NTF Schadenfreude & Horror Forecasting

Schadenfreude Yatch Club

This past weekend, NFT maker Yuga Labs hosted ApeFest in Hong Kong for members of the ugly, overpriced monkey jpeg owning community. It looked like the standard rave-for-people-who-don’t-actually-go-to-real-nightlife-events style party any company can produce, then attendees started complaining about suburbs, eye pain, and even vision issues. I’ve been to a lot of events at nightclubs. I’ve been to my fair share of black light parties. I’ve never gotten a sunburn or gone temporarily blind at the club. Turns out the party was using the kind of UV lights designed for disinfection, not normal fun party lights.

This is objectively hilarious. I wish all of the injured apes a speedy recovery and hope none of their maladies are permanent (I’m not that terrible a person). But I will not apologize for laughing at people developing eye pain and vision issues at the ugly monkey picture party. It’s comedy gold. The incident also speaks to how artificial and divorced from real culture the Bored Ape Yacht Club and other NFT projects have always been. 

This might be unique to queer nightlife in San Francisco, but a night out at the club is rarely just a straightforward commercial transaction. Big parties are community gatherings, charity fundraisers, artist showcases, and excuses to dance until late into the night, all rolled into one. It’s not uncommon for the person scanning my ticket to be there as a volunteer in exchange for attending the rest of the party for free, for coat check to be run by volunteers raising money for a local charity, and to see local up-and-coming drag performers and DJs perform alongside internationally known talent. Good parties are an act of community and love, not UV disinfection. 

At the height of the bubble, NFTs were positioned by their chief advocates as the future of art, community, and/or investment. All of that has proven to be untrue. 

Platform Updates 

Instagram & Threads

• Instagram Adds Song Lyrics Display in Reels Clips

• Instagram Will Now Let You Highlight Post Replies in Stories

The Rest of Meta 

• Meta bars political advertisers from using generative AI ads tools 

• Meta Launches Initial Test of Read Receipts Opt-Out in DMs

TikTok

• TikTok’s $1 billion creator fund is shutting down

• TikTok Launches Updated Events API To Facilitate Campaign Performance Tracking

• TikTok Adds More Local Agencies to Its Marketing Partner Program

YouTube

• YouTube to test generative AI features, including a comments summarizer and conversational tool 

Google 

• Google Announces AdSense Changes in Payment Structure and Ad Delivery Thresholds

• Google creates a brand new hub for shopping deals

Reddit

• Reddit is starting to test its own add-ons for the platform 

Tumblr 

• Tumblr is downscaling after failing to ‘turn around’ the site 

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

• Elon Musk Launches New ‘Grok’ AI Chatbot To Compete With ChatGPT (reminder: it took less than 24 hours for Microsoft’s old Twitter-trained chatbot to become a racist nightmare)   

• Elon Musk’s X Has Started Selling Off Old Twitter Handles For Upwards Of $50,000

The Dumpster Fire

• PlayStation is cutting off X sharing options (I suspect we’ll see an increase in other services deprecating their Twitter, sorry X, sharing features over the next few months) 

Next In Horror 

Five Nights at Freddy's is doing great at the box office right now. Earlier this year, this M3GAN was a viral sensation. I see two clear hypotheses if you are trying to connect these data points and forecast what audiences want to see next. First, people want more PG-13 horror comedy. Both films fall into the scary but not too scary, appropriate for teen viewers, horror comedy bucket. Second, we’re all a little anxious about AI. Killer robot doll, killer animatronics, killer machines, you get it. I suspect both themes are contributing to these films connecting with audiences. What I don’t know is which theme will have a bigger impact on what horror projects get made next. 

Anyway, here’s my pitch for a PG-13 comedy remake of The Terminator aimed at a Gen Z audience.  

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

• SAG-AFTRA Approves Deal to End Historic Strike

• Marvel’s new Spotlight branding will help you cut through the MCU’s noise (file under: Disney knows they need to fix the MCU but I’m not sure this is the right move)  

Music 

• SiriusXM unveils new streaming app, set to launch next month

Gaming 

• Nintendo confirms live-action Zelda movie is in the works

• Crunchyroll is adding mobile games to its subscription 

• Former Kotaku writers are launching a new video game site — and they own it this time 

AI 

• Everything announced at OpenAI’s first developer event 

• Samsung unveils ChatGPT alternative Samsung Gauss that can generate text, code and images

• How Microsoft is making a mess of the news after replacing staff with AI

• FTC takes shots at AI in rare filing to US Copyright Office

Scams

• Bored Ape NFT event attendees report ‘severe eye burn’ (I’m sorry this is just too funny)  

• WeWork, once valued at $47B, files for bankruptcy 

• Humane officially launches the AI Pin, its OpenAI-powered wearable 

Recommended YouTube Video of the Week 

Remember when McDonald’s took over the fan wiki about their brand to promote Grimace’s birthday? This video has more details on the decline of Fandom wikis and how fan communities are adjusting. 

Housekeeping

I changed up the format a little bit this week. I’m gonna keep playing around with it, but feel free to leave a comment with feedback as I experiment. 

Also, I will run a light newsletter (links but possibly no essay) over the next two weeks (Nov 17 & Nov 24) and might even publish a day or two early or late. I’ll be traveling for Thanksgiving with my family, and the rhythm of news around the holidays gets funky, so I’m not going to stress about trying to hit specific publishing deadlines until December.