Happy Friday 👋

Here’s everything we covered in this week’s Open Tabs conversation:

* Khaby Lame sells his likeness for (almost) a billion dollars [0:00].We kicked things off with news that Khaby Lame, TikTok’s most-followed creator, sold a stake in his brand to Rich Sparkle Holdings in a deal valued at $975M. The holding company now has the rights to monetize his platform and likeness across beauty, fragrance, apparel, TikTok Shop, livestreams — and notably, an AI-powered digital twin that can generate multilingual content at scale. We unpacked why Khaby is uniquely suited for this move: his content is reaction-based, low-verbal, and intentionally personality-light, making him closer to a scalable IP than a confessional lifestyle creator. At the same time, we questioned the valuation, the real conversion power of visibility vs. persuasion, and the brand risk creators take on when they relinquish control over how their image is used.

* Our POV: This deal isn’t a blueprint for all creators — it’s a case study in how abstract, personality-lite creators can turn themselves into infrastructure. For anyone whose value is built on trust, taste, or emotional intimacy, AI-scaled monetization risks hollowing out the very thing audiences come for.

* Additional resources:

* Creator Khaby Lame just sold a stake in his brand for $975 million, Mashable

* TikTok Superstar Khaby Lame’s Big Deal—Which Saw Him Valued At $6.6 Billion—Raises Red Flags, Experts Say, Forbes

* Danielle Bernstein and the private–public creator paradox [15:00]. Next, we shifted to lifestyle creators and the emotional cost of oversharing. Danielle Bernstein [aka @WeWoreWhat] announced her breakup via Instagram Stories after a very public engagement, then redirected followers to her Substack, where she explained she plans to be far more private going forward. The response on Substack was largely positive — but it reopened a bigger question around whether creators can ever successfully “pull back” after building an audience on access.

* Our POV: Lifestyle creators are stuck in a structural trap. The internet rewards intimacy, but punishes boundaries. Once an audience feels entitled to your personal life, withholding information isn’t seen as healthy — it’s seen as betrayal. This isn’t a personal failure; it’s a business risk baked into the model.

* Additional resources:

* The private parts of a public life, Danielle Bernstein

* Creators opting out: burnout, boundaries, and refusal to sell [25:30].Danielle Bernstein got us talking about content creators who’ve actively stepped back instead of scaling up: Charles Gross leaving the luxury influencer grind for mental health reasons and Elle Mills, who posted about being “burnt out at 19” after blowing up on YouTube. Both cases illustrate what happens when creators decide they’re not willing to monetize themselves indefinitely — even when the algorithm rewards them for doing so.

* Our POV: Not every creator wants to scale and not every creator should. The industry glamorizes growth, but longevity often belongs to those who know when to pull back and pivot.

* Additional resources:

* Burnt out at 19, Elle Mills

* I’m back ❤️, Charles Gross

* Substack TV and the expansion into video [43:45]. On one side, the move feels timely. With TikTok’s ongoing instability and recent algorithm weirdness, many creators have been pushing audiences to Substack as a safety net — a place to find them if other platforms get unreliable. Video also opens the door for creators who aren’t writers but want longer, more nuanced conversations with their audiences.

On the other, the backlash has been loud. Many journalists came to Substack specifically to escape the industry-wide push to video and protect the written word. For that audience, the TV announcement felt less like an evolution and more like a betrayal, especially given how lightly Substack framed the change.

* Our POV: Video scales, watch-time metrics feel more trustworthy to advertisers, and every platform wants to own a share of the living room — especially as video still feels like an unfinished frontier and TikTok’s future remains uncertain. Substack isn’t trying to become YouTube — but it is chasing the legitimacy and monetization power of video. The risk isn’t adding video; it’s losing trust by failing to clearly articulate why this move aligns with what made Substack feel different in the first place.

* Additional resources:

* Substack launches a TV app, TechCrunch

* Introducing the Substack TV app, now in beta, On Substack

Thanks for listening! 🎧 🤍

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