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It's Monday and AI chatbots now have their very own social media platform to do what they do best: chat without any interference from meddlesome humans. |
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Today's News |
🕹️ A Roblox game gets into the movie biz 👫 Instagram shakes up friendships 📈 A TikTok rival climbs the charts 🫁 Iron Lung hits theaters 🎙️ This week on the podcast…
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GAME ON |
 | If the game's popularity is any indication, all pre-adolescents will want to see this. |
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A top Roblox game is headed to the big screen |
The film adaptation: One of the biggest games on Roblox is being turned into a feature film. The cinematic adaptation of Steal A Brainrot is currently in its early development stages, with Story Kitchen taking the lead on the project. The L.A.-based production company is known for helming movie adaptations of popular video game franchises, including big-screen versions of titles like Tomb Raider and Just Cause. |
A Roblox adaptation is a natural next step—and it makes sense for Steal A Brainrot to be up first. The competitive item collection game isn't just an online hit with millions of Gen A fans (although it did reach a record 25.8 million concurrent players in October 2025). |
It's also full of the same type of memetic references that made A Minecraft Movie so wildly successful. Steal A Brainrot developer SpyderSammy is a larger-than-life figure who has stirred up drama to smash Roblox all-time highs, while "brainrot" characters like Tralalero Tralala and Ballerina Cappuccina can serve as the chicken jockeys of this particular property. |
The context: The success of A Minecraft Movie showed that Gen Alpha has become a force to be reckoned with at the box office. The blockbuster took home nearly $1 billion, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2025. |
That success has made Hollywood studios all the more eager to get their theatrical releases in front of Gen A audiences, and Roblox has proven to be an ideal marketing vehicle for that purpose. So if the platform is already one of the best ways to reach Gen Alpha, making a Roblox movie and promoting it on Roblox starts to look like the obvious next move |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
 | Friendships can be messy. Instagram gets it. (Photo via Getty Images.) |
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Instagram knows friendship breakups happen. The platform is testing a new feature that would allow users to remove themselves from others' "Close Friends" list. (TechCrunch)
Bluesky has released a 2025 Transparency Report outlining its approach to identity verification, toxicity filtering, and more. (Bluesky)
Investment firm Architect Capital is reportedly in talks to acquire a 60% stake in OnlyFans. (Engadget)
ChatGPT is allegedly considering advertising rates that would place its slots in the same cost range as premium Super Bowl commercials. (TechRadar)
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PLATFORM RIVALRIES |
 | TikTok seems to big to be beaten. UpScrolled is at least going to give it a shot. |
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Could UpScrolled be the next TikTok? |
The chart climb: As TikTok users question whether the new U.S. version of the app is censoring viewpoints, another short-form video hub is rising in popularity. |
CEO Issam Hijazi only launched UpScrolled last July, but the ongoing TikTok chaos has sent the app surging to #1 on the U.S. download charts while taking its user base above one million. Just a few weeks prior, UpScrolled had been sitting at about 40,000 users. The sudden increase in activity has been big enough to temporarily take down UpScrolled's servers, though the app has pledged to provide more uptime in coming days. |
The TikTok rival: UpScrolled's censorship-free, chronologically-ordered feed may be its most valuable position as the U.S. version of TikTok struggles to find its footing. Hijazi—who is affiliated with the Free Palestine Movement—told Rest of World that he lost family members during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, and wanted to create an app where users could post without fear of censorship. He ultimately developed UpScrolled out of the Tech For Palestine incubator program: |
"I found this gap in the market, with a lot of people asking why there is no alternative to the Big Tech platforms for their content, which was getting censored. So I thought, why don't we build our own?" | | | | - Issam Hijazi |
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The context: Anytime a major platform becomes embroiled in controversy, alternative apps scramble to woo disgruntled users. Elon Musk's X takeover, for example, ended up being a boon for Mastodon—but although the open-source platform was arguably the first popular X alternative, Bluesky ended up winning more users thanks to its intuitive design. |
If TikTok's troubles in the U.S. are prolonged, it's worth asking whether UpScrolled is more of a Mastodon or a Bluesky. Is it merely the first TikTok alternative to seize the opportunity, or does it have a solid long-term prognosis? |
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MOVIE MAGIC |
 | Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach smiling before his movie crushed it at the box office. |
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Iron Lung snagged $18M during its opening week—making it the #2 movie in the U.S. |
The backstory: Markiplier (aka Mark Fischbach) first played Iron Lung on his channel in 2022, shortly after the indie game's debut. Developed by David Szymanski, Iron Lung follows a convict welded into a submarine and forced to explore an ocean of blood. |
Fischbach knew soon after playing that he wanted to turn Iron Lung into a feature-length film. So he DM'd Szymanski. |
The developer was immediately on board, and Fischbach tells Tubefilter that the two "worked very closely together from the beginning." |
At that point, the creator had already written and directed the choose-your-own-adventure YouTube Original film In Space with Markiplier. He'd also been starring in the podcast The Edge of Sleep, which was later made into a six-episode miniseries co-starring himself and Lio Tipton, and distributed on Amazon Prime Video and then Tubi. |
But for Iron Lung, Fischbach was signing up to write, direct, star, edit, produce, and finance, supported by a team of family, friends, and fellow creatives. And he was determined to do it right. He filmed the entire movie inside a custom-made version of the Iron Lung, which he loaded onto a rig that would shake it like a soda can. |
The box office: Fischbach hasn't revealed how much he spent to bring Iron Lung to life, but noted that it qualifies as "low-budget" by Hollywood standards. (That puts it in the $2-5 million range.) He adds that while it was a SAG-AFTRA movie, he insisted on paying the cast and crew more than the union required. |
Iron Lung is currently showing on over 3,200 screens in the U.S., Canada, U.K., E.U., Australia, and New Zealand. Box office for opening weekend was a record-setting $18 million—a haul that made Iron Lung the #2 movie in America, just behind Sam Raimi's Send Help starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien. |
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LISTEN UP 🎙️ |
 | Dhar Mann's Chief Strategy Officer, Ross Habif, tells us why Dhar is smiling. |
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This week on the podcast… |
The episode: On the latest installment of Creator Upload, hosts Lauren Schnipper and Joshua Cohen sat down with Dhar Mann Studios Chief Strategy Officer Ross Habif to review what might be the biggest week in Dhar Mann's history. |
From signing a massive 40-film deal with Fox to partnering with the NFL as their Chief Kindness Officer, the social media-savvy producer is rewriting the rules of the creator economy. |
Check out the full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to find out more. |
The survey: Creator Upload wants your opinion! Take this survey to help us understand who's tuning in and what you want more (or less) of from the show. |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, James Hale, and Josh Cohen. |
