<b>"Duet or stitch a big creator to steal their reach."</b>

<b>"Duet or stitch a big creator to steal their reach."</b>

The wisdom assumes you inherit the original's audience by association. It's appealing — piggyback on a hit. The piggyback rarely materializes.

The mechanism: a duet/stitch is a <i>new video</i> tested on its own signals. You don't get routed to the original's viewers automatically; you get tested cold like everything else, now competing against the far better original it references.

What's true: stitching works when <i>your</i> addition is the value — a sharp reaction, a correction, a payoff the original lacked. The big creator's name isn't reach; it's context. Your clip still has to earn the test pool alone.