Hello Hustlers,
Happy Tuesday, let us get the week rolling.
I know, I know. AI fatigue is real and I feel it too. But this week I found three things worth paying attention to regardless.
In today's edition:
Authenticity: the tweet that went wrong
Higgsfield AI: why this trend is taking over the internet
Google Omni: how it is being used and how it helps you
Let’s get into it! 🎉
THE CULTURE SNAP
The Tweet That Destroyed A Promise
Pictured: Hank Green
Hank Green, sometimes referred to as a founding father of YouTube media and culture, runs a collective of high quality YouTube channels with his brother John Green.
They have a reputation for being extremely mission driven. Recently they turned their YouTube business Complexly into a non-profit, and they are trusted by fans to put authenticity first. I find honesty comes with the territory in that kind of media.
But as AI has swarmed YouTube, a growing divide has emerged.
On one side, creators are adopting it openly.
On the other, creators are consistently being accused of sounding like a robot.
I saw an Instagram account yesterday and I was CONVINCED she was AI. She was not… just a big fan of Facetune. But her comments were flooded with people convinced she was artificial and deeply unhappy about it.
We digress.
After Hank's channels were criticised for AI usage, he came clean in a tweet.
Pictured: The original tweet from Hank
The backlash was huge. The tweet was deleted and a long Reddit apology followed.
In reality, what Hank said is nothing new. A large proportion of the globe is overusing AI, for emails, texts, essays, itineraries. The list goes on.
I started this newsletter to find my personal voice, my human voice, and I ensure it is fully human written. That is my brand, my trust and my promise.
And that is the issue. In the 20 seconds it took to type that tweet, Hank broke a promise. A promise of strong, consistently fact checked research that, even if accurate, felt like an opt-out. He is probably just a busy person trying to navigate this AI minefield like the rest of us.
So the takeaway?
Your branding is your promise. Do not serve someone a cherry bakewell that turns out to be strawberry. They will not return, even if you confess to it.
THE DEBUNK
Tape Your Mouth Shut and You’ll Make £££: Higgsfield AI
Here is the social media trend goes:
Tape your mouth shut
Go to YouTube and find a channel with millions of views
Take the concept into Claude and ask it to write a Higgsfield prompt
Higgsfield generates a video, basically an exact imitation
The mouth tape is absolutely not required, but as a hook it is weird enough to work.
Higgsfield AI is a cinematic video generation platform that has grown fast, hitting a $1.3 billion valuation in early 2026. It bundles over 15 AI video models including Sora 2, Veo 3.1 and Kling 3.0 under one subscription, with a focus on realistic motion, lighting and camera control.
Described on Reddit as an AI slot machine, if you are as specific as possible and get it right first time, it is somewhat workable. But for the amount of testing, prepping and starting over, it is a slow and time consuming process.
A video recently circulated where someone took every prompt from a popular Higgsfield video and tested it against itself.
The results? Poor.
The promises circulating online do not have the legitimacy to back them up.
So why does this matter to us?
We are in a weird new era where the internet is chasing views for any content, authentic or not. By using the same caption and text hooks again, and again, and again. The more we lose value in the follower / subscribe metric, the more short-form virality will be a priority.
Account is not named and face is covered to keep anonymity, this is not to bring judgement but to highlight a real change across social media.
As side hustlers we are not in that race, but we do need to know what is trending, what is being sold as an opportunity and what is actually worth our time. That is what makes it hard. The noise is loud and the promises are everywhere.
Industry data on automated and faceless channels shows that only 3% ever achieve YouTube partner monetisation. The remaining 97% abandon the project or get rejected during monetisation review.
The influencers promising income by cloning YouTube channels with Higgsfield? That promise does not hold up.
WEEKLY DIGEST
Google Omni: The Tool That Deserves Its Own Podium
We have already debunked the low effort, fully automated AI YouTube channel. But generative video does have a genuine use case when applied correctly, and that is exactly where Google Omni comes in.
Rather than sitting behind another standalone subscription, Omni lives directly inside the Google ecosystem via the Flow workspace.
What sets it apart from every text to video tool that came before it is its understanding of physical reality.
No uncanny valley, no Will Smith eating spaghetti moments.
Omni tracks real world physics, lighting and momentum with impressive accuracy.
That means:
Upload anything and animate it.
A hand drawn sketch, a mind map, a static infographic. Omni animates your specific input into a moving sequence without losing the structure or context of what you gave it.Edit in plain English.
If a generation misses the mark, you do not start from scratch. The Flow dashboard lets you make natural language adjustments to existing frames across multiple edits.No extra cost.
Omni is bundled into existing Google AI tier plans. No new subscriptions, no bloated software stack.
How cool that we have tools like this at our disposal now!
THE THREAD
Every week I am going to take one thread as something for us to ponder over.
It might be a question, a side hustle, a random idea or a trending moment. I would love to include questions, quotes or examples from you, reading!
To submit your own, connect on socials with The Side Scoop and you could be featured!
This week is a note from a side hustler on Reddit, on a new form of income they’ve found to be successful.
I bought 30 of those stackable plastic moving boxes after helping my brother move and realizing cardboard boxes are weirdly expensive now. I listed the whole set on Facebook Marketplace for $45 a week with a refundable deposit, mostly just to make some of the money back.
They have now been rented out six times, usually by people moving between apartments who only need them for a weekend. I keep them nested in one corner of my garage, send people a photo of the box count before pickup and charge extra if they want me to deliver.
It is not completely passive since I have to wipe them down and arrange pickup, but its maybe 20 minutes of work each rental. I even bought set in a different color so I can keep track of which customer has what.
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THAT’S A WRAP
💫 Final Word
That’s all for today folks, thank you to the 127 readers!
As always: every edition, we get 1% sharper. A better tool, a smarter approach, one less mistake to make.
See you next time! 🤍
The Side Scoop