I’ve been paying closer attention lately to the patterns showing up across social media… not the fleeting trends that disappear in a week, but the slower shifts that actually change how founders and creators should be thinking about visibility. Here’s what’s caught my eye, plus a few thoughts of my own on why I think this moment matters.
1. Millennial Creators Are Back In Style
After a wave of AI-generated content flooded every feed, people have gotten remarkably good at spotting it… and skipping it. Content that feels overly polished, scripted, or obviously AI-made is getting scrolled past at higher rates than it was even a year ago.
The creators pulling ahead right now aren’t the ones with the most production value. They’re the ones filming in real environments, admitting when something didn’t go as planned, and letting their process show. It’s a quiet return to the millennial creator style that built the creator economy in the first place… less performance, more person.
And okay, I’ll say it: yay to millennials. As a proud geriatric millennial myself, there’s something satisfying about watching the pendulum swing back toward the way we used to do this… real, a little messy, actually you.
2. The Rise of the “Intellectual Influencer”
This one’s been fun to watch. Creators are building entire personal brands not on trends or “look what I have,” but on books, geopolitics, financial literacy, and philosophy. Being well-read has become its own kind of flex.
And it’s not just a niche corner of the internet… audiences are increasingly craving expert-led insight over pure entertainment. In a feed full of noise, depth is starting to read as differentiation.
Thank god, honestly. Content had gotten so basic and shallow for a while there… I’m genuinely relieved to see people caring about intelligence and real storytelling again instead of just chasing the next trend audio.
3. Substack’s Growth Isn’t Slowing Down
Substack has gone from roughly 20 million active subscriptions in May 2025 to about 35 million now… and traffic has climbed right alongside it. That’s not a small platform having a moment; that’s a real shift in where people want to spend their attention.
Less noise, more depth. People are choosing long-form, ad-free, algorithm-free reading on purpose… and that says something about what audiences are hungry for right now.
I’ll be transparent: this is my new obsession. I’ll be launching my own Substack very soon, and watching this platform grow the way it has only made me more excited to be building there.
4. Micro Is Beating Mega
Smaller creators are pulling 2.4 to 6.7 times more engagement per post than big-name influencers.
Turns out trust travels better in small rooms. A tightly-knit, highly engaged audience of a few thousand is proving more valuable… to both creators and the brands who work with them… than a sprawling, disengaged following of hundreds of thousands.
I actually saw this shift happen in real time. When I was heading up a department at an influencer agency, I watched brands move away from wanting big names for their budget and towards quantity and wanting smaller creators with closer, more genuine connections to their communities. It wasn’t a theory to me… it was a line item change in strategy meetings.
5. Community Is Quietly Becoming the Whole Strategy
Fewer creators are leaning on brand deals to carry their business. Growth is increasingly concentrated in owned, recurring communities… not reach and not the next viral moment.
This is a meaningful shift: it means creators (and founders) are building businesses that don’t live or die by an algorithm change. The audience becomes the asset, not the follower count.
And Even Here at Home…
This isn’t just a global pattern… it’s showing up in the Canadian market too. Canadian agencies are seeing that tight-knit micro-communities with devoted audiences are outperforming massive followings that don’t actually engage.
And as a Canadian, I’m genuinely excited about what’s on the horizon for us here… even with everything going on with our neighbours to the south right now. If anything, that tension has made us more unified and stronger, and I think that’s going to show up in the way Canadian creators and brands build community going forward too.
So What Does This Mean For You?
None of this means burn your strategy down. It means the founders paying attention to how people actually want to connect right now (depth over noise, trust over reach, community over content) are the ones who’ll stay visible for the right reasons.
Visibility isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being found by the right people, in the right way, telling the right story. That’s the whole game.