How TikTok (still) works
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Hey, it's Andy Roddick, and I'm not just a former tennis player. I am a tennis fan, a tennis nerd. I just can't stop watching it. I can't stop analyzing it. I can't stop talking about it to anyone that will listen, which is why I started my podcast Serve with Andy Roddick, now a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. On the show, we talk about everything from new up-and-coming players to the champions dominating the narrative. We talk about the

to whatever's on my mind. This January is the Australian Open, and you know I've got some thoughts. So tune in for our Australian Open coverage, find served wherever you get your podcast or on our YouTube channel. From the Vox Media Podcast Network, it's Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I am also the Chief Correspondent at Business Insider. And today we are talking about TikTok.

which, as I am recording this, is still operating in the U.S., despite the fact that there's a new law that went into effect a few days ago that said TikTok can't operate in the U.S. unless it's owned by a non-Chinese buyer. And what happens next is going to be fascinating because we really don't know what's going to happen next. For instance, Donald Trump has signed an executive order telling tech companies to ignore the new law while he figures out a sale.

But that order by itself doesn't seem to persuade companies like Apple and Google that they should put TikTok back in their app stores. Again, I want to point out that this is a law that Donald Trump is trying to either overturn or extend or modify. It's a law passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year, upheld by unanimous Supreme Court last week. So if anyone tells you they know what's going to happen next,

I don't know. I don't know if they're a credible source. You should maybe rethink that. In the meantime, I want to use this time to do something I haven't really done on this show before to tell you how content companies and creators actually use TikTok and how they do and don't make money there. So to do that, I brought in Adam Faze, who grew up in L.A. and wanted to make movies and instead ended up moving to New York and creating Gymnasium, a TikTok-focused studio.

you may have seen some of their stuff yourself. He's happy to walk us through all the ins and outs of this, so let's hear from Adam Faze right now. And we're with Adam Faze. He is the CEO of Gymnasium or the co-founder? Co-founder. What's your official title? And Gymnasium is a content studio that makes stuff for TikTok. Television studio from the modern age. Calling it a TikTok studio. And the reason we've got you on, you're an interesting guy, but I wanted to have you on today, Tuesday, recording this. Two days after the TikTok ban ended,

came, maybe went. Loaded week. Wasn't sure what life was going to be like for you. And I want to talk to you mainly about sort of how your business works, how you make money on TikTok. But we are recording this Tuesday. TikTok seems to be up and running in the U.S. There's a lot of uncertainty about it. Apple and Google won't let it in the App Store right now as of this recording. Has your business been affected by either the specter of a TikTok shutdown or what happened over the weekend? Yes and no. I would say that

For the last week, everyone that we work with has been hammering me with phone calls and emails. So in that capacity, it's definitely affected our work. But it only kicked in that last week. It only really kicked in the last week. I think most of us haven't been taking the ban too seriously because it seemed like Donald, President Trump was going to be saving it all this time. I will say we are in this very bizarre limbo where technically speaking, he should not have been able to extend this ban, the 75 days. Yeah, we can bring some lawyers in to debate that. But-

it looks like he's going to be saving and it looks like they have convinced him of why TikTok should stay in this country. But you're not operating any differently. You haven't had a sponsor or anyone you work with say, hey, just to be on the right side of the law, I got to stick away. No, essentially every company that we work with, especially like any sponsors, they have essentially said like, let's just see what happens the next few weeks. That if this ban were to actually go into effect, they would sort of shift their spend to Instagram instead, which our content already is on every single platform. But TikTok is the majority of where our viewership comes from. So I think

Everyone in this space has been the sort of holding pattern to just sort of see like what is going to happen. So I think some of my listeners may have heard about you. You've gotten a little bit of press. More of them will have heard of some of the stuff you've made. And then for a lot of folks, this will be the first they've heard of you. Explain what what gymnasium makes that people would have seen on their phones. So our biggest show is a show called Boy Room, where this girl investigates the most disgusting men's bedrooms. Formerly in New York City. Now we're in both L.A. and New York.

And it used to be the show. This is dudes in their mid-20s living like he does. Yeah, we call them boys, but they're definitely venturing into their 30s. This is how I live. Yes. Into my 30s. There you go. Maybe even more. Like just people just looking at my bedroom and going, good God, is it even legal to be here?

Exactly. And this is a show that's watched by around 3 million people. It's a show that now is entirely sponsored by Amazon. So we're actually giving them brand new room renovations as part of the show. We're not just making fun of them anymore. But you broke free. You broke out before Amazon. Exactly. I mean, this is a show that we piloted because the host, Rachel Koster, came up with the idea. We were a huge fan of her talent. We thought she was an amazing comedian. She just came up with this idea of I'm obsessed with men's bedrooms and I wish I can investigate them. One of the clips I read said she was applying to be your admin. Yeah.

So she wanted to be your admin and got a show instead. Yeah, exactly. So you made that show. Other shows people would have seen? By shows, we're saying literally a thing you've seen. The other one that I think people would really know is a show called Keep the Meter Running, which was hosted by Kareem Rama, who now hosts Subway Takes. And this was a show where he would hail a cab in New York City and tell the driver, take me to your favorite place in New York and keep the meter running while we spend the day with each other. And it was sort of like Anthony Bourdain with New York City's cab drivers. Really special show.

So you started Gymnasium how long ago? About 18 months now. 18 months ago, two hit shows, one of which is now turning into actual money for you. Is that sort of the, to boil it all down, that's the plan? You've got a small scrappy-ish studio. Your idea is to keep making shows primarily for TikTok, but other platforms as well, and hope more of them hit.

Yeah, I mean, the way that I would phrase it is version 1.0 is creating shows that are largely supported by brand sponsorship. I'd say version 2.0 is seeing like how much bigger can we make this IP? Whether that means is there other forms of telling these stories? Are there products that can come out of this universe? Are there brands we can partner on bringing parts of this universe to life?

And so today we're really just in that 1.0. We also have like an agency side of our business where we take the learnings and we make these short form shows, organically watch viral shows on the internet, and we'll go work with the biggest brands in the world and essentially say like, hey, we're going to bring that magic to you and have a show that lives on

We don't work with them. I'd love to, but the McDonald's network, for instance, right? So this is a model that is very old, right? You've seen versions of this for a very long time going back to the original movie studios, right? And TV studios make things, hope they find an audience. The also become an ad agency is sort of a newer twist, but one we've seen for a while, uh,

We've seen versions of this going back to YouTube and sort of every iteration beyond that. Are you a student of the model and the history or do you just go, this just seems like a good business, let's build it and go from there? Not only a student, also, I mean, I...

to this space because of how much I used these platforms. I mean, I'm someone who grew up being obsessed with Hollywood, wanted to be a producer from the time I was like six or seven years old. I don't even know what it meant yet. You wanted to be a big shot in Hollywood. Wanted to be a big shot in Hollywood. Where you grew up. I grew up in LA. It was the only thing I saw. I was surrounded by it. And I ended up not going to college. I just started working for producers straight out of high school. Spent about seven, eight years working in traditional Hollywood. And around the end of that, it was the pandemic. And I got...

somewhat addicted to TikTok and I would really look forward every night to going on TikTok to watch entertainment than I was to scroll on Netflix. And so there came a point in my head where I was like, I wanted to be in Hollywood because I saw this as like the center place of culture in the world. And I no longer think that's the case. And I think that the center of culture is this thing in our hands right here. But you didn't feel, oh, it's 2020, 2021, TikTok's blowing up. I'm too late.

Like this thing is already popular. I mean, there was a fear in my head only because I had never really made digital content in my life. I mean, I had made YouTube videos when I was about eight years old of like me being home alone with my brother, but I had never made content before on these platforms. And so for me, it was just more so looking at these platforms like TikTok in particular and saying,

Everyone is saying this is the dance app and this is UGC and that's the only thing that will ever work on these apps. What I see is distribution. And I wonder if we focused on like what does a TV show look like on these platforms, how quickly they'd be able to find an audience. And why TikTok, not YouTube, which has been around for a long time, makes a lot of money, makes its content creators a lot of money if they're very successful. Why not? And again, there is a path for that. People have been doing that.

Why not go there? For us, it's the quickness of how we're able to see if we have a hit or not. On TikTok, we usually know within the first three episodes we post on a new show if we have a successful show. And so that algorithm is just so phenomenal at finding who would or would not like something that for us, it just is a no-brainer to test shows out in this capacity first, make them a household name in this version. And then if there is a longer form version to make, 100%, let's go make a YouTube version.

So some of our listeners will understand this, but others won't. I just want you to walk through how one makes money and one doesn't make money on TikTok with a viral show, which you've had. So the benefit of coming into the space years after TikTok was introduced is we never revolved our business model around how much is TikTok going to pay us. We actually went into this company thinking we would never make a dollar from any platform. Literally TikTok would not give you a cent.

We've probably generated about a half a billion views on TikTok since the company started. And I think we've maybe made less than $20,000 in the platform. So, again, it was not even remotely in our views of view. Just pause there again because YouTube remains to this date the only big video platform that consistently shares about half of its ad dollars with its creators.

Instagram, TikTok, Snap, kind of have those in very small pockets, but generally they don't. They sort of expect you will make your money somewhere else. Am I summing that up correctly? The reality is short-form content is a

ad business for the platform. It's not for the creator because when I'm watching your YouTube video and it's 18 minutes long, I will be consuming five ads during those 18 minutes. It's a fantastic business for TikTok. It's an incredible business for TikTok. They have free content. They don't even have to cut the people Exactly. In the 30 minutes that I'm scrolling, I'm seeing five ads, but who's to say that you deserve the money from one of those ads? It seems like a terrible business to be a TikTok creator. Absolutely. That is, except for things now like TikTok Shop where you have individual creators who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month of a basically QVC video.

And so there is an economy on this platform. I think TikTok's opinion has always been that you use our platform to make a name for yourself to become a star, and you will find other ways to monetize off the platform. And so generally, you'll hear a creator talking about a brand deal. I think I know what this is, but you spell it out. What does a brand deal mean in TikTok?

So for your regular everyday influencers that have a following, I mean, fashion companies and airlines and theme parks, whatever it may be, are going to sponsor that influencer for them to make a video. And they'll say, hey, here's 30 grand. Go make a video in the style that you would and just be supportive of the business. Mention us in some way. Show off the product.

For us, the way it looks a little differently is we really want to find truly organic ways of bringing a sponsor into our content. And again, you made Boy Room, which is a woman, an aspiring comic, goes into miserable men's rooms in – not men's rooms. Men's bedrooms in Bushwick, Williamsburg, wherever and goes, that's disgusting. Yes. Right? And when that show is a hit –

You are not monetizing it in any way. So to also color in how we make these shows, I mean, it's usually no more than a crew of three people. They shoot on Sony FX3s, a great DSLR camera. And so our cost to produce these shows is so little that we're able to take bets on new talent, on new ideas in a way that is impossible in Hollywood today. So a boy room...

Prior to Amazon getting involved, cost what per episode? About $2,000 an episode. $2,000 an episode. It's about, what, three minutes? About three minutes in length. So it's not nothing, but it's pretty darn cheap in terms of content. And so in doing that, we ended up making 14 episodes on our own. By episode three, the show was massively viral. It was our biggest show we had ever made. By episode six, it was in print in the New York Times. And by episode seven, we started talking with Amazon. And a big part of that was that we had...

had these sort of fake renovations at the end of every episode. We would just give advice on like, well, we would have two curtains that are the same size and we would have a duvet cover. I don't think I ever got to the end of a boy room. Wow. You're even shorter. Well, I got like half of my, oh, I've seen a bedroom like this. This is my bedroom. I don't need to see anymore. So we would tease people on what the renovation looked like. And if you read the comments, I mean, almost every single fan of boy room would be like, you need to go and actually renovate these rooms. And so we saw it as a huge opportunity to really have

a great partnership with a brand. And so when we started talking with Amazon, it started being a no-brainer of like, let's turn this into a modern day HDTV renovation show with a little bit of a spoofy twist and let's go change these guys' lives. So when a brand comes to you or you come to a brand, they're looking for obviously reach. They want to know that you've made something that people like.

What else do they want from you before they cut you a check? I think they want to know that they're tapping into a bit of culture, right? And so something that's really cool about having a show like Boy Room is it has a very consistent audience that tunes in every single episode. And so for a brand like Amazon to organically show up in a show like that, it sort of changed the conversation versus an influencer who's just doing, you know, the ad of the day for Amazon that like maybe gets some clicks, but it's not really showing you what Amazon's actually there for.

But what do they want? What does an Amazon want out of you? So it's not just – and by the way, you could buy new curtains at Amazon, right? Exactly. So the way that the show works now is the first half of the show is exactly the same except basically at the halfway mark, Rachel stops and says, I used to not be able to help you but now I can because Amazon is actually here right now.

And then we go into a renovation sequence where you start to see some stuff get done in the room. And then we have this like, you know, move that bus, open that door moment where the guy opens his room and he's a brand new bedroom. And Amazon presumably needs to sign off on all this stuff. Amazon's on set with us. They're very involved in the production. And so like...

I don't know if I ever saw anything super gnarly in season one of Boy Room, but I'm just imagining you could find all kinds of things in a boy room. Of course. That are real and are disgusting and that Amazon maybe doesn't want. Absolutely. So do you guys figure that stuff out? Exactly. And I will say- It's got to be dirty, but not too dirty. 100%. And I think we're also lucky to have a great relationship with them where they're very trusting of the fact that like,

this show has existed in this way before. We can't really change it too much without losing our audience. So it's a give and take. So Amazon comes to you when you've got how many viewers for that show? At that point, the show had probably had cumulatively like 150,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram. So that's...

That's a – And an average episode probably had around a million viewers. Right. So it's not a giant, giant crush the world TikTok hit. But they go, all right, you built that. That's great. We want to participate in that. Is there expectation that you can repeat that, that you can do more? And then how does that bump up against what you were describing sort of TikTok special sauce, which is they do all this targeting. They bring new things to you.

everyone I've talked to who's ever made anything for TikTok knows full well that the hit they have today could be gone tomorrow because the algorithm changes. That exists everywhere. It seems even more ruthless on TikTok. How do you sort of set expectations for Amazon? It's funny. I mean, we have never, in famous last words, we've never disagreed with what the algorithm has made work and not work. Because they could turn it off tomorrow, right? They could turn it off tomorrow. We've never had that happen on a show of ours. I think a lot of the people who kind of fill the white noise of TikTok

of that criticism are, you know, individual creators who maybe got a following for making one type of video and either people got sick of that one type of video or they pivoted and tried something else. But even I'll notice it just as a consumer of that stuff. I like so-and-so's videos about cooking. And I don't see them anymore. And they go away and sometimes I've even thought like, oh, what happened to so-and-so? And I'll go look

for that person. They still exist. They're still making videos. I'm still following them. TikTok has decided I've had enough. And I think that's where we also are very conscious of the fact we don't want people to get sick of us or have seen too many of our videos. So we're very unlike other creators who might be posting three times a day. We on Boyer Room right now are posting once a week for 16 episodes and then the show's going to go off for a few months and then we will be hopefully coming back for another season. So we've never had that happen to us and that is also why we are on every platform and we hope to have an equal size following on every platform.

We'll be right back with Adam Faze, but first, a word from a sponsor. And we're back. So tell me more about the studio structure because, again, we're going to get people together. We're not going to pay them that much. We're not going to spend that much money. We'll make a bunch of content. A lot of people have done that, varying success. Sometimes they'll say, well, we've got a network now, and so that allows us to help seed new shows, podcasts.

You're not really doing that. No. And in fact, if we're going to talk TikTok specifically, I mean, many can argue that TikTok itself is the network. And so we aren't that interested in building the network. So you're not going to spin out a new show from Boy Room or you're not going to have a collab. You might have a spinoff out of Boy Room, but you might not have shows that are so central to gymnasium. But that's not the plan that you're going to have a bunch of.

content that I'll recognize as gymnasium content, even if I don't know it's gymnasium content. Our hope is over time that you have, you know, you respect the work that comes out of gymnasium. And so you like gymnasium as a result, but we're not going to sort of force feed the gymnasium name down your throat. And in fact, I mean, I don't think I knew the name gymnasium when I was watching the show, right? So what's better about the way you're doing it than if I literally just found three other interesting people and gave them a thousand dollars and said, make me a video. I think for us, it's the sort of like

meeting point of traditional Hollywood storytelling and using these modern day platforms. And so what's really fun for us is like we do call it a television studio. It acts very much like a television studio. The crew behind the camera might not look like what you expect on the show of

you know, set of an HBO show. But for us, it is what TV is. And I think what I really enjoy is having spent almost a decade working in Hollywood. For the first time in my life, I can talk to like someone between the ages of 20 and 30, tell them a show that I'm working on. And chances are not only have they seen it, they've probably seen every single episode. And so that's such a crazy reaction to be getting out of someone when I worked at big movie studios and I could name a bunch of movies that I had a

a helping hand that none of these people had ever seen. You've got two hit shows over 18 months. How many shows total have you tried out? So over the last 18 months, we've done about six or seven shows. So you've got a...

pretty good batting average. Exactly. Two hits out of six. And I will say like the biggest thing that's changed this year is we've now doubled the size of our creative team and we're about to just release a lot of pilots to have the audience tell us what shows do they actually want us to do. So that's the plan. Just keep making more and there's kind of no other secret to

Now, I mean, I really do believe that, you know, platforms like TikTok prioritize great content that you actually want to be watching. I think what's cool for us is these platforms are also super international as well. And in the unscripted space, it's very common you would have a format that becomes very big in one country. And you say, hey, there might be a way to do a local language version of this in a different country altogether. Yeah.

And so I think as we develop even more hit shows, you will start to see local versions that spin up around the world. You said you can figure out if a show is a hit in three episodes. That's just because the numbers are telling you that. Do you have hunches prior to that? When you're starting at zero for each one of those six shows, did you know, I think Boy Room is going to be the hit or is it random? We only release stuff that we're a fan of.

Right. So we always have a hunch that we think it's going to work. And I will say out of those six shows that I mentioned, they actually were all a success viewership wise. Sometimes they were just very hard to monetize. And so unfortunately, that is a huge part of what allows us to green light shows. Like, do we think we would be able to make our money?

So will people watch it and then once they're watching it, is there a way we can bring in Amazon or someone like that? Because I'll give you an example. We used to make a show called Clockwork Dynasty with these two watch dealers from 47th Street who are dear friends to this day, Vukum and Tuscany Rose, a.k.a. Buckley. And it was basically Pawn Stars. We built their watch shop in our office. People would come on the show and buy, sell, trade luxury watches. I've definitely seen a video like that, but I don't know if it was yours or an actual watch. These were like the original 47th Street.

guys. And so we actually made a prior show with them called Buying Time. We'd been working with them for about a year and a half. And that show had a consistent 1 million plus viewers an episode. But our audience was 99% boys between the ages of 18 and 24, which in the watch space isn't that monetized. They're not buying watches. They're not buying watches. And so a show like that, sometimes you have to do the math and you're like, you know what? Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense for us to keep making the show, even though we love it and people love it as well.

Will TikTok come to you and say, hey, this show you've got here, that's really working and you're valuable. Why don't you try tweaking this or adding that? No, because again, you know, the show was a success on the platform. And so TikTok doesn't have an interest in being a Hollywood studio at the end of the day. They love that we make content for them just as much as they love the other 500 million people that make content on the platform. But they're not necessarily looking and saying like, hey, how can we build like the Snapchat discover feed of helping these studios kind of make original content?

TikTok has 170 million users in the U.S., they say. But it's not the only place to watch video. One of my kids, for whatever reason, is an Instagram Reels viewer. I will see Reels and I'll see a lot of videos I saw on TikTok. YouTube Shorts is a clone.

Are the viewers, are the users of the platforms different between Reels, Shorts, TikTok, or is it all the same people? I mean, I can tell you this. The average viewer of Boyroom on TikTok is a 22-year-old girl. The average viewer on Instagram is a 35-year-old woman. So slightly different demographic. Instagram tends to be older than TikTok would be. But I would say in general, I mean, the algorithms are very different. And I think if you look at the Reels algorithm, it's a lot of rage bait. It's a lot of stuff that they know you're likely to send to friends.

because that is sort of the piece of engagement that drives a video up on the Reels feed the most. My Reels feed, I can tell you right now, is pretty awful. I actually spent Saturday night thinking, you know what? In a world where TikTok doesn't exist, let's just assume Reels is the platform that we go to. Let me just spend some more time on Reels. You think they really are tuned in a different way? Yes. Because when I look at it,

from interested observers, but with no inside information, I assume, they're all doing the same thing, which is you like this thing, let's give you more things like that. TikTok definitely does that, right? And I've heard people argue TikTok's algorithm is more refined, better, they're willing to experiment more, that improves. So leaving aside the fact that maybe it's better, aren't they all fundamentally saying you like the pretty lady in a bathing suit? Here are more, because we're guessing you might like to look at that. Yes and no. Again, I would say that Instagram...

has a lot more of what I would call rage bait, where it shows you things that it knows you won't like, but it knows that you are likely to engage with the content. And so as soon as you do engage with that content, it's going to show you more stuff that you don't like. So if you're a Republican, it's going to show you liberal content. And if you, you know, hate trans people, it's going to show you a lot of content featuring trans people. It actually really like salivates on that engagement, whereas TikTok is not like that whatsoever. It's a lot more about what are you interested in? What type of person are you? And we're going to show you content that feeds those interests. We've

We'll be right back with Adam Faze, but first, a word from a sponsor.

And we're back. Edgard Spelfen here, last fall after the election. He specializes in doing YouTube and podcasts generally for sort of right-leaning folks. He was very excited about TikTok as a video platform. I was skeptical. What do you think? Is TikTok a place that you think your shows are going to run? Sorry, Twitter. It's like, wait a second. They're already on TikTok. We do post our content. We can even edit that app. Let's just leave it in because you can see how the magic happens. We use X. We have a gymnasium X. We post TikTok downloads of our content onto X.

I am an avid X user. Yeah. What about as a video consumer and a producer who wants to make video? Look, I would say I think it's great for podcasts. I don't know if it's the best place for long-form content unless they change certain things about the platform. I still think YouTube is always going to be the best platform for long-form content. I think for clips, it's fantastic. I do...

I do think we see in culture that the conversation on X does a lot of times drive the conversation happening around the world. So can your stuff live there? Can you make money there? Making money on it, again, I think it's too early to say. It's been a year-ish of monetization on X. We, again, really do not rely on platform monetization for our business. I will say, like, once we start having more longer content on YouTube, it'll be exciting to have that form of revenue in the business. But, again, it's just not something that we're building our business off of.

And I guess it doesn't make sense to ask you about how advertisers might feel about having your videos on X because it's not really there yet. And I will say, like, again, I can tell you there was a day in April where a different user picked up Boy Room and was like, there's this show on TikTok where this girl is going to the most disgusting rooms and you have to see it. And that tweet got about 10 million views, which...

Who knows what views me on Twitter, but it said it got 10 million views. And I know that it actually had an impact because that day I got about 50 emails and 100 texts from people that had found out because of that post. And so it is a super, super important platform, and we will continue to post everything there. So let's go back. Talk to me about how you got to here. You grew up on the west side of L.A.,

That means you were surrounded by movie people, TV people. Were your parents in the business? No. Dad was a mortgage loan officer for Washington Mutual and then later a bunch of other banks. And mom was a realtor.

And were you someone who said, I want to be in this business. It's obvious I'll be in this business from the get-go or did you come to it later? Oh, no. I mean, I can tell you like from being in middle school, it was like this was the only thing that my life was about was pursuing a career in Hollywood. Definitely was a challenge at times with family only because it was very outside of like the expectation of what might be possible. But I think over time –

When that gold just doesn't go away and you've been working on it your entire life, there's nothing you can do except support it. But you made some progress, right? You got a job at Annapurna, which was, I guess, still extant, right? I mean, still is a production studio owned by the other Ellison child. The other Ellison. And the whole time you're doing this, it's not like you're someone in their 50s who's never seen a phone before, right? No.

In the 50s, I've seen it. The point is, like, you were fully aware of digital media this whole time. This entire time, I was terminally online, right? Like, I would describe myself as someone who was chronically online. My screen time is still around 9, 10 hours a day on my phone. Sometimes I'm ashamed of it. Sometimes I'm not. But I think— That just means you're a person. Exactly.

Totally. People get outraged when they hear those numbers. But like if you walk around with your phone, that's what you're going to have. Yes. And I will say I think the average Gen Z-er is chronically online, right? Like this is a generation we grew up with the internet. So I think it is just a second language. And so at all this time that I was pursuing a career in Hollywood, there was a part of me that was thinking if only I grew up in the 70s and I could grow up with Spielberg and De Palma and Coppola and all these amazing filmmakers I look up to.

And then there was a part where that sort of started to shift in 2020. It was like actually if those filmmakers were my age today, they'd probably be making content on their own and be posting on the internet trying to make a voice for themselves. And if you really think about it, it's never been easier to reach more people around the world. And that's a pretty incredible thing. And moving to New York instead of doing it in LA, I mean most people I know who are making content have moved to LA for that reason even if they're making YouTube stuff.

It's interesting. I moved out here for a job. That job is where I started making sure from content. I would say that the type of studio, the gymnasium is only possible because we're in New York.

It's really fun that the talent we get to work with are people who are trying to be the next generation of comics, trying to be the next generation of writers. A lot – I think the gymnasium that would have started in LA would be a lot more influencer-based. We do not make influencer content. Not that there's any shame to that. It's just not the company that we are. And so I think if you look at it, I mean New York has a very rich history of television, right? There's a reason why NBC is still here. SNL is still here. And I think we're sort of following in those footsteps. Cool.

Go back. What is the distinction between what you make and influencer content?

So we work with rising talent, right? We're working with, you know, Rachel Koster, host of Boyroom. I found her in a comedy club and I just was obsessed with her talent. And I was like, this is someone who's going to have a massive, massive career in comedy. What I mean when I say we don't make influencer content is like we're not finding the influencer of the week who's doing makeup tutorials and saying like, hey, let's go make that show about makeup with you. That's for another company to make whose business model, you know, fits that better. We are really trying to make shows that we're fans of.

So something closer to what we would have called a person with talent. Now, I know people are going to listen to that, get derogatory and say people who are putting on makeup in front of TikTok, that's a real talent. It is. It's a real skill. If anyone could do it, everyone would do it. They don't. But you are making some distinction between sort of someone with a what would they call a concept for a show and some sort of onscreen skill versus talent.

Exactly. I mean, I would say that I compare the types of shows that we're going out and making right now to a lot of unscripted studios that exist. You know, we're really looking for these hit unscripted formats and whether they're helmed by a comedian or they're helmed by someone you've never heard of before. We are just trying to make that next generation of hit TV shows just in a completely different place. And you are you are on camera at any point? No. Do you want to be on camera? You were briefly famous for a minute.

If I Google you, you come up as Olivia Rodrigo's ex-boyfriend. That is a chapter of my life. What was that experience like in retrospect? I think nobody media trains you to go through an experience like that. And so what's hard is you're just in a relationship and relationships change.

are not easy to begin with. And so when that is mixed with waking up and realizing your name is trending and people are like trying to find bad things about you and because they can't find them, we're going to start making things up. It's really hard. And I was, now I look back and I was like, I was a kid. I was 23 years old and I don't think I was ready to go through that. I will say I will never do that again because it's such a horrible. So if a famous, good looking person

is into you in New York, you meet somewhere, you go, no, sorry, I already was. I was already dating a famous person. You can't stop. If something's in the cards, it does what it does. But, you know, the internet can be pretty cruel. Give you any insight in sort of how it works for the folks who are on camera that you're working with now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a big thing is

When someone is about to helm a show, I do like to have a conversation with them now, having seen this a few times. It's like, if this show is a hit, you will become like this person, right? You will be defined by this right now. And your career may be very long and you might be lucky to do a million things. But for a while, you will be known as this person. So if this show is to go big, are you okay with being that? Are you okay with being the face of this property? Because...

And they all say, yes, that's what I'm doing, dummy. I mean, of course, I want it. Give it to me. And I will say again, like it's what is very crazy about platforms like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube is they have a much wider reach than anything we have in Hollywood today. And so we will have a show like Keep the Mute Running that in the first episode got 1.2 million views. And then the next morning, Kareem is being stopped in the streets by people that are like, I love your show. That's wild.

Like that does not happen on TV anymore. And so people have very parasocial relationships with the types of talent that are on camera on platforms like TikTok. And it can be overwhelming at times. And then on the other side, before a show like Boirom monetizes, what's super strange is sometimes you'll have a show that's super viral, but you haven't made any money from it yet. And so you're still in this weird place. You're getting stopped on the street, but you're... I'm getting stopped on the street, but I also work at a coffee shop. And what does that mean? And so...

I do think TikTok more than any other platform other than maybe YouTube.

created a new generation of quote-unquote famous people at a speed that just was never before tested with. So let's end where we started. TikTok had a near-death experience, near-ish death experience. Seems like it's going to exist in some form for some amount of time. Having gone through this and realizing that it might have gone away, even if you were confident it wasn't, has that made you rethink how you're going to build your business?

We will continue to always diversify the platforms that we use. Unfortunately, TikTok is the one that we love the most. We're just huge fans of the platform. I think one of my bigger fears about it getting banned in the U.S. is

I think our government is trying to protect us from Chinese influence, which is very important. But at the same time, I worry about the lack of American influence on the platform if we were not to be on it anymore. And so the rest of the world will continue to have this app. The chicken shop lady is going to take everything. She's more on YouTube anyway. But point being, there are going to be more stars –

coming from those markets than the American markets. This is an app that is dominated by American influence right now. And so I would really hate to have all of a sudden a splintered internet where in the U.S. we're on this platform, but it's only reaching a U.S. audience, but then the rest of the world is on this really great platform. I mean, I think we're getting to the splintered internet whether you like it or not, right? There's a bunch of websites that can exist in one country and not another. Almost none of this exists in China. Ironies. Well, that's the thing. It's like, do we want to become them? That's for a different podcast.

Adam Faze, thank you for coming over. Thank you for having me. Thanks again to Adam Faze. Great that he came into the studio. Thanks to Jelani Carter who came into this studio, a real live studio, to record, engineer, and produce this thing. Thanks to our advertisers who bring this show to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening. We'll see you next week.