Black Creators’ Future with Virality

It’s been a crazy week. The family and I went camping, so I was OFF-offline for 3 days. NBA playoff basketball has been keeping me and my girls up later than usual. And we had a graduation in the family to celebrate.

Thus, this week’s newsletter comes out on a Saturday morning!

Fret not, it’s a shorter one. Not because I didn’t have time, but because we finally get to wrap up The Virality Paradox and everything we’ve discussed over these previous 5, now 6, editions of the newsletter.

Let’s get this started!

Okay, so over this past month, we’ve discussed the following:

The magic and randomness of virality.
Virality’s fading cultural and fiscal impact.
How virality is not so great for ALL creators.
What tentpoles are and why they’re better than virality.

At this point, you know where I stand:

Virality has never worked equitably for Black creators.

But we’re entering a new phase of the creator economy. One shaped by AI, algorithmic shifts, changing devices, and platform fragmentation

So the question is:

Will these shifts make virality easier, or will they reinforce the same structural issues, just with new tools?

What’s Changing?

Here are four forces reshaping the landscape, and what they mean for creators chasing viral moments:

AI-Generated Content

Content is easier than ever to make; platforms will get flooded.
But with so much content, uniqueness is harder to achieve.
Outcome: The bar for what goes “viral” will get much higher.

Platform Fragmentation

New platforms (Spill, Fanbase) offer more chances to stand out.
But attention will splinter across more places.
Outcome: Smaller, more random viral moments—and less predictability.

Monetization Pressure

TikTok and IG are optimizing for watch time and revenue per minute.
Platforms will prioritize content that keeps and monetizes users.
Outcome: Non-monetizable viral formats (think rants, dances, hot takes) will fade from favor.

Audience Behavior Shift

Monoculture is dying.
Viewers are moving toward long-form, creator-driven content on big screens (TVs, YouTube, streamers).
Outcome: The window to hook non-core fans is shrinking. You need to give people a reason to stick around.

What this means for Black Creators

I believe virality will become even harder for Black creators to access and sustain. Here’s why:

AI is optimization without cultural context.

It’s going to generate content based on what “works”, but those benchmarks are trained on biased datasets. Having the “wrong” skin tone, vernacular, or cultural references might cause content to underperform in machine learning models that weren’t trained to understand them.

Algorithms will reinforce existing gaps.

If AI gets embedded deeper into recommendation engines, what it favors could further distance Black creators from discoverability, just like Netflix’s now-infamous thumbnail issue that over-indexed on Black faces, even when those faces weren’t central to the story.

Appropriation will scale.

If jacking Black culture is easy now, imagine when creators can feed entire content libraries into AI agents, spin up synthetic personalities, and mimic cultural aesthetics without ever showing their face. The “stolen credit” risk multiplies.

How Black Creators Can Win

So yes—AI, Big Tech, and Big Influence are coming. But Black creators can future-proof themselves. Here’s how:

Build for Community

Focus less on passive followers and more on engaged participants.

If your audience doesn’t talk back, click through, or check in, it’s not a community, it’s just a crowd.

Use AI to Scale You, Not Replace You

AI can help with scripting, editing, and brainstorming. Use it to shorten the distance between ideas and execution, not to erase your voice.

Collaborate More

The most powerful growth hack in social media has always been collaboration. Co-create, guest feature, and tap into overlapping audiences. Nothing spreads faster than shared value between creators. And let’s be real—creators want to collaborate with people, not robots. This is your advantage over AI.

Plan Tentpoles

Forget chasing the next moment. Engineer your own. Use the Volume Tentpole Framework, plan 2–4 high-impact moments a year that your audience knows to expect and rally around. You don’t have to go viral to be unforgettable.

The Virality Paradox was Never Enough

It’s not your fault.

Humans have chased virality—by another name—for generations. Singing on subways. Streaking across stadiums. Saying crazy stuff during interviews. Doing whatever it takes to be seen, even for a second. The lure of the spotlight—real or imagined—is wired into us.

But if you’re serious about building a creator business, you have to let that instinct go.

The idea that virality will change your life is a myth.

It always has been.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. But don’t show me the outliers—show me the tens of thousands who went viral and then vanished. Whose names you don’t remember? Who never made a dime? Who didn’t get a second act?

If virality were truly this tremendous plan, Black creators should be crushing it. After all, we are brilliant at driving culture. We start the trends, remix the norms, and shape what everyone else copies.

But on platforms that claim to celebrate culture, we rarely hold the power.

I don’t have the data, but I have a theory: Black people have been subconsciously trained to chase the trend, start the trend, or buck the trend—because that’s what culture is: the initiating and changing of trends.

And it’s what we do.

So, when virality promises attention for making trends, it feels like a match made in heaven for Black creators.

But it’s not. That’s just the Virality Paradox at work.

Because virality doesn’t sustain. It doesn’t build. It doesn’t protect.

And it doesn’t create culture.

It consumes it.

But tentpoles turn moments into movements.

Planned, powerful, culturally resonant movements. And those are what create the zeitgeist. Drive impact. Build equity. Make money.

And that’s where the future is for Black creators.

Creating, distributing, and owning culturally resonant movements—big or small. That’s how Black creators will thrive in ’25…and beyond.

Wrapping Up

So that’s the end of The Virality Paradox series. I hope you found it interesting and can take something away from it.

For those of you who know an emerging creator who could afford to hear some strategic advice like this, I hope you’ll pass this along. I believe anyone getting started with content creation as a career in 2025 needs to read and understand what we’ve discussed over these 6 editions, particularly if they’re going to be in this line of work for a long time.

The Virality Paradox: Part 6