. The meme became its own supply chain, carried forward by the people who played with it.
It’s content democracy in its purest form.
GARDEN VIEW
What do all of the recent legacy media layoffs have to do with the creator economy?
A lot more than you think.
This week’s video dives into a growing trend: TV and film pros quietly shifting into the creator economy, not as influencers, but as the producers, editors, and creative forces behind the scenes.
Rob Balasabas breaks down what he’s seeing after nearly a decade in the space and what this means for budgets, expectations, and the kinds of creator businesses being built next.
HARVEST QUOTE
“Ultimately, actors & actresses are being outworked by creators, and although the two may not have been competing 10 years ago, the actors & actresses are paying the price now.”
— An unnamed former legacy executive’s feedback on Matt Belloni’s “What I’m Hearing” newsletter.
With so many star-packed Fall movies failing at the box office, it’s never been clearer that the traditional press tour is no longer cutting it.
A “Hot Ones” clip might still deliver a dopamine hit, but it feels totally disconnected from how fans actually experience their favorite personalities online on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, creators (and the few traditional celebs who act like creators — see Timothée Chalamet’s amazing antics for Marty Supreme) are showing up every day, building real community, and mobilizing their audiences with a consistency that legacy’s old model simply can’t match.
Have a great weekend…