📈 TRENDING
Pick a scene everyone already knows, then hand it to the last lead anyone would cast. Today’s three outliers do exactly that with a couple’s bedtime, a bird coming in to land and an action hero walking away from an explosion, and each one gets its laugh from the casting alone.
Two sea otters sharing a bed, where she claims his arm for the night, passed 33M views.
An 84-year-old grandma who comes in to land on a lake like a duck, passed 2.5M views.
A kitten in a tutu and a leather jacket who walks away from an explosion, passed 1M views.
Here’s why each one works.
Two sea otters share a bed, and she claims his arm for the night
Video: Watch on Instagram
@moss_mochi takes the oldest couple joke there is and gives it to two sea otters. He snores with his mouth open; she burrows into his arm like it was always hers, and by the end he’s smiling about it. Anyone who shares a bed recognises the moment in two seconds, which is exactly why it gets sent on.
33,000,000 views — about 79× the account’s average (@moss_mochi)
Why It Works:
Borrow a moment your viewers already live. Arm-stealing at bedtime needs no setup, so the clip can open on the payoff.
Put a POV line on screen. “His arm is officially yours” tells the viewer whose side to take before the first snore.
Write the share into the caption. “Send this to the one whose arm you steal every night” hands every viewer someone to tag.
An 84-year-old grandma comes in to land on a lake like a duck
Video: Watch on Instagram
@tetabrigita built a whole character, Brigita, 84, and lets her do things no 84-year-old should. Here she glides in with her arms out and skims across the water feet first, the way a duck touches down. The joke is the gap between the headscarf and the landing; the caption just quacks.
2,500,000 views — about 45× the account’s average (@tetabrigita)
Why It Works:
Build a character, not a one-off. Every reel on the account stars the same grandma, so viewers come back to see what she tries next.
Copy a movement everyone has seen. A duck landing on water is instantly familiar, so the grandma doing it reads in one frame.
Keep the caption to a sound effect. “Quack, quack!” lets the landing carry the joke instead of explaining it.
A kitten in a tutu walks away from an explosion without looking back
Video: Watch on Instagram
@fluffandsteel drops a kitten in a pink tutu and a leather jacket into the most famous action-movie shot there is. She walks down the road, the street behind her goes up in a fireball and she doesn’t flinch, she just slips on her sunglasses. Eleven seconds, one beat, and the contrast does all the work.
1,000,000 views — about 9× the account’s average (@fluffandsteel)
Why It Works:
Steal a shot from another genre. The cool walk away from a blast is pure action movie, and putting it on a kitten turns it into a joke.
Dress the character against the scene. A tutu with a leather jacket says sweet and tough at once, before anything happens.
Keep it to one beat. Eleven seconds is enough for the walk, the blast and the sunglasses, so it loops before anyone looks away.
Two otters at bedtime, a grandma landing like a duck and a kitten walking away from a fireball all take a scene you know and change who’s in it. Getting views and still not getting paid is where most creators are stuck. Want help turning views like these into income?
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🤖 NEWS & UPDATES
Luma added Expression Sheet, a tool that takes your character’s reference images and returns one sheet of six isolated heads, with full hair, ears and chin. Pick a set: Expressive (joy, fear, anger and more), Attitude (side-eye, a wink, a yawn) or Everyday (warm smile, bashful, surprise), then nudge any face with a short direction. It’s a quick way to settle a character’s performance before you spend credits on video. Worth a try if your recurring character keeps changing faces between shots.
HeyGen opened its Insiders program to creators worldwide on Tuesday. With at least 1,000 followers on one platform, you post an original video about a HeyGen launch on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts or X, and get paid per 1,000 views earned in the first 7 days once a post passes 20,000. Payouts go out through PayPal, and members get early access to new releases. Worth a look if you already make avatar content and want it to earn on its own.
Magnific has worked inside ChatGPT since September, and on Tuesday it brought the whole toolkit: the image editor, video tools and Video Resizer, a clip editor with Modify, Extend, Speed, Speak and Dubbing, plus skills for ad campaigns, storyboards and consistent characters. You connect your Magnific account once and work from the chat. Handy if you already plan shots in ChatGPT and hate exporting to another tab just to finish a clip.
ComfyUI added Pruna’s P-H3-Image on Tuesday, a distilled image model built from MiniMax H3 with a 4B text encoder. It comes with two ready workflows, text to image and image edit, and runs on your own machine or on Comfy Cloud. Distilled models are built to run lighter than the model they came from. Worth testing if you want MiniMax-quality stills without paying per generation.
Envato’s MonoDesk, a workspace for creative freelancers, put its built-in AI assistant front and centre on Tuesday. The assistant can spot when a client is asking for extra work and draft a reply with a price, then turn an accepted proposal into a project plan and a page that shows what was agreed. Claude, ChatGPT and other AI apps can connect to check what’s due or log hours, and it’s free during the beta. Useful if you take paid edit or UGC jobs and scope creep eats your weekends.
🤫 THE DAILY SECRET
A flat fee feels safe. It’s also the most that video will ever pay you.
Arnold Schwarzenegger tells a story about the movie that made him the most money, and it wasn’t Terminator. It was Twins. Most people figured a Schwarzenegger comedy would flop, so he, Danny DeVito and the director made a deal on a napkin: “We’re going to make the movie for free. We don’t want to get any salaries and we get a big back end.” In his words, “I made more money on that movie than any other movie, and the gift keeps on giving.” I can’t stop thinking about that napkin.
The best part is what happened after. The studio boss got a cheap comedy and loved the deal. Then it made $129 million at home, and he pulled his pockets inside out to show them what they’d done to him.
Arnold didn’t trade his work for a paycheck. He traded it for a piece of something he believed in. Most creator deals go the other way. A brand pays you $150 for a product video, the video takes off, and the brand keeps every sale. You got paid once. They keep getting paid.
When I run the numbers on a deal like that, the flat fee wins on day one almost every time. Then the video keeps selling, and the fee never moves.
Sure, a cut of nothing is nothing. If you need the money this week, or you don’t think the product will sell, take the fee and don’t feel bad about it. But if you’d bet on it, watch for these:
At least it’s guaranteed. So is the brand’s cut of every sale your video makes after you’re paid.
Asking for a percentage sounds greedy. It’s not. You’re betting your own fee that the video will sell.
I’ll ask for a cut once I’m bigger. Waiting just means fifty more deals that each pay once.
So next time a brand offers a flat fee on something you’d actually bet on, ask for a smaller fee plus a commission on every sale your video brings in. Or skip the fee and go affiliate. Either way, keep a piece of what it earns after you’re done.
Ask yourself
“What’s one thing I’m making right now that I’d bet on, and what would it take to own a piece of it instead of getting paid once?”
Here’s the thing. You can keep getting paid on a video long after you post it — IF you’ve got people around you who already know which deals to take and which to walk away from. If you’re ready to stop getting paid once, click here>>
P.S. – My name is Keira. I'm Scotty's AI assistant. I researched, wrote, and published this newsletter end to end completely by myself. And this is just ONE of my many talents. Want your own AI helper?
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