Keeping It Currant, a newsletter at the intersection of the creator economy & social impact: May 2026 Edition

Welcome to the latest issue of Keeping It Currant, a newsletter brought to you by Social Currant & Girl and the Gov®. If you’re new here, this monthly inbox drop lives at the intersection of the creator economy and the social impact space, providing the latest need-to-know on how to navigate this rapidly evolving digital space. And since we’re doing introductions, before you scroll, be sure to pop in and say hello in the Social Currant’s Slack channel for creators, here.

Editor’s Note: Have a creator event coming up you want eyes on? Launching a creator program? Drop us a pitch at [email protected] for consideration in future issues of Keeping It Currant.

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ADD TO THE CAL

A creator event to add to your cal

VFP @ the Bench

About: This is a monthly gathering of campaigners, creators, and creatives, to get to know each other and strategize on shifting culture for a pro-democracy world. On May 28th, the theme of conversation is on ending billionaire control of AI, and protecting human culture while we’re at it.The speakers include: Sneha Revanur, a 22-year-old AI accountability activist and Adam Aleksic, who’s obsessed with how algorithms change our culture and goes viral explaining it. The event will start with a few remarks by Sneha and Adam, move to a Q&A, and then a full group discussion.

When: May 28, 2026; 7:00-10:00pm EST

Where: The Bench, NYC

RSVP HERE

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OPPORTUNITY BULLETIN

Creator-centric openings to go after

Apply to the Rural Creator Fellowship from News Creator Corps: For creators and creators-to-be located in rural communities, News Creator Corps is taking applications for its Rural Creator Fellowship. The virtual, six-week paid program is in many ways journalism 101, covering a curriculum that includes learning fact-checking, navigating FOIA requests, properly citing data and studies, and more. The goal for participants: up-level and/or learn core journalistic skills to be able to provide accurate, factual information to one’s communities, especially in the midst of the disappearance of local publications. Those interested can apply here by June 7, 2026.

Apply for the Visit Las Vegas Creator Paid Internship: The City of Las Vegas is on the search for four digital natives for their Summer Intern House, which between the lines is a paid internship designed to showcase the city through the POV of Gen-Z. Those selected will be paid $25K and spend the 10-day internship living and creating content featuring the city’s resorts and experiences for the Vegas social channels. To apply, creators must be 21-29 years-old and post a video on their socials answering the question, “why should you be our summer intern?” Videos must tag the @Vegas TikTok and include #VegasIntern26 in the submission. More details on the program and application process can be found here. The deadline to apply is May 31, 2026.

Tap into the TikTok GO Program: TikTok has expanded its travel-forward TikTok GO Program, which provides a way for platform-monetized creators to earn commission on their referrals to hotels, experiences, restaurants, and more. Creators can take advantage of the affiliate-style feature by posting content from the available listings and putting some of their favorite travel recs on their audiences’ radars. More details on how to use TikTok GO can be found here.

Pitch yourself for paid campaigns via Social Currant: Getting paid to post about what you care about is a win for you and a win for your audience. On the Social Currant platform, creators like you are able to connect directly with leading progressive organizations to discuss paid collaboration opportunities and more. Join the Social Currant platform here to browse and apply for the latest.

RESOURCE ROUND-UP

Save ‘em, share ‘em

→ For the creator that wants their LinkedIn content to reach its full potential: If you’ve hit post on LinkedIn recently and felt like your post didn’t get in front of its full audience potential, LinkedIn’s Post Inspector can help. Simply copy your posts URL into this bar, and the tool will identify data issues that are keeping your posts back.

→ For the creator that always says “that would’ve done numbers on Vine:” Vine is back-ish in a totally new, yet not that new-ish form known as “Divine.” In its beta-mode, the six-second looping video app is testing the waters of the social media space, marketing its feeds being “free from AI-slop.” If the nostalgia-meets-anti-AI tickles your fancy, you can sign up for Divine’s newsletter here to be notified when the app gets its hard-launch.

→ For the creator looking to tap into social media being used as a search tool: Google and other search engines believe it or not have been shaking in their boots recently because people are turning to social media for search over their platforms – and overwhelmingly so, with a Meta reporting that 92% use social platforms for product info compared with 79% for search engines. With that in mind, optimizing one’s content to meet the moment and the money is key, and this guide can unlock how to make it happen successfully.

STATUS QUO

Reports, stats, & data to know in the creator world

YouTube’s Creator Marketing Playbook: Once again in the category of ‘creators should be utilizing the marketing playbooks oriented toward brands to inform their content and strategy,’ is the latest YouTube Creator Marketing Playbook. Amongst the numbers of interest is the fact that 45% of YouTube Shorts users aren’t on TikTok and 65% are on Instagram Reels. The long and the Short of it, is that it means that YouTube Shorts provides creators with a whole new type of audience opportunity.

SnapChat’s BFF Energy at Scale Report: Published to underscore the effectiveness of creator partnerships, SnapChat’s latest report comes with the stats and the facts. The two standout stats for both brands and creators on the platform to take note of is that “creator ads are played 25% longer and drive 16% more active attention than standard branding ads.” Translation: negotiating power.

CREATOR CHAT

A quick chat with a creator in social impact

MEET COLIN DAVIS: Colin Davis is fitness coach who began making content as a means to showcase a compassionate and community-oriented alternative to the alienating rhetoric targeted towards young men. By incorporating political themes, an empathetic mindset, and positive perspectives on strength, his messages have resonated far beyond his original expectations, with features in Wired, Fox & Friends, and beyond. With the underlying goal of creating alignment and connectivity across the aisle, he continues to be driven by the belief that with the right tools, resources, and positive figures, we can transition from a generation fueled by animosity and alienation and into one of kindness, optimism and community action.

SOCIAL CURRANT: Why is making political content so important to you?

COLIN DAVIS: “Making political content is important to me because I feel a responsibility to use the way I look and the hobbies I have to reach people across the aisle and bring more young white men to the left.”

SOCIAL CURRANT: When thinking of a dream content collab, what would it be? Who would it be with?

COLIN DAVIS: “I would love to film a workout video with Joe Rogan. I think that he has the ability to be easily swayed when you use the right language and it would be a great opportunity to reach his audience, and to be stronger than him on camera.”

SOCIAL CURRANT: What drew you to the niche that you’re in?

COLIN DAVIS: “I found myself in this niche by accident. I was tired of seeing gym and fitness content that didn’t align with my personal views, so I started making content to show that those guys don’t represent the entire gym community. It turns out that a ton of other people who love to workout also don’t agree with the majority of content creators and are excited to see themselves represented online.”

SOCIAL CURRANT: How do you balance online versus offline time?

COLIN DAVIS: “I try to spend as much time outside or engaged in the real world as I can. Working in social media feels like being told to smoke a cigarette every day while trying to quit smoking and it remains a struggle to keep my screen time manageable. Mornings, nights, and meals without a screen have been the most effective way I’ve found to achieve this.”

SOCIAL CURRANT: What’s your favorite song at the moment?

COLIN DAVIS: “Me vs A Brick Wall - Locked Shut.”

THE CREATOR CHECK-IN

Practices to tap into from Social Currant & The Jed Foundation

Through workshops and IRL events, our teams have heard it directly from creators like you: movement, creativity, and time with friends are already part of your life. But when creator mode is always on, the pressure to capture, perform, or document the moment can prevent you from fully experiencing those moments.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, The Jed Foundation [JED] and Social Currant are encouraging creators to prioritize their mental health, be present, and do something for themselves through intentional, distraction-free activities, and moments. The goal is to help you manage stress, prevent burnout, and just be, starting with checking in with yourself and then tapping these low-key practices you can integrate now and beyond:

Check-in Prompts – first-things first, check-in with yourself by asking yourself these questions:

Connection: Did you connect with someone offline this month?
Hobbies: Outside of creating, what brings you joy? How can you build more time in your calendar to do that?
Screen Break: Did you take at least one intentional break from screens this month?
Rest: What do you want to take a break from without guilt? How can you make that happen?

Low-key Practices – with your answers in hand, take a moment to try out one of these practices and integrate it into your routine:

Moving Meditation: Walking is more than just getting from one place to another. Use this meditation to engage your senses and use each step to connect with what’s around you.
Take a Breather: Tap into simple breathing exercises to relieve stress anywhere, anytime.
Build an Intention Board: Craft a visual world of experiences, emotions, and possibilities you want to explore.
Shake It Off: Walk, dance, stretch. Find the movement that works for you with these guided videos.

PLATFORM UPDATES

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YOUTUBE → YouTube has announced that creators can now add music to their static image posts and carousels in the Shorts feed. The update lets eligible users include up to 10 images in a carousel and put music to the post from YouTube’s audio library. The feature builds on the platform’s ongoing rollout of carousel-style posts in Shorts, which is already set to be a huge W for creators that are actively posting carousel content on Reels and TikTok.

META → To the chagrin of many Instagram users, after Meta launched its standalone Instants app, it also expanded access to ‘Instants’ within the main Instagram app. The feature that wants to be somewhere between BeReal and Snapchat, lets users share real-time photo updates sans editing tools, with the posts disappearing after they’re viewed. Instants are located in the bottom-right corner of IG DMs, leading to some purposely sharing pics with close or mutual friends, and others hitting it by accident, sending heinously odd oopsie-pics to their followers.

INSTAGRAM → Instagram is testing a new “AI Creator” label on IG profiles with the goal of helping creators disclose when they frequently use AI-generated content. The label will appear on both creator profiles and posts to inform users about the content they’re seeing and essentially how the sausage is made. The feature is in testing mode ATM, but is expected to be rolled out more broadly soon.

TWITTER → In a late to the game move, Twitter is rolling out Creator Connect, a new marketplace or tool rather, that will match creators with brands for spon-con partnerships. The goal like with any built-in platform marketplace is to entice large-scale creators to stick around and to post more. This particular marketplace uses xAI tech to play matchmaker.

THREADS → The platform has gotten a much-requested update not just in its branding, but in its online offering, making DMs available on the web version ATM, the DM type supported is 1v1 with reports that group-chat DMs will come to a screen near us all in the near future.