We're Giving Away $1,500 for Your Creatorland Stories

Creatorland hit 400,000 connections last week. Behind that number are real relationships - creators meeting brands, finding collaborators, landing opportunities, reconnecting with past partners.

But here's what we don't know: your specific story. What happened because you joined Creatorland? What keeps you logging in?

This month, we're paying three members $500 each to tell us.

Record a 30-second video sharing your experience with the platform. Did you land a brand deal through a connection here? Reconnect with someone from a past campaign? Find a collaborator? Simply love having a professional network that actually gets the creator economy?

We want the unfiltered version - not a polished testimonial, just your honest take.

What to talk about:

• Why you joined and why you stayed

• What Creatorland does differently

• A specific win (connection, opportunity, relationship)

• Why the creator economy needs a platform like this

• Literally anything genuine about your experience

How to win:

• Record ~30 seconds (vertical preferred, but horizontal works)

• Good lighting + clear audio (your phone is fine)

• Be yourself - we want authentic, not produced

• Submit by December 31st

Three winners get $500 each. Announced in early January.

Privacy note: Your video stays private unless you give us explicit permission to use it. If we want to feature yours, we'll reach out first.

Now let’s get into my creator economy predictions for 2026.

My Forecasts For The Creator Industry in 2026

2025 was a wild year for our industry TikTok gets banned again then saved (again), spending on creators hit an all time high of $37B, from Jan-Jun 52 M&A deals went down a 73% bump over 2024.

There was plenty of excitement in the water in 2025 and 2026 is going to be just as exciting. Putting on my Nostradamus hat (stoked I spelled that right on first try) here are 4 key forecasts I have for 2026.

Brands Will Embrace Unhinged Brain Rot Content Run by their Gen Z team members on TikTok

If you’ve seen the Brita TikTok account, you know exactly what I mean.

Brands are starting to realize that young GenZ team members may just know a whole lot more about how to be engaging on social media than the Gen X or millennial boss (sorry friend’s I know this hurts for all of us born before 1990). The best performing content comes from people who have grown up with the content format in question - the Brita’s wild content on TikTok is a perfect example of this.

Brita’s content is chaotic, positive, self deprecating in the best way referring to themselves as “Bwita”, and extremely well performing.

Just look at the engagement across the last 12 posts - Brita has generated 21.3M views on the last 12 posts alone since November 26. That’s a lot of goodwill for a brand that was very vanilla pre their TikTok account’s success.

The GenZ chaos demon running TikTok at Brita deserves a raise, and I think we’re going to see a lot more brands embracing taking risks on social in 2026.

The rise of scripted high-production-value brand content and brand content studios.

In June of 2025, InStyle launched “The Intern” a scripted reality series purpose built for TikTok. It’s been a massive hit, driving millions of views per video and pushing their TikTok 617K followers. We’re going to see a lot more of this in 2026. Brand content has always been challenging on TikTok, a place where authenticity thrives. With the exception of “founder-led” content (posts from entrepreneurs breaking down their day to day struggles and successes) it’s been incredibly challenging for brands to produce content on their own and find viral success.

Scripted entertainment designed specifically for TikTok is changing that, which is good news for Hollywood writers and filmmakers who are looking for work in the wake of an unprecedented pullout from major studios from the LA market.

Dick’s Sporting Goods launched a content studio in August this year, Cookie Jar & A Dream is a new internal production studio focused on making original sports films, documentaries, and unscripted series. Big Dreams: The Little League World Series 2024 is their first production.

Why this production is genius: Who shops at Dick’s? Primarily parents of young athletes who haven’t graduated high school. Who plays in the little league world series? You guessed it. This show honors and elevates their customers when they’re shining brightest, and builds huge goodwill and awareness for the brand without having to push a promo down your throat.

I predict we see more studios like this being announced in 2026, and I already know of 2 that are in stealth right now 😉.

AI Content Gets Nerfed Hard in 2026

The platforms have an AI problem, and 2026 is when they'll finally admit it.

Here's what's happening right now: Clipper accounts are mass-producing engagement bait by stealing and remixing human creators' content using AI tools. They build audiences of hundreds of thousands, then either sell the account or use it to funnel traffic to platforms like Whop. They're not creating anything - they're gaming the algorithm with stolen content at scale.

This breaks the entire creator economy model. Instagram and TikTok need human creators to retain audiences. When creators see their original content getting outperformed by AI remixes - or worse, when audiences can't tell the difference between real and fake - the best creators will leave.

YouTube already saw this coming and demonetized AI-generated content in July. Facebook just announced content protection tools for Reels last month, with alerts when accounts steal your content. Classic reactionary behavior from META but it’s a response to a coming crisis, and they’re trying to get ahead of it while they’re already behind.

The breaking point comes in 2026 when platforms realize they can't have it both ways. Either they crack down on AI slop and protect human creators, or they break trust with and ultimately lose the talent that makes their platforms valuable in the first place.

My prediction: Mandatory AI labeling becomes universal. Any content using AI tools in production will be automatically disclosed on the video - similar to how sponsored posts need #ad.

This will hurt creators who are legitimately using AI as a new art form, like Max, who made a live action Iron Giant trailer that is genuinely impressive. But the platforms will consider that collateral damage worth the trade-off next year.

Why? Because they can't solve the clipper, misinformation, & slop problem without transparency that disincentivizes it. And they can't maintain audience trust when people can't tell what's real. The legitimate AI artists get caught in the crossfire, but platforms will choose protecting the broader creator ecosystem over protecting a niche.

By mid-2026, expect both TikTok and Instagram to implement aggressive AI content restrictions - mandatory labeling at minimum, algorithmic deprioritization, and likely demonetization to follow (mostly just applies to Facebook). The clipper economy will face massive headwinds.

You can't build a creator economy on content that replaces creators.

What This All means

Three predictions that seem contradictory at first glance: Brands going full chaos mode, brands investing in Hollywood-level production, and platforms cracking down on AI. But they all point to the same underlying shift.

2026 is the year authenticity gets redefined. Chaos content works because it feels real. Scripted brand studios work because they're transparently entertainment (not pretending to be organic). And AI gets labeled because audiences demand to know what they're watching.

The common thread? Transparency wins. Whether it's a Gen Z intern being unhinged on the Brita account, Dick's Sporting Goods producing actual films, or platforms forcing AI disclosure - the content that succeeds in 2026 will be honest about what it is.

For creators, this means picking your lane matters more than ever. Are you the authentic voice brands hire for chaos content? Are you building production skills for the studio economy? Are you experimenting with AI as a tool (knowing it'll be labeled)? All three paths will work, but trying to fake any of them won't.

I've got plenty more predictions brewing - the creator M&A wave continuing, talent management consolidation, payment infrastructure finally getting solved (👀), and what happens when the first AI musician goes platinum. But those are conversations for future newsletters.

For now: 2026 is going to be the year platforms and brands stop pretending they can have it both ways. They'll either commit to supporting human creators or admit they're building something else entirely.

I'm betting they choose creators. That's why we're building what we're building.

🔥 Hot Opportunities

Check out some of the hottest opportunities on our job board below, and if you’re a brand looking for awesome creators to work with - you can recruit for your campaign for FREE. Just fill out this form or click below (takes 2 minutes), most jobs receive their first qualified candidates within 2-3 days of going live.

Ches Editions Seeks UK Haircare Creators for Gifted Holiday Campaign - Free Luxury Haircare Box valued at £180

Gamma Seeks Creators for Paid NanoBanana AI Campaign (Dec 2025 - Jan 2026)

Sweet Dill Seeks Product Recommendation Creators for Paid Partnership ($200-$1,000)

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👋 Happy Networking!

~ Brian F.

1. _{Creative Solutions for Creatives: Trends Powering the Creator Economy - https://techcrunch.com/sponsor/visa/creative-solutions-for-creatives-trends-powering-the-creator-economy/}

2. _{Made for you, by you: Introducing YouTube Recap - https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-recap-2025/}

3. _{2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report - https://www.iab.com/insights/2025-creator-economy-ad-spend-strategy-report/}