Go back in time to 2016: BuzzFeed, Vice Media, and Vox Media are supposed to be the future of media. Now back to present tense: Vice filed for Chapter 11, Vox is breaking up, and BuzzFeed just sold itself for a fraction of its former value. Meanwhile, many of the companies the digital upstarts were supposed to replace - big publishers and TV companies - are still here.
McCullough's videos focus on U.S. and Canadian culture and how they intersect. A sampling of recent videos: "How bad is the PragerU guide to presidents?", "What 2025 permanently added to American culture," "whatever happened to Canada's Online Streaming Act?", and the four presidents that lead America into (and out of) war. His audience is around 80% male, with most of his viewers between the ages of 20 and 35 and about half based in the U.S.
You've probably encountered images in your social media feeds that look like a cross between photographs and computer-generated graphics. Some are fantastical-think Shrimp Jesus-and some are believable at a quick glance-remember the little girl clutching a puppy in a boat during a flood? These are examples of AI slop, or low- to mid-quality content-video, images, audio, text or a mix-created with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy.