The Meme Economy: How Tank Sinatra Turned Internet Jokes into a Multi Million Dollar Business

I was making memes and posting them on Reddit in like 2008 and then I just didn't stop and I was selling fence for my friend's fence company on Long Island. I was like this is what I do. I'm a husband, I'm a dad, I sell fence, it is what it is. My cousin was at IBM for 15 years as an executive trainer. I see him as someone who's very dependable and successful. I said do you think I'm being stupid quitting my job and leaving the security of a job and he goes nobody has security. I don't have security. I could be fired tomorrow. And when he said that, I was like, wow. What's up, besties? Welcome back to another episode of Net Worth and Chill with me, your host, Vivian Tu, aka your HBFF and your favorite Wall Street girly. When I first started posting on social media, it was truly for the love of the game. I had a bunch of coworkers who had no idea how to start building their own wealth. And I quickly realized that there are a lot of people out there who really needed personal finance advice. But if you went back in time, walked into my little cubicle on Wall Street and told me that my TikToks would become my own business, that they'd get me on the Forbes and Time lists and put my face on a billboard in Times Square, I don't know if I would have believed it right away. Not because I didn't believe in myself, but because between then and now, the creator economy has grown so much. Over the past 10 to 20 years, content creation has become a force to be reckoned with. You've got streamers, makeup gurus, wellness influencers, and people making hundreds of thousands of dollars off Pinterest. And yes, that includes the meme counts that we go to for a daily dose of laughs. Those faceless accounts sharing wholesome news or posting viral tweets and even teasing influencers for things that they say in the wild. Yeah, they're making bank. And oftentimes, these people are running an empire of meme platforms. One of the most well-known creators doing this is Tank Sinatra, who you probably follow on Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild, or his personal account, Tank.Sinatra. Tank has 15 million followers across all of his platforms, sharing everything from sketches to funny TikToks. And he's here to chat with us about everything social media and the meme economy. Tank Sinatra, thanks for joining us. Yes, I am. I am here to chat about that. Baby Beluga's in the house. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I have yet to crack Pinterest. I know what's going on there. I cannot figure it out. I'm going to be really honest. The only time I was super locked in on Pinterest was when I was wedding planning. Of course. And I was just like hyper consuming. Yeah. But then it got to be quite overwhelming. Yeah. I wish you could make money on buying stuff off Etsy. Oh, buying, not making, buying. I wish. Yeah. Okay. So we have to start with a fun little icebreaker. And this is truly going to be me trying to make myself feel better about my personal behavior. Okay. What is your screen time? If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. and save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the Eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Oh, it's not great. It's a lot. It hasn't been less than eight hours in like 10 years. Really? Yeah. Do you feel like you have brain rot? No. Really? No, I'm very smart. No, I feel like as I spend more time in front of a screen, I'm getting dumber. Isn't that something someone with brain rot would say though? Oh, you're saying like, I would not have that consciousness. How would I even know? My dumb rotted brain. Yeah. You know what? That's actually really fair. Self-awareness. I'm still pretty sharp. I read a lot. I talk to people in real life and on the phone. I interact. I engage with the world. I'm a man. I'm like a full blown adult. A grown man. And I was when this happened, which is the only reason I think I've been able to do it for so long. We'll get to that. Yeah. But before we get into that, I need to know what's your favorite meme at the moment? His name is Grant Loy. Can I just show you something for 10 seconds? What up, gang? We're at Crete Express. One month of influencing with my wife, Liv. His name's Grant Loy. He pretends to take a picture with her and then just speaks so loud and he's just like embarrassing her. And it's so funny to me. You know what, though? I love the, when like dads or husbands pretend to be their influencer wives and they're doing the clickety clackety on the bottle or like the puff, puff, puff, puff, puff on their like makeup. I think it's really funny. What up gang? What up gang? He's probably never said that in his real life. Never. That, I'm just, I'm. That was a white man in a polo. Yeah, yeah. Who looked like he was very country club. That and I will always stop if there's a compilation of kids telling their parents that their favorite celebrity has died. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't. It's the funniest thing. And it's so funny because the parents get so like involved. If somebody told me Jay-Z died, I'd be like, oh, that sucks. I would collapse. No. I would be heartbroken. Oh, okay. That's the only – aside from my family and friends and whatever. Yeah, Jay-Z, I'm not looking forward to that. They would get me with that. I would be the mom or the – not the mom, the dad in the video that's like, shut up. No. There's no way. And I'll start crying immediately before I even got a chance to look it up. Okay. So yeah, hopefully that doesn't happen ever. Yeah. Okay, cool. He's pretty rich. So if he's, someone's going to figure it out. He can Brian Johnson himself into the future. Exactly. So undoubtedly, you're one of the most followed meme accounts on the entire internet. I need to hear your villain origin story. When and why did you start making these accounts? Were you always funny? Yeah. So my actual proper villain origin story is two things. one in kindergarten i pulled up to the playground we're gonna play soccer i had no shirt on some kid goes oh my god he's got boobs i was five mind you later on 11 12 boobs tits i have he has oh my god he has tits so it was like age appropriate bullying to an extent i mean 11 12 is a little whatever um i just like i felt i had no worth and I was not chill. Unless I was funny. Unless I was funny and unless I was strong. So that's the origin story. Instagram is like the 12th thing that I've tried. Just in the social media realm. I'm so glad you said 10 to 20 years because when I tell people I've been on the internet every day straight since 2002, they're like, what the hell were you doing on the internet in 2002? I was keeping it alive for you. I was an early adapter. On MySpace. Exactly. MySpace. Tumblr. Crazy. No, way before Tumblr. Okay. Bigboys.com. What is that? Which sounds wild. I know, but it became break.com. I don't even know what this is. It was like a user-generated website with memes before they were memes, viral videos, movie clips, jokes, whatever, and eBalm's World, which you may have heard of. Yeah. eBalm's World is the bigger version of Break. I spent so much time on that. Okay. Oh, my God. And I just, I loved it. I love laughing. Yeah. I love laughing. I love making people laugh. So if there's a laugh to be had, I'm going to get it. Okay. So you've been on the internet since 2002. When did you really get started on more mainstream platforms? So Instagram was 2014. Is that when Instagram was invented? That's when I started on there. Oh, okay. Instagram started, I believe, in 2011. Okay. I had an account. that's crazy immediately crazy um but i didn't post on it and then i was making memes and posting them on reddit in like 2008 okay 2009 there was like 10 choices of pictures and you had to reiterate over and over and over again um different jokes based on the personality of the picture bad luck brian yeah college freshman uh the good-looking runner guy like there was these things that were popping up, but it was so limited. I went, I had a couple of front page memes back then, but there was like nothing you could do with that. Yeah. So then I got married. I had a child. Thank you. Yeah. Um, and then I, and then I was, I was, I was a grownup for like two years. Okay. And I was selling fence for my friend's fence company on Long Island. Yeah. Victorian fence. If you need a fence, if you need, if you need a new fence, give them a call. They're still kicking it, still killing it. And I was like, this is what I do. I'm a husband. I'm a dad. I sell fence. It is what it is. I'm going to enjoy it. Because I did love it. I was in sale, so I had a lot of free time. I could have done that probably forever. But then I saw the Fat Jewish post something on Instagram, and I had just seen it on Reddit. Yeah. So I went to his page to get his email address. I was already following him. By the way, by at this time, 2014, I swear to God, without over-exaggerating, there were probably like seven or eight meme accounts total. Yeah. 2014, I wasn't legally able to have a beer. And I was like, well, I'm too late, obviously. There's already eight meme accounts. What am I going to do. That's crazy. Okay. ABC, CBS, NBC. It can only be three. I was born in 1980. So I'm still, I have that legacy traditional brain as far as media goes. But I emailed him and I emailed him, his email address was emailio.addresdevez at gmail.com. Okay. Right. So I'm like, how do I get him to open this email? Yeah. I had a flash of inspiration. Tank Sinatra. hi blah blah blah blah blah blah send opened it immediately i was like sick my open rate is 100 yeah and i said basically like i'd like to help you source content um and that was it and then he kind of like carried me to like up to like 300 000 followers 350 000 maybe what was it that you would just source content for him and he would like give you a shout out in the beginning i was sourcing it and writing the captions. And then I started to make my own. This is a very long story, but when we first started, I'll make it short, by the way. It's very long, but I'll condense it. When I hit like 30,000 followers, I got a group of like 10 or 12 other meme accounts and put us all in a group chat. It was like, hi, I'm Tank. We're all doing the same thing. I thought it could be fun to to know each other or whatever because i hate doing things alone i really like alone is not it yeah for me um so i had to like manufacture a community so there was a guy in there his page was trev so electric he was making all of his own memes he was like the only person that i knew at that time that was making his own memes and he would always tell us like if you can if you can post a meme and then write a funny caption you can make your own meme just take the picture and write that caption above and come up with another caption for the bottom. And just like burn it into the image. Exactly. So unfortunately he died. Oh. Yeah, he died. And it wasn't like, oh, I have to carry the torch for this guy that I barely knew. But it was a little bit like that. You built a community. Biggie died so I could become Jay-Z, basically. You know what I mean? Okay. There is no Jay-Z if Biggie's still here. There's a different version. Yeah. But then, let me tell you, the difference in feeling between posting a meme of your own and having it do well and posting a meme that you found and having it do well, I was hooked instantaneously. Yeah. I was like, I don know if I ever going to post anybody meme ever again unless it as a favor to somebody you know Because you want people to hee hee ha ha at your meme At my brain Yeah I want them to laugh at my brain Yeah But like you said, faceless meme accounts, like nobody knew, nobody cared. So there was a lot of stealing going on. Fat Jewish, never. He was always good to me. Like he'll have infinite credit with me. Yeah. There was a couple of pages that would steal and whatever, but it was like, what am I going to do? Police everybody? Like, thank you for thinking it's good enough to steal. Yeah. That's how I had to treat it. And then I just didn't stop. I love that. Didn't stop. That's a good villain origin story. And I like it. But now, you know, this is a money podcast. So I got to ask you the questions for people who are really curious about what you make. I see on your feed that you recently posted a meme on your account in partnership with DoorDash. Yeah. It's a square post, one slide text and a screenshot. Yeah. I'm not asking you specifically what you got paid on this deal, but what's the range of what you could get paid for a meme partnership? So it's funny you brought that one up because that came through Cornelia Creative, which is a meme agency that I'm a partner in. Oh, amazing. There are meme agencies. I didn't even know this. One, there's one. We're the only one and they do such a good job. It's Christina and Connor run it. I'm kind of like there when they need me, but they do such a good job. And that one, when they come from Cornelia, I take less because I have a partnership in the company, right? But standard across Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, and Influencers in the Wild, the standard is 25 to 40. Wow. Thousand. Dollars, yeah. Yeah. US, by the way. But I've been paid a lot more and I've taken less when it calls for it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever think that you could make that kind of money? No, absolutely not. No. You know, it's funny. I actually, a memory was served to me in my photo album and I sent it to my wife and it was a check that I got, a commission check that I got from the fence company. I was so amazed by it that I took a picture of it and sent it to her i was basically saying yo we're good it was two thousand dollars and it was i couldn't believe that that amount of money came in in one shot but yeah in thinking grow rich i don't know if you've ever read that before it's transformative book he said something in there along the lines of like when once the money starts coming in it'll come in so rapidly and aggressively, it'll make you wonder where it was all those years. Yeah. And I just became open to the fact that I might be able to make a good living doing stuff that I love. And then once you start asking and people start saying yes, then, you know, sometimes you go overboard, but I've also, one of my favorite stories is I got an email from Preparation H, right? I actually have two great stories. I don't know if we're going to have time, but- Do you have two great hemorrhoids? No, I have zero. Oh, okay. Zero hemorrhoids. So I got an email from Preparation H. Even they knew. They were like, hey, can we? Preparation H. Yeah, we know who we are, but we want to have fun with it. Yeah. So I got on the call with them. And this is two times that I did this where I said basically like, in order for me to post a meme about itchy buttholes on my page, on Valentine's Day, no less. Yes. It's got to be a number I don't even have to think about. Right. And they said, what would that be? And I was like, I don't know, 100? And they were like, let us get back to you. It was not a no. It was not a what? Yeah. 85 they paid for one meme about itchy buttholes on my page. The other story I will condense. I worked with a girl who went on to become actually, I don't remember if it was Vox or Mike or Complex in general, the editor-in-chief of at least one, if not multiple. I think maybe she was the editor-in-chief at Mike and then Complex. So anyway, she sent out an email. She was looking for subjects for a documentary that she was doing. I replied because I'm a good person and I don't leave people hanging, even though I hadn't heard from her in years, maybe a decade. And I said, I don't know anybody, but I'll keep my eyes peeled. I'll let you know. All hell broke loose because she somehow, had it, had me reply to like 700 people that she had built over the years of contacts of editors and press people. And, you know, all these people, you know how it is. People get frustrated immediately. Get this girl, get me off this list. It's like, sorry, I don't, I'm not, I don't even know if that's possible. This is an email. So I was able to crush it with humor after like four or five back and forth, like, Hey, I'm sorry. I replied to this. I didn't realize it was the whole list, whatever. And, um, and then on one email, I was like, by the way, follow me on Instagram at tanks and you got to make the most of it. Right. And then people started writing, Oh my God, we already follow you. We love you, whatever. So that dies. Um, two years later, I get an email from somebody asking me to do a campaign for Mike's hard lemonade. So I'm in recovery. So I don't like typically deal with alcohol brands um i gave it a lot of thought but basically she got my she's like we were on that email disaster and we liked the way you handled it and we love tanks good news i had just started tanks good news at that point and i was very apprehensive because i'm like i don't know i don't like i don't i just i'm not sure she's like let me just tell you what it is so they wanted to take tanks good news posts and make a newspaper out of it nothing to do with alcohol basically it was just a mike's heart lemonade thanks good news collaborative newspaper like a physical newspaper in 13 or 14 different metro uh areas and again i said it's got to be something like i don't even something i don't have to think about right so we get off the phone she emails me and she says this is by i have like 800 000 followers on thanks good news by the way and she goes would 50 work and then i replied i said you know what i for some reason i don't know why Again, like it's just a number I'm thinking. I was thinking 150. She replies again. Two seconds later, she goes, we can do it for 100. And I wrote back and said, I will not do it for less than $100,001. You can take a hike. LOL. Just kidding. Let's do it. And it was like, holy shit. Sorry. You can coer. $100,000? Yeah. It was three posts, but still, that's like, then my mind. That is what a person who is very successful makes in a year. I love how open and vulnerable and transparent you've been with me about money. So let's do a little bit more of that. To paint a really specific picture, what is the breakdown of your income? So like how much do you earn per platform? How much do you make from partnerships, like et cetera? Like where is all of this coming from? It's – I don't know the percentage. It's largely partnerships on the pages. Yeah. On Instagram. What about like where the distribution of dollars goes between like Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild? Tank Sinatra and Tank's Good News are pretty equal. Yeah. Influencers in the Wild is less frequent but more when I get them. Oh, interesting. Why do you think that is? It's double – it's 5 million followers and it's got a cultural status, an IP. Do you think it's all about the follower count though or is it more about views? Well, I mean, over the last three months, nothing matters anymore. Who knows what's going on on Instagram. But also, people that complain about not getting enough views on something, when you have – I remember when I first started my YouTube channel, which I don't have anymore. This was one of the things that I tried. I got like 11 views on a video. And I was like, who are these 11 people? I want to hug them. You watched my video? You watched even a second of it? I couldn't believe that people were watching the video. So like for me to complain about getting 200,000 views on a video because I have 3 million followers on Tank Sinatra is like, bro, just enjoy what you got. Yeah. Because everybody is – Get a grip. Everybody is suffering from it. They don't even know what's happening. Why do you think people are willing to pay so much to get posted on your page? um i think that i think it's a multiple pronged uh assessment on their part i think that for me i'll speak for myself um thanks good news very brand safe yeah thanks sinatra very brand safe influencers in the wild not not brand safe but very unique and it takes we have to like really think about what we're going to post on there together um but i think that i've always thought of it like i have three different tv stations yeah under my umbrella and i know what they charge for a 30 second spot for a commercial on prime time and it is like good luck getting anybody to see that pay attention to it um do you have like a rough estimate of what a tv spot i looked it up a while ago it was like 80 000 to 200 000 wow and those prime time shows are getting like a million views, maybe. Yeah. The Colbert show, I think, is the biggest show on TV that gets four million views nightly. And then it drops off wildly. Right. Like the late night shows get a lot of views. But yeah, I think that you have a captive audience. And the fact that they still use Nielsen ratings is beyond archaic to me. I can't believe they don't know for sure who's watching. They still use like sample satellites in neighborhoods. I can tell you exactly how many people saw the post. Yeah. By the way, I just found out, you may know this, but the reason that views are down, they just change the way they score views. You know that? Tell me about it. It used to be that if you opened up the explore page and your video was just playing kind of like passively, that counted as a view. So nobody's views are actually down. They're just being counted correctly now, which makes me feel better. because I thought everyone just decided to hate me collectively six months ago. I was like, damn, they really hate me. I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, friends. Quick pause in our show to take a question from my besties in Phone a Friend, presented by Adobe Acrobat. Sammy asks, how do I delegate? I feel so overwhelmed in my life and at work, but I have a very hard time letting go. Listen, take it from me. I am a control enthusiast. Delegating is a skill. You have to learn how to do it properly. And trust me, not being able to do so can be really, really frustrating. Here are a few strategies that have worked for me. So hopefully you get to use this and get into a smarter delegation pattern. First, here's what you need to understand. Delegating is not losing control. It's leveraging your resources. You wouldn't put 100% of your money into one stock because that's terrifying and risky. So why would you do that with your own time? Next, we have to do an audit. We're going to write down everything you did this week and honestly ask yourself, does this require me specifically? If the answer is no, that's a task you might be able to delegate. Another thing to keep in mind is stop waiting for people to do things exactly how you would do them. No one is going to be able to do things exactly as you have but they still might be able to do them pretty well If someone else can do the task 80 as well as you can that something that can and should be delegated to them So for example if somebody you know in your life does the dishes or the laundry 80 as well as you do even though you're really particular about how you like them stacked or how you like your whites and darks and colored sorted in your clothes, you can still delegate that. 80% is pretty well done. And when it comes to delegating at work specifically, reframe how you think about handing things off. When you delegate to a team member, you're not offloading your leftovers onto them. You're actually giving them an opportunity to grow, to develop a new skill and to show what they're actually capable of. Good managers delegate intentionally. The best leaders build other leaders by trusting people with real responsibility. Now, back to our show. And so like with your income being so heavily tied to brand partnerships, and there obviously is this fear of like you're so reliant on these platforms to always kind of keep you at the front of people's like feeds. Have you thought about how you are going to build a contingency plan to stay relevant and continue to make money even if one day the algo doesn't favor you? Yeah. Well, it doesn't favor me now, by the way. I don't think it favors anybody. It favors really visually dynamic stuff and rage, unfortunately, which I'm not willing to do. There's been a lot of things I'm not willing to do. I don't love tactics or hacks or anything like that. If I can't just do what I want to do, I'll go get a job. Yeah. You know? You've had one before. I've had so many. Yeah, I've had a lot of jobs. First of all, if Instagram disappears, everybody's in trouble. Yeah. It's not just me. Get your rations of doomsday prepping and get out there because something went horribly wrong. I would think – contingency plan, yes. I invested in the PAC, which is the gym that I own in Flatiron with the founders of Rumble, co-own, small. I don't even know if like I'm a small equity partner in that. I have the gas station TV thing with Tanks Good News. So those, you know, those videos are on 120 million people's eyeballs every month across the country. That brings in money too. And I don't know. I just, I'm not concerned. Yeah. I'm not concerned. A, I would, I'll figure it out. B, I've waited tables before. I know how to do it. I was actually really good at it. I can go do that again. Worst, I wouldn't want to do it now, but I don't have to now. Yeah. You know? so I think that if you are so my cousin said to me my cousin was at IBM for 15 years as a an executive trainer and then went to Bank of America he's been there for 20 and when I quit my job selling fence I talked to him about it because I see him as someone who's very dependable and successful and I said do you think I'm being stupid quitting my job and leaving the security of a job and he goes, what do you, nobody has security. I don't have security. I could be fired tomorrow. And when he said that, I was like, wow. So my, my value is in provision of content and maintaining eyeballs and keeping people's attention. If I can do that, then I'll be good. If I stop being able to do it, I won't, but nothing's going to like, nothing external is going to, is going to change that. I remember when I worked in restaurants, people used to complain about it not being busy. People just be complaining. People just love to complain. They love to complain. It shifts responsibility away from them. Okay. So there is a perception that what we do is very easy. Yeah. I would love for you to walk me through the process of like being a meme account mogul. Like, is it hard? Why or why not? That sounds cool. Better? Meme account mogul. Meme account mogul? Yeah. Versus I make little jokes on the internet. Yeah. Way better. Um, but like walk us through like a post and like what you think about, cause it's, I can feel your brain, like just the gears are spinning. You're thinking about analytics. You're thinking about data. You're thinking about, is this going to perform? Who is this going to appeal to? You're thinking about so many things, but like walk us through a process of one post. So I will say just before I get to that, and I'm probably going to forget the question, but it's relevant. It's not hard work comparatively to A, B, or C. I would never tell somebody my job is harder than yours. Who sells fences. Or who installs the fences or someone who's an ER nurse or any number of things. I have been told to get a real job though. And I looked at the guy's profile. I was like, bro, you sit in an office all day. I work a thousand times harder than you. You sit in front of a computer and you do what people tell you to do. That's easy because you don't have to think. When I read 4-Hour Workweek two decades ago, probably, he said something along the lines of busyness is a noble form of laziness. I wouldn't say that my job is hard now because I love it, but I did all of the hard work before that figuring out what I want it to do. That is the hardest part. You can really be anything you want when you grow up, two things. You got to figure out what you want, near impossible. And you got to decide when you're a grownup, also very difficult. So it's really on the person to figure out, take the time, do that hard work to figure out what you want to do. And then doing it is easy because you took so much time figuring out what you wanted to do. But as far as a post goes, it happens real fast. I'll see something, I'll text myself or write a note about it, and then get ready to – I'll start envisioning the scenes, start doing a shot list in my head, maybe write a little bit of a script. And that's it. As far as Tanks Good News goes, that's different because that's sourcing news from all the sources. And Influencers in the Wild is a dream because they're all user-generated clips and they come to us. We just have to pick which ones we like. I guess I have a good question for you is just like I feel like when I first started following you, it was all like just memes. But as of lately, I have noticed that you've actually pivoted to speaking a lot directly to camera. You are making the jokes yourself. There is a running gag about you being a beluga whale because of your very shiny, very smooth head. Bulbous beluga head. Yeah, your beluga head. But like, what was the decision to do that? Is it because people kept stealing your content and you wanted to like, you know? No, no. So it's interesting to me because you know what you've done the whole way, right? When people say to me, which through no fault of your own, that I've been making videos as of late, I started in 2020 with the videos. That's how long ago it was. But it takes either you don't register it or you're not paying attention because you have your own life and you're running your own business and you're not thinking, when did he convert from memes to videos? Because I still do the memes. Sometimes an idea is a little bit too complex to be a meme and it needs to be fleshed out and it needs to be acted out. I also like doing it because I like, again, so imagine a meme that you didn't make doing well versus a meme that you did make doing well versus a video that features you and is your original idea doing well. It just feels better when the videos do well. Yeah. It just feels more like, okay, it's more of more validation of my sense of humor, more of a vote of confidence of me as a person rather than just somebody who posts memes or somebody who makes memes because nobody cares who makes the memes. Yeah. Nobody cares. Yeah. You saw that with, with fuck Jerry when they tried to, to get him off the internet. Yeah. Nobody cares. A few people care. Yeah. And they make a big, a big, you know, stink, but to do, to do about it. But I remember when the Fat Jewish had his controversy, there was some guy who said he stole my tweet, he posted it, he cut my name out. Lo and behold, that guy stole the tweet. So like, what are we doing here? Not one original thought on the internet. We're all operating from the same universal consciousness. And if I make a joke before you, like I just saw somebody do a video that I did three days before I did it. It looks very much like I stole the video. I have no idea who this person is. I just happened to see it on my, on my, uh, explore page. So there's like, we're all doing a certain amount of things. We're living, we're being friends, being family members, being employees. And like, how much can you really, how much can you not only consume, but there's no original ideas, like you just said, especially on the internet. So I just like, you know, I like, sometimes I like somebody's take on it better than another person's. How do you know when a meme is hot and gaining steam and when it's cooked? I check back in like three months and I know. You don't know in the moment? Not anymore. One of the worst things that ever happened to me as somebody who does this is getting a like to minute ratio way back when it was chronological. So I knew if I got 300 likes per minute for the first 10 minutes, it was going to be a banger. Yeah. but there's no way to know now because you have no idea who's seeing it you have no idea why it's being served or why it's not being served um it's like when i used to do stand-up comedy right i used to imagine what would i do if there was a glass cage around me and i couldn't hear whether or not people were laughing how would i know what was funny or not yeah and then three days later someone sees me on the street they're like yo that thing you said was so funny yeah at the night at the comedy club. Oh, really? I thought it sucked because nobody laughed. Right. You just don't know. Like this algorithm thing, that's why the less I care, the better I do. I just, I simply cannot care anymore about performance because nobody knows what's happening. Do you think it is cool or choogy when- Chogy. Are we not saying that anymore? I'm not a millennial per se. Okay. So I know choogy is a millennial word. Yeah. I'm in that era of forgotten children. Forgot. Okay. But do you think it's actually cool? Cringe? Cool or cringe. Okay. Is it cool or cringe that oftentimes new companies are trying to get into the meme economy because they find it as a source to be able to sell product, but then they try to like capitalize on the culture? That's chuggy. Oh. I will. I don't know exactly what Chugi means, but it sounds like something. Chugi is like the commercial version of cringe. Yeah. Cringe is residential. Chugi's commercial. Do not hit me with a meme from six months ago and try to get me to buy your, like I remember. Yeah. By the time that compliance has approved it. Oh, I, when Yanni Laurel, remember that was happening? Who was that? Yanni Laurel. What do you hear? Yanni or Laurel? Yanni or Laurel? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Six months later, I'm not going to say the name of the company because I've said it publicly and somebody got really mad at me once. Part of their ad was, do you hear Yanni or Laurel? If you hear Yanni, buy this. If you hear Laurel, this one's for you. It's like, that's dead. That's real dead. Way dead. And also kind of weird. Yes, very weird. Yeah. People, there's a friction between the creatives and the executives. And there always has been and there always will be. Because the executives, the creatives don't have the mental capacity to do what the executives do. But the executives think they have the creativity to do what the creatives do. And creatives admit it. Executives don't. So they'll go, you know what? I think this idea would be really good. like I did an ad for this financial company every single round of edits they just I feel like they thought well how could we make this worse In what way could we make this worse and less appealing to people Cause let do that And they, by the way, they did like 15 rounds of edits. I told my agent, shout out to Kaylee. She's the best upreach agency. She took it over for me. I was like, I don't want the money. I don't want to do this anymore I don't want to deal with them anymore it was so frustrating yeah what ended up happening? she finished it, she posted it she got more money because it was so many rounds because at that point we were like seven rounds in we told them we're like we're not going to do this anymore and they were like what do you mean? I was like we're not this is out of control we're not going to do this anymore and then they said what if he gave you more money well consider Everybody's got a number. Yeah. That's so funny. Why do you think AI is going to help meme creators or hurt the meme economy? I think AI – I think people are a lot more worried about AI than they need to be. Why? And the less you understand it, the more concerned you are because it's just so far away from being able to be effective. 100% effective. There's no accountability with AI. I got into an argument with ChachiBT the other day. I asked it what lyric was on the road to riches and diamond rings, real gangsters do real things. What song is that from? It's a biggie line. It said, it's from Juicy. And then it gave me four lines. And I said, and I got so frustrated. I said, where the fuck does it say on the road to Rich's end. Oops, you got me. My bad. Sorry about that. It's actually in this verse and it wasn't in that verse either. I was like, this thing is not taking anybody's jobs. Good at the chat GPT voice. Oh my God. Yeah. Oops. You caught me. What do you mean caught? You just, you were wrong. This could have just been a control F situation. Yeah. I asked it to give me every song Jay-Z has ever done in chronological order, albums, appearances, soundtracks, whatever. It went, it said to me, that is a stupendous task and I am unable to provide this list for you. And I was like, I could do this from memory if I really wanted to. I just wanted it easy. Like, I'm just not, I'm just not concerned about AI. I think that, I think that for a savvy person, have you ever seen Ronnie Chang's bit about AI? No. Oh my God. It's so good. It's so funny. He's trying to explain to his mom how he knows that Bigfoot is not in the stop and shop. Yeah. And he's just like, besides the context clues, I can just, the shadows are not right. Something's off. Like the video, the image looks wrong. He's like, it's like my 10,000 hours have come to fruition. I just know, I can't explain to you how I know. But I feel like people know, even if they don't know. And when they feel like they got duped by it, I think there's going to be some more resentment around AI before there's acceptance because it is just so annoying. to see people fall for, I'm not a fan of staged content. I'm not a fan of manufactured content. The problem with it is that when you do stuff that depends on spontaneous interactions and you start getting traction, you can't count on them anymore because they don't happen organically enough or frequently enough. I don't know. I may sound like an old man a little bit. I love that though. Yeah. Just be creative. And if you're not creative, that's okay. Not everyone is creative. Sometimes being a creative is like not the best. Like I was on the phone with a friend of mine. I was melting down. I forgot what it was. Obviously wasn't important. And he said something like, you know, this is, this is the brain you got. You're doing the best you can with it. Right. And I was on my way to my friend's place. And when I got to my friend's place, he pulled up a video of mine. He's like, yo, how do you even think of this. And I was like, yeah, that's the brain comes with it, comes with the territory. It's you're kind of tortured by your own brain, but if you can focus it in a general, in a direction that will serve you great, but that's hard for anyone who's trying to become a content creator. Now, what would your advice be? And what do you think is more important quality or quantity? um so it's it's funny this is not a pitch for it but after 10 years i'm actually starting to like teach people how to do it and the thing i think is the most important to do is to spend the time to figure out what you want to do don't just pick something because you think it's going to do well and it's trendy because again not to go back to this thing but it's it feels good when a meme that you believe in does well, but it feels good when a meme that you believe in doesn't do well. Cause it's like, okay, a couple of thousand people like this. They have the same sense of humor as me. There's nothing worse than posting something that you don't believe in because you think it's going to get likes and then it doesn't get likes. It's devastating. It's like, I didn't even want that. Why did I do that? Exactly. Cause I thought you were going to like it. You, the proverbial you. Pick a thing, take time, take a good amount of time. Nobody should be in any rush to get this thing going. If they're going to, you know, there's certain verticals of content creation that do really well with spontaneous creation, like just face the camera, whatever, if you're a great storyteller, or if you're very knowledgeable about something and you're just going to prattle on about it for a little bit. Word of the day on my phone, app prattle. But yeah, just take the time to figure out what you want to do and stick with it longer than you want to. Stick with it longer than you want to. I feel like that's a really good piece of advice. Stick with it longer than you want to because you have no idea what's going to be the thing. People give up too easy. They give up way too easy. They also stay on things too long that are obviously not working. So it's like you have to be honest with yourself. Like TraxNYC, right? You know who that is? No. He's been- Our internets feel very different right now. TraxNYC is the guy who went into the place and screamed at the guy, give me my money, you bitch. You had to have seen the video. It has 300 million views. I'm gonna ask, Grace, you're young, you're hip. Have you seen this? Maybe. Yeah, yeah. There was parodies of it, whatever. He's been doing this for 15 years. Yeah. And he just had his most viral moment. By far, nothing even comes close. He was in Uncut Gems. Like, he was such a well-known social media jeweler that he was in Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler. Yeah. Like, he's been in the game a long time. Shout out to him. He's a really good example of someone who was doing something already and then just started documenting it and never stopped. Yeah. But yeah. Give me my money. hey, where's my money? And he slams a bracelet. Some guy was pretending to use his, pretending to be associated with him to sell like BS jewelry to people and scam them. But yeah, oh man, mega. Mega viral. Oh God, yeah. For weeks. Yeah. Okay, well, we are running out of time. No. But I have one question left for you. Okay. You've had an incredibly long, illustrious. Illustrious. Illustrious. that's going to be tomorrow's word of the day. Yep, probably. Career in making content online. Do you happen to know what you've made all of these years combined? Quick math. Quick maths. That's another name. Maybe eight, nine million. Eight to nine million. Something like that. Making memes. And I've invested well. Yeah. Thank God. Let's actually, I lied. Second to last, or last question. Yeah, yeah. Is from the money that you have made, this eight to nine million over the course of, let's call it 20 some years. Yeah. No, 10. 10-ish years. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't making no money. Yeah. Over the past, you know, 10 years, you have mentioned that you are a part of a gym, that you're part of an agency. Like talk to me about the thought of like what you've been doing to take this money and redeploy it. Have you ever heard of Rumble Boxing? Yeah, I've been. So the founders of Rumble Boxing opened this gym, The Pack. Noah I met 10 years ago. I watched what happened with Rumble. It was insane. They sold for – this is a money podcast. They sold for $300 million after being in business for four years. So when he told me about this, I was like, bro, please let me give you any amount of money just to be involved. I actually sold Bitcoin to invest in this. And that's my never sell. I sold it at the peak, which was good in retrospect. But I think that if you're ubiquitous and good to an extent, like you're not, there's great, but great only happens like every once in a while. like my thing has been my friend adam um said to me create create create anomaly capitalize create create create that's this that's the cycle over and over and over so create create create you have to work really really hard there will be an anomaly something incredible will happen to you capitalize on that yep get back to work wow yeah um and also be once you get into the business part of this, just be easy to work with. Do not be difficult. People get an attitude when they start getting some attention, which is very common, which is why I said I was happy when this happened for me when I was 35, 36, because had this happened when I was 23, I have no doubt it would have changed who I am or how I saw myself. I think I would have blew it at that point. But it was never going to happen for me because I was totally shot and out of my mind at that time. But yeah, Just be easy to work with and be consistent. And just, you know, just don't give up on ideas when the time is ready. Do not give up on yourself. Be willing to abandon ship for a bad idea, but never your own ship. Yeah. Stick with something longer than you want to. Once it occurs to you, it's done. Be done with it. But you never quit on yourself. Like I said, I didn't even get into all the things I did before Instagram between the blogs and the video blogs and the websites and the crazy ideas that were dead in the water, but I thought were the lottery ticket for me. And execute. If you have an idea, do it because somebody out there is probably thinking the same thing you are and they're going to do it before you. Trust yourself. I feel like that's a great place for us to end. Tank Sinatra, thank you so much for joining me. Can you tell everybody at home where we can find you? Thank you for having me. I hope your listeners got some value out of it. You can find me on Instagram, Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild. You can find me at The Pack in Flatiron, 23rd between 5th and 6th. Come work out. It's a great time. And you can find me on the gas station TV screens across the country. I love that. Yeah. Thanks for joining. You can't avoid me, honestly. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcast at yourrichbff.com. Follow Net Worth and Chill Pod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast related news. And you can follow me at yourrichbff for even more financial know-how. See you next week. Bye.