Increasingly fragmented narratives: the clip factory is in full swing

A billion-dollar hit. So much is worth Scrub Daddy, the iconic American brand that revolutionised the world of cleaning by conquering the theme-unfriendly Generation Z with short, viral, self-contained videos. The creative team packs sketches and memes designed directly for the algorithm and not adapted later for social. So today the company, which distributes over 160 products including accessories and detergents, has over 4.3 million TikTok followers with the specific hashtag exceeding 3 billion views. A smiling face imprinted on the product that got its springboard with the startup show Shark Tank. A strategy that tells in seconds about the innovative thermo-responsive sponge that softens in hot water and stiffens in cold one, guaranteeing an anti-scratch action.

Cut, break, multiply. Brands and creators are seduced by the clipping economy: content is no longer consumed as a whole but disassembled into pills. A podcast, a video, a webinar are no longer finished products, but mines from which to extract dozens of clips for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. The long format remains, but lives to feed the short one that now dominates unchallenged: short videos do not promote, but are themselves the true content of viral fragments. The Atlantic wrote about this, highlighting how short-format videos have conquered the Internet, becoming the dominant unit of online media, not just a promotional tool. According to The Verge, the clipping economy is now an indispensable lever to exist in the attention economy. The goal is to colonise algorithms, multiply reach, generate virality. Thus digital content is designed as clip factories. "It is a structural transformation. Content is no longer born as a closed work to be promoted, but as a modular structure, i.e. an archive of moments already designed to be extracted, reassembled and distributed. Editorial logic has shifted from narrative to circulation,' says Giovanni Boccia Artieri, professor of sociology of communication and digital media at the University of Urbino and author of 'Sfiduciati. Democracy and communicative disorder in the exposed society' for Feltrinelli. The best content no longer necessarily wins, but the most 'clippable': emotional, divisive, fast. "It works because it adapts to the temporality of the feed: short, recognisable, immediately shareable. It does not always replace the integral, but precedes it and often exhausts it. The clip becomes a threshold of access and at the same time an autonomous unit of meaning. The impact is a cultural selection oriented towards maximum reactivity. Emotional intensity, conflict, surprise, simplification win out. This increases circulation and weakens context, argumentation and attention span,' Boccia Artieri points out.

This new obsession of contemporary marketing is multiplying snack campaigns and the weight of a specialised supply chain with figures who only work to man the feeds and wink at the algorithms: more clips, more visibility, more chances to go viral. The most obvious cases are among streamers and podcasters. In the meantime, there are those who industrialise the process, and real 'clipping armies' are born: networks of creators who relaunch video fragments to preside over the algorithms. Of note are MrBeast and N3on, while the streamer Clavicular has more than 1,600 clippers involved, almost 70,000 clips produced and more than 2 billion views. The Clipping.net platform aggregates 62 thousand active clippers in its network alone, with average earnings of up to around $3 thousand per clipper per month. Crocs, the US brand that became famous for its colourful resin clogs that have turned into a global pop phenomenon, is focusing on vertical micro-dramas with its 'Charmed to meet you' series. Marc Jacobs, too, has constructed the social mini-series "The Scene" made of narrative fragments, while Burberry has rethought luxury with modular micro-contents on TikTok. Gap with "Better in denim" built a campaign around short replicable clips, while Duolingo turned its owl mascot into memes designed to be clipped. In the travel sector leading the atomisation of content is Ryanair with ironic videos designed to colonise algorithms and in the beverage sector there is Liquid Death with meme-oriented campaigns. Even beauty is moving in the same direction: Elf Cosmetics has built 'Eyes lips face' around music remixes, while Sephora fragments tutorials by a few seconds. Even sport now lives on fragments: the National Basketball Association turns highlights into independent editorial products. All cases that tell of a crucial transition: content is no longer created to be viewed in its entirety, but to survive when cut by professionals. Thus new profiles such as clippers, short-form editors, clip strategists are born to preside over social feeds. "These figures show that creative work is hybridising with distribution work. It is no longer enough to produce content, but it is necessary to know how to make it readable for the algorithms, segment it, title it, and test its grip. The editor also becomes a visibility strategist,' says Boccia Artieri.

But beware: if the clipping economy increases visibility and relationships, in order to maximise reach and virality it also amplifies the risk of decontextualisation. The danger is obvious: the progressive loss of context and narrative depth. "For brands and creators, the clip allows them to quickly reach lateral audiences, multiply contact points and make attention more scalable. The risk is that this logic transforms communication into continuous extraction, separating content from its contexts and making the relationship coincide with the simple measurability of engagement," Boccia Artieri concludes. Once again, the alert is to mistake a part for the whole. In hyper-connected times, losing one's bearings increases the risks for users.