“Instagram is for girls.”
That’s what Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X last week. His remark was in response to a post from financial commentary account Geiger Capital calling Instagram an “inherently female app” with “zero benefit.”
These posts came around the same time as comedian Pete Davidson publicly derided female influencers during an interview with Variety. “Girls are just talking to themselves and they’re like ‘ok, come get ready with me’… and they make $40 million a year. And I’m like what? The world is broken,” he said in a now-viral clip.
Taken together, these comments reflect a long-standing tendency to dismiss women’s work online as frivolous or unserious.
Of course, Musk is known to make inflammatory statements, so it’s easy to write off his post as just stirring the pot. But there’s likely more to it than that.
For one, Musk has an ongoing feud with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom he famously challenged to a cage match in 2023. If you take Musk’s comment as derogatory toward women—as many people did—it’s also a jab at Meta-owned Instagram, which is a much bigger platform than X in terms of both users and revenue. In 2025, Meta generated between roughly 70 to 100 times more in revenue than X did, with Instagram accounting for a large portion of Meta’s ad sales, based on company reports and third-party estimates.
Musk also didn’t offer any evidence for his assertion about Instagram being “for girls.” And data paints a different picture.
While Instagram does skew more female than X, almost half (46%) of Instagram’s monthly user base in the US is male, according to Emarketer estimates. There are also significantly more men in the US who use Instagram (71 million) than X (28 million).
46% of Instagram’s US monthly user base is male.
As for Davidson, we certainly see plenty of problems with the fact that you can now share and monetize virtually every aspect of your life online. But men rarely face the same kind of criticism for posting and earning money from their content. That includes dance videos, which Davidson criticized alongside “get ready with me” content. (Let’s not forget that part of Davidson’s job on SNL included starring in dance skits that went viral online. He also dated one of the most famous influencers in the world: Kim Kardashian).
To be fair, though, it’s not just men who are fueling these stereotypes. Last week, Alix Earle claimed she had “never read a book,” giving critics of female creators easy ammunition. Earle graduated from the University of Miami with a business degree in marketing.
Between the lines, all of this commentary also comes as more women, including Earle, are building lucrative businesses that rival those of male creators. That is bound to attract attention, both bad and good.
We’ve been struck by how many female creators have received outside investment recently. Alex Cooper, for example, could now be the second-most valuable creator overall: An investment from WTSL valued her media company Unwell at $500 million, which is behind only MrBeast’s Beast Industries. She’s ahead of other big-name male creators like Steven Bartlett and Jake Paul. Earle, Ashley Flowers and Maggie Sellers Reum are among the other female creators who have also raised funding in the past two years.
Even so, there’s still a long way for female creators to go. The share of VC funding in the US going to female-founded companies jumped by roughly 8 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, according to PitchBook. But those companies still only accounted for 27.7% of total VC deal value, and most of that growth was driven by a few mega AI deals. PitchBook also included any startup with at least one female founder, rather than looking at all-female or female-led companies alone.
Small female creators may have it even tougher. Reliable data on female vs. male creator earnings is hard to find, in part because there are so many variables, including the fact that payment policies and brand deal rates vary heavily across platforms. But one report from influencer marketing platform Collabstr found that male creators are paid an average of 40% more than female creators per collaboration.
In the meantime, we’re choosing to take Musk’s take on Instagram as a compliment. If Instagram really is for girls, we’re here for it.
The Round Up
TikTok is launching an AI shopping assistant and a way for users to buy items directly from brands within the TikTok app. The move comes as Meta is also rolling out new shopping tools, including within its personal assistant Muse, and feels like somewhat of a reversal from the days when TikTok was solely focused on checkout via TikTok Shop. It also comes just ahead of the holiday shopping period, during which 73% of Gen Zers expect to use AI to explore new gift ideas, per PwC.
YouTube said it will prioritize original content on Shorts, which is bad news for the armies of clippers or other accounts that repurpose other people’s videos without adding their own twist. Read more about the rise of clipping here.
Beehiiv, the newsletter publisher, is raising prices on its monthly plans. In a blog post, CEO Tyler Denk wrote that the move allows the company to “continue investing in our core platform experience.” Some creators are unhappy about the price hikes, which go up to $10 or more, per the Verge. That’s despite the fact that the increases come with access to more tools.
Thinkific, a Canadian online course platform, laid off 96 employees as part of a company restructuring.
Atlas Entertainment, producer Charles Roven’s film and TV production company, announced a deal with Culture Genesis to jointly develop film, TV and short-form projects from Culture Genesis’ content and talent archive. Its talent includes Kai Cenat, React and IShowSpeed.
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Podcasting News
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos downplayed the company’s investment in podcasts and YouTubers as a tiny portion of its budget, during Bloomberg’s Screentime conference.
Meanwhile, new data from Sounds Profitable suggests that Netflix is now the third most-popular podcast platform in the US: 21% of podcast consumers had watched a podcast on Netflix in the past 12 months, behind only YouTube (63%) and Spotify (33%) and ahead of other major podcast platforms like Apple (15%), Pandora (11%) and iHeartRadio (11%).
Fable and Folly, a six-year-old audio fiction podcast network, announced it would close at the end of the year. The company blamed shifts in the industry, particularly in advertising, and said it’s helping creators move their shows to new homes. It’s the latest example of the reckoning facing podcasting as the industry gets more crowded and pivots to video.
Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, the independent tech reporters behind a new NPR podcast about AI called “Machine Gods,” are receiving a $480,000 grant from The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, according to Semafor. They are the first recipients of the nonprofit’s $10 million fund to support independent coverage of AI.
Flightcast, the Steven Bartlett-backed video podcast hosting platform, launched a new feature called Collaborative Publishing, which is similar to Google Docs for podcast teams. It allows multiple staffers to edit the same episode, including titles, descriptions and thumbnails.
Creator Moves
Kylie Jenner is set to star in a thriller drama for Hulu with the working title “Bachelorette Weekend,” Deadline reported. Jenner and half-sister Kim Kardashian, who has also moved into acting, will both be executive producers on the show.
Morning Brew acquired Express Checkout, a newsletter and media brand focused on the consumer packaged goods industry, in an all-cash deal. Co-founders Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz will join the Axel Springer-owned company full time. The Express Checkout newsletter had about 13,000 subscribers on Substack as of Tuesday. The brand’s Instagram account has more than 70,000 followers with well-produced news graphics.
The Creative Executive, a new YouTube series, is launching on Thursday from Harry Smith and former Netflix exec Siddhi Sundar. The new show focuses on helping creative executives succeed. Guests will include Harry’s brother Will Smith, Hollywood producer Todd Black and Grammy winner Major.
Brandon Edelman, better known as Bran Flakezz, hosted a “Bran Trip” in California with moms and their plus ones. Brand partners included Beis and Hampton Water Wine. While influencer trips hosted by companies like Tarte and Shein have faced backlash in recent years for being out of touch, this is one we can get behind!
Jake Shane collaborated with the clothing brand New York or Nowhere and Sesame Street to promote new merch.
Talent Tracker: Executive Edition
James Dibbo is the new chief financial officer of Pinterest, effective October 26. He succeeds Julia Donnelly, who recently announced she’d be joining a private, early-stage company. Previously, Dibbo was CFO of Amazon’s consumer business, ads and global media and entertainment. He’s also the former CFO of P.F. Chang’s and UK grocery giant Tesco.
Ryan Roslansky, who was CEO of LinkedIn for six years, is leaving parent company Microsoft after nearly 18 years. Most recently, he was EVP of LinkedIn and Microsoft 365.
Fox hired Bryan Thoensen as senior vice president of content partnerships and Kirsten McAuliffe as SVP of strategic partnerships and growth for its Fox Creator Studios business. Thoensen joins from TikTok where he ran content partnerships, while McAuliffe worked at Moonbug and Warner Bros. Discovery.
