Addressing the social media backlash he received from Filipino viewers recently, Nuseir Yassin, the man in front of the camera for Nas Daily, said that this kind of pushback is bound to happen at some point in time.
“With the Philippines, Nas Daily got too big too fast, and there’s always resistance for whatever grows big enough – and that should be a compliment,” he said in this year’s Tech in Asia conference.
Yassin added that a lot of content creators have to become comfortable handling these kinds of resistance. “And the minute you’re comfortable with resistance, then you can start creating content that you truly and meaningfully believe in.”
Nas Daily’s Nuseir Yassin / Photo credit: Nas Daily
Yassin, who is also the CEO of content creator-powered edtech platform Nas Academy, had come under attack online by some of its Filipino viewers in August. It followed accusations of exploitative behavior coming from Louise De Guzman Mabulo, a Forbes 30 Under 30 listee who was supposed to be featured on one of Nas Daily’s videos for her initiative, The Cacao Project.
In response, Yassin had said that the “200 farmers” part of the project were nowhere to be found and there were no cacao plantations that Mabulo didn’t “personally profit from.”
Around the same time, the Nas Daily star also came under fire after Nas Academy was called out online by a relative of a lecturer featured in one of the platform’s online classes.
Following the backlash, Nas Academy halted its operations in the Philippines.
“If you have nine friends that like you and [there is] one friend that you just don’t get along with – the problem with that [is] it doesn’t work at scale,” said Yassin. “Even though you have 9 million people that like you, you have 1 million people that don’t like you, and you’re gonna feel like the world has ended.”
For an online personality like Yassin, who has focused on creating content that aims to change the way viewers think, he embraces this struggle. “You cannot get big enough without resistance. If you don’t have resistance, you’re not doing anything, you’re just a comedian.”
See also: Nas Daily dreams of hiring 1,000 people for its grand edtech plans
This advice would ring true for a lot of budding creators as well. Yassin expects to see more content creators moving forward because of the opportunities that the profession offers and the industry being more open to new people.
“For example, in the past, if I wanted to market something as a business, I went to the TV station. Now, I just go to Facebook ads and Google ads, but [those] are going to become a lot less effective. So, in the future, I’m going to put my marketing money on content creators,” he said.
Yassin also noted the increase in the number of content platforms, as well as the bonuses these platforms offer. He said that major players like TikTok and Facebook have already set up funds to get more creators onboard.
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