This Gen Z media empire is racking up millions of views. Here's why...
With alums from Mr. Beast and NBC, meet Mad Realities.
Those hungry to crack the code of what young people want online can find one successful example in Mad Realities — a social-first entertainment and media company that brands itself as MTV for Gen Z, making “TV for the first internet-native generation.” With backing from Paradigm, Maveron and Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, Mad Realities’ content exists across platforms from TikTok to Instagram – and now RedNote.
This week, I spoke with Alice Ma, co-founder and CEO of Mad Realities, about the brand’s rapid growth, how she’s thinking about social-first content in 2025, and the fate of TikTok.
TLDR: To scale, Mad Realities engages with sub-cultures online, plays into levity, and capitalizes on their audiences’ attention in the first five seconds of any given video.
Our conversation below has been edited for clarity and brevity.
First, tell me a bit about Mad Realties and the impetus behind it. What has its growth looked like recently?
AM: We really set out to be the MTV of the internet generation. And what we mean by that is kind of like to be what MTV represented for the generation of our parents – except on social – because social is the new TV. That's underlying our thesis. Overall, it's really just crazy how much attention has shifted to digital services, if you look at the broader trends and what our generation is paying attention to.
In our industry, the one law of gravity is just that everything follows where attention flows. And so in our view, it's inevitable that TV will be remade, social-first, digital-first.
We launched two hit shows last fall. Shop Cats and Hollywood IQ. Shop cats is basically a show where the host is looking for the best bodega cat in New York. It's really modeled off of MTV Cribs meets Steve Irwin. But it is, at the end of the day, a window into small businesses and local communities in New York – as well, as it turns out, often the immigrant experience in New York. And then Hollywood IQ is a daily pop culture trivia show. Periodically, there's an iconic new daily trivia show that comes up, whether that's Wordle or Jeopardy or HQ trivia. Hollywood IQ specifically appeals to the stans of the internet. If you spend a lot of time on the internet, you start to realize that the stands basically run the world. Those two shows combined have garnered 250 million views since September.
How are you churning out content on such a frequent basis?
AM: We have an internal development process where we're constantly pitching new ideas internally and moving them through almost a traditional TV process of having a pilot and then a green light phase. We're constantly developing more ideas internally and taking external pitches. You'll be seeing a lot more shows from us this year as well. In terms of how for each show we turn out so much content, part of it's just the DNA of our team. Everyone's very, very savvy with digital forward content. Once we land on a format that we are like, ‘this really works,’ and it delivers the storytelling really well, we've built an engine where we can just continually and repeatedly produce that content at high quality. Part of our process is completely different from what you might see in very traditional spaces, even just in terms of timeline. Shop Cats, for example, was three months from conception to launch. [Our process] enables us to really move at the speed of the internet and be on point as the zeitgeist is changing.
Who’s on your team? Are you all part of our generation — that grew up online and consuming content constantly? How does that impact the culture? Do you have any people from traditional TV backgrounds?
AM: It's such a mix of all worlds. For example, there's a cohort on our team that's like 45. It's very bimodal. It's like, 40’s and then 20’s. You kind of need both of those mindsets to run a great company.
The backgrounds, especially on our production team, range. On the very digital end, we have a couple people from Mr. Beast’s short-form team as an example. So it's like the person who grew up on the internet, but has already had years and years of experience as a producer professionally. People have worked on projects, like very large-budget projects, even from the digital native cohort. One of our producers, he produced a show for National Geographic. He's worked at Jubilee, worked at Mr. Beast, and even then, he's like, 25. Sometimes I look at the kids and I'm like, ‘Wait, this is crazy. How are you like a professional 10-years into your career right now?’ There's such an expectation for people to do stuff and get passionate early that it creates unicorns like that.
There's other members of our team who have been working in the comedy circuit for a really long time as a producer. Sandy, who's our development producer, and the host of Hollywood IQ, coincidentally, she used to work at Broadway Video, she was working and producing there for a few years, and she was a page at NBC.
So it's really that mix of DNA coming together that is what enables us to do what we do. When we're building our DNA, we're constantly looking at, like, how do we mix traditional methods, as well as the new, and create something new from that combination.
Community matters for our generation. How do you keep yours engaged?
AM: There are already these very vibrant subcultures that exist on the internet. Whenever we're developing new shows we're really making sure that the storytelling is appealing or giving a platform to a new voice that hasn't been platformed yet, that's often from a very specific subculture. It helps a lot that our team is often of that subculture themselves, and already existing fans or consumers of the internet areas where we produce shows. As an example, Talia is the creative producer for Hollywood IQ, and she's 100% a stan herself. She knows and follows all things pop-culture. She knows every single meme. She's like a walking encyclopedia. As a result, whenever we're launching new episodes, they're very much participating in or quizzing fans on things that are already happening in pop-culture. So it feels like a conversation.
Another way is that we read the comments on and are always taking DM’s from all of our community and just paying attention to what they want. The most direct way is our casting process. We've gotten hundreds of DM’s from folks that want to come on our shows. For Hollywood IQ, it's as a contestant — people are like, ‘Can I come play?’ We barely walk up to people anymore when we're doing shoots, because it's usually people who have asked us to come on, or when we're on the street, people just stop us and try to play because they recognize it. There's actually a really funny video where it's like two girl contestants going up to or wanting to take a picture with our cameraman. Like he's a celebrity or something. That's a super direct way of it being participatory and involving the community.
And for Shop Cats, people are always asking us to go visit their local shop cat or bodega. The way we shoot the show now is entirely based off of this internal cat map that we've created from community submissions.
The elephant in the room. How are you guys preparing for life post-TikTok, if that ever happens?
AM: We’ve really proven that our shows are IP-based, just based on how they perform across platforms, whether that's TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, RedNote and so on. When you have real storytelling and a concept that people really, really care about, they will continue to find you where you are, so long as discovery is possible.
I personally don't think TikTok will be banned for many, many reasons. I think there's something in between, some deal that will be brokered.
But the cat is out of the bag, pun intended, on the medium of short-form, vertical video. I think everyone kind of realizes this. I imagine even the TikTok team did as well, where during that brief [period] when they were banned, everyone just poured onto other platforms, whether that was RedNote, or Reels, or YouTube Shorts. Whether it's TikTok, Reels, or a new player, someone will fill the vacuum, because the medium is really here to stay. The value of a discovery algorithm powerful enough to connect viewers all over the world to the content they're most interested in is also just proven.
Along those lines, our collective attention spans have been condensed to appreciate short-form and vertical video content. Is that a part of your method?
AM: Definitely. You literally have like, five seconds, maybe three, maybe one to convince someone that they want to watch, that they want to pay attention. So that's definitely how we think about it. We think a lot about the first five seconds.
And lastly, what is your biggest tip for engagement with young and Gen Z audiences in 2025?
AM: I'm definitely biased, but there's a reason that we're doing what we're doing. It's such a competitive landscape now, and anyone can make content, I think that it actually almost becomes old-school again, where it's just like really incredible, entertaining, storytelling-driven content is what wins out in the end. Because great content travels no matter what. The best type of storytelling starts a conversation and lingers in the mind after – like the depth of brand impression that Shop Cats leaves. We're always hearing feedback about it. It transcends the digital world because, even in person, I'll be constantly meeting people who love Shop Cats and are a fan of it.
To stand out in 2025 you have to make that level of cultural impact. We’re on the bleeding edge. In some ways, it actually goes full circle to old-school storytelling, and filmmaking, and creativity, and craft, where it's like that's what people actually remember. When we are casting hosts, we do not care about their followings. The conversation is ‘Does this person have star quality?’ ‘Do they have a voice and a point of view that hasn’t been told before, hasn't been platformed yet?’ And ‘What is most interesting about that?’ ‘Why does this need to see the light?’ It goes all the way back to old-school. When people were discovering new stars from auditions.
For context, Michelladonna, when we started working with her, she only had 5,000 followers on Instagram. And the host of Hollywood IQ, Sandy on our team, she doesn't even have a TikTok, and her Instagram is private. She's never wanted to be famous in her life. It’s actually the content and the storytelling. It's not relying on the distribution of creator or host.
There’s a common adage that says the internet is only promoting polarization. What Shop Cats proves to me is that there’s almost a way to beat that dynamic and put out something that’s very positive and actually emotionally deep in its storytelling. It takes a certain level of ambition and daring to not follow the standard ‘rules’ in internet land, to create something new, and prove that it’s possible.
Noteworthy reads of the week
Like Any Millennial, Yahoo Wants To Be Seen As Cool Again, Amanda Hoover for Business Insider
The Gen Z Influencers Giving MAGA a Youthful Glow: “Our Voices Are Being Heard”, Olivia Empson for Vanity Fair
‘Micro-Retirement’: The New Career Trend Rising Among Gen Z, Bryan Robinson for Forbes