Entertainment
The Creators Behind New York City’s Digital Revival
Bing bong! If you’ve ever been to New York City, you know the iconic sound of the subway. Or you’ve heard the onomatopoeia echoed by one of New York’s many content creators. America’s largest city is swarming with talent chasing the attention economy. This is how some of New York City’s newest and brightest social media stars are shaping that moment.
If your TikTok algorithm is even slightly New York-centric, you’ve seen the chaotic sparkle of Side Talk New York, the “1-minute street interview show” that’s become both a meme machine and a cultural archive. Filmmakers Trent Simonian and Jack Byrne have turned shouting matches outside MSG into high-speed anthropology. A man declaring “Bing Bong” after a Knicks win? That’s folklore now (the phrase was popularized by frequent guest host Nems). But the genius of Side Talk is in the small moments of joy and absurdity across boroughs that it captures. The pulse of the city translated directly into pixels.
If you’re lucky, you might catch an interview done with microphones attached to Metro Cards on your Subway journey. Subway Takes, created by Kareem Rahma and Andrew Kuo in 2023, has interviewees defending their hot takes live on the train while the host, Rahma, agrees or disagrees. The platform is one of many that have revitalized interest in the city, which suffered greatly from the woes of the Covid-19 pandemic, causing a huge increase in hospitalizations and deaths, as well as shuttered businesses, brought tourism to halt and brought an interest into uplifting local communities and highlighting the rich and unique culture and atmosphere of New York.
Especially in tourism and food content, there is a renewed interest in New York, from places of interest to tourists, to old-school local businesses that have survived generations. Rob Martinez, the name behind Eating With Robert, has amassed a huge following on TikTok, YouTube, Substack and Instagram for his videos and writing about amazing food finds. Martinez, originally from Long Island, began his journey by highlighting his favorite local eateries in New York, and has expanded his food content globally, traveling elsewhere in the United States and abroad to highlight local food cultures and deserving small businesses. –
Another way New Yorkers have garnered attention is through their recipes, not the glossy, studio-lit kind, but those that feel born in apartment kitchens, somewhere between nostalgia and innovation. Future Canoe, a YouTuber who reviews and cooks food in humors videos, with New York as his backdrop. The videos often pair experimental recipes (trying to attempt AI click bait recipes, trying “struggle meals”and reviewing viral NYC dishes). In the same spirit, Farideh Sadeghin, the former Munchies host now helming her own YouTube channel, captures that quintessential “cook with me” energy. Her collaborations—whether grilling ribs on a Brooklyn rooftop or testing a Lower East Side deli’s secret sandwich—turn everyday cooking into cultural conversation. It’s not just about the food; it’s about how food folds into city identity, class, and accessibility.
Another lively example of coverage of neighborhood favorites and the revival of New York is Brooklyn Bites, mainly known via their Instagram account @brooklynbitess. Run by first-generation Italian-Americans Sabrina and Giuseppe, their page reads like an ever-expanding family table: clips from Sunday sauce, neighborhood pizza spots, and trips back to Italy all sit side by side. They spotlight local restaurants and bakeries as lovingly as they document the kind of comfort food made by nonnas, showing Brooklyn and the Italian diaspora that raised them to the world. The tone is casual and deeply affectionate, the hosts pull you into a shared cultural memory, one bite at a time.
Altogether, what connects the content of Subway Takes, Eating With Robert, Future Canoe, Brooklyn Bites, and Side Talk is a collective insistence on presence. These creators reject sanitized portrayals of New York in favor of the messy, immediate, lived-in version. The platforms differ in focus, but they share a rhythm: hyperlocal storytelling charged with digital intimacy. In post-pandemic New York, the city’s return is being championed by creators.
Entertainment
Rabbit Hole Sends 36 Creators to Disney+ and Hulu
Pocket.watch’s Rabbit Hole puts 36 creators in one premium series, then parks 240 spinoff episodes behind it on Hulu. The structure, not the star count, is the story.
Thirty-six creators walk into one variety series, and behind them Hulu quietly stacks 240 more episodes so nobody who clicks in has a reason to click out. That is the shape of Rabbit Hole, the pocket.watch series that premiered July 13 on Disney+ and Hulu. Topper Guild, the YouTube prankster with the largest following in the cast, leads it.
The 10-episode, half-hour series debuted on Disney+ and Hulu in the US and on Disney+ in select international markets on July 13. Disney and pocket.watch call it the largest ensemble of digital stars ever assembled for a premium series. The cast reaches a combined 675 million followers, more than the roster carried at greenlight, when the same show counted 421.8 million.
That headline number is the easy part. The real story sits in the release strategy around it, and it says a great deal about where creator IP is heading.
Pocket.watch did not just book a marquee show. It built a supply chain. Eight cast members already have individual series streaming on Hulu, with more launching around the premiere, and the full universe spans 240 half-hour episodes. The tentpole draws the crowd. The back catalog keeps them there.
The Ensemble Is the Product
The follower total works because no single channel could stage the collisions the show is built on. A viewer who watches Topper Guild’s pranks has never seen him next to ZHC’s art challenges or Collins Key’s magic. The cast also includes Zhong, Jesser, Josh Peck, Sofie Dossi, Mackenzie Turner, Papa Jake, Matthew Beem, and ExtraEmily.
Individual reach anchors the pitch. Topper Guild brings 127.9 million followers, Zhong 100 million, and ZHC 76.1 million, figures pocket.watch listed creator by creator in its announcement. Those are the three largest in a lineup where most names would headline a show on their own.
Disney frames the deal as a milestone for its platforms, not a favor to the creators. Lauren Tempest, Head of Content Planning and Partnerships, DTC at The Walt Disney Company, said the series gives subscribers “access to 36 of the most followed creators for teens, all in one series.”
Why the Spinoffs Matter More Than the Premiere
The math on retention is the point. One premium series can win a launch weekend. A launch weekend does not hold a subscription.
That is the gap 240 episodes are built to close. Pocket.watch CEO Chris M. Williams described the model as a premium entry point that opens into hundreds of episodes of the same talent, connecting appointment viewing with ongoing discovery. It reads less like a show order and more like a studio franchise assembled from fanbases that already exist.
The comparison is traditional television, run backward. Legacy studios build a hit, then spin off characters audiences met on screen. Pocket.watch starts with creators who arrived with millions of fans, then routes that attention through Disney’s paywall and keeps it circulating across the spinoff slate.
The scale grew as the deal did. When pocket.watch first greenlit the show in October 2025, as Deadline reported, the cast commanded 421.8 million combined followers and Hulu was the sole US home. By launch the roster had expanded to 36 creators and 675 million followers, with Disney+ added for the US and international markets.
Rabbit Hole is the clearest test yet of whether free-platform audiences follow their favorites behind a subscription wall. All 10 episodes are streaming now. The 240 waiting on Hulu will decide whether they stay.
Entertainment
Dudamel Streams LA Phil Farewell on His Own YouTube
Gustavo Dudamel is ending 17 years at the LA Phil on his own YouTube channel, not a broadcast network, turning a farewell into a live Venezuela fundraiser and a bet on classical as prestige streaming.
The maestro who turned a symphony orchestra into a stadium act is spending his last night as its leader routing the whole thing through a donate button. Gustavo Dudamel closes 17 years as Music and Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Sunday, August 23, with a Hollywood Bowl concert streaming worldwide on his personal YouTube channel.
The show is called A Concert for Venezuela, and every dollar it raises goes toward earthquake relief. Donations split between the United Nations Development Programme relief fund and the El Sistema CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean Fund, which supports El Sistema students, staff, families, and facilities hit by the June 24 disaster.
Here is the part the creator economy should sit with. Dudamel did not send his farewell to the LA Phil’s institutional channel or a legacy broadcaster. He sent it to his own YouTube page, with a platform-native donate button doing the fundraising in real time. A prestige classical figure is treating the platform as his independent broadcast network, and YouTube is treating classical as a category worth owning.
The concert was not always this. When the LA Phil first announced its 2026 Bowl lineup in February, the finale carried the title “Celebrating Gustavo at the Bowl: A Musical Legacy.” Then two earthquakes struck northern Venezuela on June 24, 39 seconds apart, and Dudamel rebuilt the night around his home country. The tribute became a benefit.
“Venezuela will always be my home, and every moment, my thoughts are with the families whose lives have been forever changed by this tragedy. The suffering is immense, but so is the strength and resilience of our people,” Dudamel said in the statement announcing the change.
Who Shares the Bowl Stage
The bill reaches well past the orchestra pit. Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic and members of YOLA, the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, alongside guests including Beck, GIVĒON, Carlos Vives, and Natalia Lafourcade. Venezuelan artists Lasso, Eduardo Betancourt, Jorge Glem, and Nella appear too, with the program built around Venezuelan composers.
That cross-genre gathering is the entire pitch. A single YouTube stream carrying an R&B singer, a Colombian pop star, and a youth orchestra under one conductor is the kind of event a broadcast network would have gatekept a decade ago. Now it lives on one man’s channel, free to anyone with a screen.
The institution put money down as well. LA Phil President and CEO Kim Noltemy announced a $50,000 charitable donation toward Venezuela relief alongside the concert, a figure that sets a floor before a single viewer clicks the button.
“In moments of profound need, our responsibility as an institution extends beyond the stage,” Noltemy said.
Where the Maestro Goes Next
The exit has a destination. Dudamel leaves Los Angeles to become music director of the New York Philharmonic, a move the orchestra announced in February 2023 on a five-year contract for the 2026-27 season.
So the farewell is also a handoff, and the choice of venue for it says something. A conductor whose LA tenure included the Super Bowl and Coachella is ending it not on a stage owned by a network, but on infrastructure he controls, pointed at a cause rather than a curtain call.
“This concert at the Hollywood Bowl is an invitation to stand together and transform our compassion into action,” Dudamel said.
The full concert stays on his YouTube channel after the broadcast ends, donate button attached. The tribute became a benefit, and the benefit does not clock out when the lights come up.
Entertainment
YouTube and Variety Book Two Creator Premieres at TIFF
On opening day of TIFF, two YouTube creators premiere new work that skips theaters entirely and heads straight back to the platform. Inside the Variety x YouTube Creator Festival and why the room it sits in matters.
Two YouTube creators will screen new work on the opening day of the Toronto International Film Festival, and neither project is chasing a theatrical run afterward. Both are going straight back to YouTube. Mark Vins and Ziwe headline the first Variety x YouTube Creator Festival at TIFF, set for September 10.
YouTube and Variety announced the showcase on August 12. Vins, of the Brave Wilderness channel, will premiere his feature-length documentary “Reef to Ridge,” which follows his team on a high-stakes expedition through the Galápagos to film endangered species. Ziwe will premiere two new episodes of her interview series “You’d Be an Iconic Guest.” Each screening carries a Q&A with Variety executive editor of film Matt Donelly. Both shows move exclusively to YouTube later this year.
Here is why the date matters. A festival premiere has long been the front door to a theatrical release and an awards campaign. These two projects walk through that door and then turn around to a platform anyone can open for free. That inversion, prestige premiere first and free distribution second, treats creator work as premium IP from the start rather than as content that graduates into it.
The placement itself is precise. The screenings run inside TIFF: The Market, the festival’s new content marketplace launching this year, not the Official Selection tracks that carry the Galas and Special Presentations. TIFF built The Market as a hub for buying and selling screen projects across every platform. So the creators land in the room where deals happen, next to the trade, rather than on the red carpet reserved for the year’s Oscar hopefuls.
That distinction is the story, not a footnote to it.
Variety is co-hosting, a step past media partnership. Dea Lawrence, the outlet’s co-president and publisher, is quoted directly in the announcement. “We’re excited to partner with YouTube in its inaugural year at TIFF, spotlighting the extraordinary rise of creator-filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of premium storytelling and redefining the next generation of cinematic voices,” Lawrence said.
YouTube framed the moment in blunter terms. “YouTube is where the next generation of Hollywood is being built,” said Kim Larson, the platform’s global head of creators.
The two picks are not interchangeable, and that is deliberate. Vins built Brave Wilderness into a wildlife-documentary operation, and “Reef to Ridge” is his first feature at that scale. Ziwe arrives from the opposite corner, a comedian and interviewer whose format thrives on discomfort. One is expedition cinema. The other is a talk show that refuses to be comfortable. Together they make the argument that creator programming is not one genre but a slate.
The 51st edition of TIFF runs September 10 through 20, with The Market anchored at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The creator festival occupies the first day of it.
The premieres screen once at the convention center. The shows themselves land on YouTube before the year is out.
Related: YouTube Lands Opening-Day TIFF Slots With Vins, Ziwe.