vista

Inside a historic aircraft hangar in Playa Vista, crowds of people gathered on Thursday to browse the latest fashions from handbags to clothing and shoes as they prepared for the holiday shopping season.

These weren’t shoppers or retailer buyers browsing for the latest products. Instead, they were YouTube video creators who were being courted by brands from Lowe’s to Shark Beauty to encourage online audiences to buy their products.

Aaron Ramirez, a 22-year-old influencer who focuses on men’s fashion and lifestyle, stood in front of racks of carefully curated shelves of backpacks as he decided which items he would endorse for his 234,000 YouTube subscribers.

“I can make a video about anything that improves my quality of life and add a link to it,” said Ramirez. “I only recommend products that I really use and really like.”

The San Diego resident was among about 300 creators participating in YouTube’s annual benefit for creators dubbed “Holiday House” that helps internet personalities get ready to sell goods during the busy holiday shopping season.

The event — held at the cavernous converted Google offices that once housed Howard Hughes’ famous Spruce Goose plane — underscores YouTube’s desire to be a bigger player in online shopping by leveraging its relationship with creators to promote products in much the same way that rival TikTok does.

In August, YouTube introduced new tools to help its creators better promote products they plug in their videos. One feature uses AI to identify the optimal place on the screen to put a shopping link when an influencer mentions a product. If a customer clicks on that link and makes a purchase, the creator gets a commission.

Brands that were once skeptical about influencers have embraced them over time as sales-tracking tools have improved and the fan base of video creators has mushroomed.

“It’s like the people that you saw on television and before that the people that you listened to on radio who became the trusted personalities in your life,” Earnest Pettie, a trends insight lead at YouTube, said in an interview. “Oprah’s Favorite Things was a phenomenon because of how trusted Oprah was, so it really is that same phenomenon, just diffused across the creator ecosystem.”

Despite economic uncertainty and tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, shoppers in the U.S. are expected to spend $253.4 billion online this holiday season, up 5.3% from a year ago, according to data firm Adobe Analytics.

Social media platforms have helped drive some of that growth. The market share of online revenue in purchases guided by social media affiliates and partners, including influencers, is expected to grow 14%, according to Adobe Analytics.

Cost-conscious consumers are doing more research on how they spend their money, including watching influencer recommendations. In fact, nearly 60% of 14- to 24-year-olds who go online say their personal style have been influenced by content they’ve seen on the internet, according to YouTube.

“It’s more about discovery, understanding where the best deals are, where the best options are,” said Vivek Pandya, director at Adobe Digital Insights. “Many of these users are getting that guidance from their influencers.”

YouTube is one of the top streaming platforms, harnessing 13.1% of viewing time in August on U.S. TV sets, more than rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, according to Nielsen. And shopping-related videos are especially popular among its viewers, with more than 35 billion hours watched each year, according to YouTube.

With YouTube’s shopping feature, viewers can see products, add them to a cart and make purchases directly from the video they’re watching.

Promoting and enabling one-click e-commerce from video has been huge in China, triggering a wave across Asia and the world of livestreaming and recorded shopping videos. Live commerce, also known as live shopping or livestreaming e-commerce, is a potent mix of streaming, chatting and shopping.

The temptation to shop is turbocharged with algorithms like that of TikTok Shop, enticing people to try more channels and products.

1

2

1. YouTube content creators Diana Extein, left, and Candice Waltrip, right, film clothing try-ons during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 in Playa Vista, CA. 2. YouTube content creator Peja Anne, 15, makes a video with beauty products as her mom Kristin Roeder films during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 in Playa Vista, CA.

A YouTube content creator who declined to give her name browses YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday in Playa Vista, Calif.

YouTube content creator Cheraye Lewis’ channel focuses on lifestyle and fragrance, and a brand deal with Fenty Beauty helped launch her content to larger audiences.

More than 500,000 video creators as of July have signed up to be a part of YouTube Shopping, the company said.

Creators who promote products can make money through ads and brand deals, as well as commissions.

YouTube already shares advertising and subscription revenue with its creators and currently does not take a cut from its shopping tools, said Travis Katz, YouTube Shopping vice president.

“For us, it’s really about connecting the dots,” Katz said. “At YouTube we are first and foremost very focused on, how do we make sure that our creators are successful? This gives a new way for creators to monetize.”

Companies like Austin-based BK Beauty, which was founded by YouTube creator Lisa J, said YouTubers have helped drive sales for their products.

“They’ve built these long-term audiences,” said Sophia Monetti, BK Beauty’s senior manager of social commerce and influencer marketing. “A lot of these creators have established channels. They’ve been around for a decade and have just a really engaged community.”

To be sure, YouTube faces a formidable rival in TikTok, which is a leader in the live shopping space (its parent company, Byte Dance, is being sold to an American investor group so that the hugely popular app can keep operating in the U.S.).

Two years ago, the social video company launched TikTok Shop, working with creators and brands on live shopping shows that encourage viewers to buy products. TikTok had 8 million hours of live shopping sessions in 2024.

YouTube says its size and technology create advantages, along with the loyalty its creators build with fans when it comes to product recommendations.

Bridget Dolan, a director of YouTube Shopping Partnerships, said “shopping has been in YouTube’s DNA from Day One” and that the company has been integrating shopping features into its viewing experience.

YouTube content creators peruse products and film content during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday in Playa Vista, Calif.

Santa Clarita-based YouTube creator Cheraye Lewis said that YouTube Shopping helped her gain traction and earn a trusting audience through quality recommendations. Lewis, who has 109,000 subscribers on YouTube, makes videos about items such as fragrances and skincare products.

Lewis has been a video creator for eight years and has worked with such companies as Rihanna’s beauty brand Fenty.

“I try to inspire women and men to feel bold and confident through the fragrances that they’re wearing,” Lewis said at the event Thursday. “I give my audience real talk, real authenticity.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s “sanctuary jurisdiction list” has more holes than the plot for the latest “Mission Impossible” film.

All you need to know about its accuracy is how my native Orange County fared.

The only O.C. city on the list is Huntington Beach — you know, the ‘burb with an all-Republican council that’s suing California for being a sanctuary state, declared itself a “non-sanctuary” community in January and and plans to place a plaque outside the city’s main library with an acrostic “MAGA” message.

Missing from the list? Santa Ana, long synonymous with undocumented immigrants, which declared itself a sanctuary city all the way back in 2016 and has a deportation defense fund for residents.

More laughable errors: Livingston, the first city in the Central Valley to declare itself a sanctuary for immigrants in 2017, isn’t on the list. Yet Santee in San Diego County, so notorious for its racism that people still call it “Klantee,” is.

There’s even Represa. Ever heard of it? Me, neither. Turns out it’s not a city but the name of the post office for two places not exactly known as sanctuaries: Folsom State Prison and California State Prison, Sacramento.

Within hours of his inauguration, Donald Trump signed an executive order tellingly titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” that, among other things, stated that sanctuary jurisdictions should no longer receive federal funds.

But the May 29 list laying out the jurisdictions that are supposedly subject to the penalty was so flawed that it was taken off the Homeland Security website within days. It’s still not back up. The effort seemed cobbled together by someone who typed “sanctuary” and a city’s name into Google and swallowed whatever the AI spat up without even bothering to cross-check with Wikipedia.

Trump’s opponents are already depicting this fiasco as emblematic of an administration that loves to shoot itself in the foot, then put the bloody foot in its mouth. But it’s even worse than that.

The list shows how blinded by fury the Trump administration is about illegal immigration. There is no mistake too big or too small for Trump to forgive, as long as it’s in the name of deportation and border walls. The president’s obsession with tying all of this country’s real and imagined ills to newcomers reminds me of Cato the Elder, the Roman Republic politician famous for allegedly saying “Carthage must be destroyed” at the end of all his speeches, no matter the topic.

That’s why the pushback by politicians against Homeland Security’s big, beautiful boo-boo has been quick — and hilarious.

Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns listens to speakers discuss the city’s plan to make Huntington Beach “a non-sanctuary city for illegal immigration” during a City Council meeting in January

(James Carbone)

Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns appeared on KCAL News to declare that Surf City’s inclusion was “pure negligence” while holding a small white bust of Donald Trump the way a toddler clings to its blankey.

Vista Mayor John Franklin, meanwhile, was on the city council that voted in 2018 to support the Trump administration’s unsuccessful lawsuit against California’s sanctuary state law. He told ABC 10News San Diego that he thought Vista made the list because “another city in the county that bears a similar name to ours … may have, and I haven’t confirmed it yet, adopted a sanctuary policy.”

Dude, say the city’s name: Chula Vista, a far cooler, muy Latino town closer to the U.S.-Mexico border than Vista is. It’s also on the list and isn’t a sanctuary city, either.

On the other end of the political spectrum, Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) told the Voice of OC that he recently advised Santa Ana officials to “keep their head low” and not make a big deal about their sanctuary city status — as if hiding under a desk, like a “Scooby Doo” caper, will somehow save the city from the Trump administration’s haphazard hammer.

Immigration, more than any other part of Trump’s agenda, exemplifies the Silicon Valley cliché of moving fast and breaking things. His administration has deported people by mistake and given the middle finger to judges who order them brought back. Trump officials are now shipping immigrants to countries they have no ties to, and shrugging their shoulders. Immigration agents are trying to apprehend people in places long considered off-limits, like schools and places of worship.

And yet, this still isn’t enough for Trump.

Deportation rates are rising, but still not to the levels seen in some years of the Biden and Obama administrations, and not even close to Operation Wetback, the Eisenhower-era program that deported over a million Mexican nationals. Trump’s deportation dream team — Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — has berated ICE officials for not doing more to comply with Trump’s wishes.

The sanctuary list embodies all of this. Who cares if the wreckage involves human lives, or the Constitution? The sloppiness is the point. The cruelty is the point.

Homeland Security didn’t answer my request to explain the flaws in its sanctuary jurisdiction list and why it was taken down. Instead, a spokesperson emailed a statement saying “the list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly.” The decision whether to include a place, the statement said, “is based on the evaluation of numerous factors.”

Except the truth, it seems.

Let’s laugh at the absurd mistakes while we can. Really, how pendejo can you be to think that Huntington Beach is friendly to undocumented immigrants but Santa Ana isn’t? Let’s laugh while we can, because things are going to get much worse before they get better.