Adventures Of A Middle Aged Tik Tokker

I have had a YouTube channel for about ten years, mostly focusing on comedy and – for a few years - the odd John Key impersonation, when he was “Pro Miss New Zealand and Mr Truism.” (Say it fast and you’ll get it). Then about four years ago it all went pear shaped and my channel seemed to have been put out to pasture. New video uploads – which regularly used to get thousands of views - started to get tens of views. A Google search confirmed my worst suspicions – I was most likely a victim of the dreaded “algorithms”. No – not a seventies disco band, but a mysterious set of equations (so mystical they may or may not even exist) which define who gets seen and who doesn’t. A bit like a bouncer in a hip night club.

However, my undwindling passion for comedy never waned, so I kept making my videos and posting them on YouTube. The views continued to go down and down, until getting a simple “like” was like Christmas. I started to have some serious (excuse the pun) self doubts. Was I no longer funny ? Was I irrelevant ? How could videos that were so much joy to make not be bringing any joy to the world ? As a “creator” I was naturally aware of the fickleness of an audience, but this wasn’t just fickle – it was f--- all ! I did some soul searching and came to the conclusion that yes - I was in it for the right reasons. If you ask any creative person they will probably tell you being creative is like boxing - it’s about connecting with people and hopefully knocking their socks off. The thought of someone chuckling at your Kiwi video in rural Azerbaijan is simply wonderful. Anyway, my videos had pretty much stopped getting any traction. I was all dressed up and nowhere to go. I came pretty close to closing my YouTube account but for some reason I didn’t. Possibly because I couldn’t follow the “how to delete” tutorial. (Now there’s a comedy idea …)

Then out of the blue a friend messaged me and suggested trying TikTok. I had heard it was an app for kids so told her it just wasn’t me. She replied with a link to an eighty year old guy who was “Tik Tok famous.” So I joined up, and was immediately surprised at the simplicity. When uploading to YouTube you have to worry about getting the perfect title, key words, immaculate thumbnails, playlists, correctness, cross references to other videos and so on. With TikTok you follow a fairly basic process involving a couple of simple choices ( Cutesy special effects ? No thanks. ) and there it is. The added bonus of Tik Tok seems to be that – unlike YouTube – it randomly serves up your older videos to give them a second life. I started by uploading some of my “greatest hits” from YouTube. As TikTok focuses on short videos from a matter of seconds up to one minute, this was pretty straightforward. I Just needed to choose my favourite jokes or scenes from YouTube and transfer them to Tik Tok.

Within hours everything had changed. I started to get hundreds – and then thousands of views. That was a few months ago, just before lockdown. At the last count I have had about 26 million views. Has my life changed ? Not one iota. I have relatively few “followers” but at least I’m having fun, and so far haven’t been algorithmed into comedy oblivion.

What amazes me about TikTok is the vastness of humanity and the human experience. People seem unafraid to express themselves in deeply personal ways, and it is strangely reassuring to see that humans everywhere share similar challenges and struggles. Or perhaps we’ve all simply gone mad because of global lockdowns and just want to connect with the world. What I find appalling is the whole “comments” thing and the way people of all ages seemed to be targeted by online bullies. In my opinion it would all be much healthier with no comments at all, but that’s the way it is. I try not to read them a) because I’m too lazy, and b) because comments are a double edged sword. However, some comments are in your face (although I just found out you can turn them off). I read one comment recently that somehow slipped through the cracks. The person had clearly studied my looks, personality, age and so on with the intention of cruelly offending me as a human being, and I thought “What a tragedy to waste those precious moments of your life projecting your own self loathing onto a complete stranger.” We really need to educate young and vulnerable people that the “haters” are one hundred per cent highlighting what they have inside them , not their victims.

I have been told my videos are “dad humour.” To be honest I actually had to Google that to see what it means. I am still none the wiser – something to do with puns and cheesiness ? I guess if you are a father and/or over the age of forty any attempt at humour automatically falls into the category of “dad jokes” and there’s nothing you can do about it. It is almost a given that middle aged men can never be truly funny – only corny. How unfair is that ?! Do “Mum jokes “ exist ? Uncle jokes ? Neighbour jokes ? There are countlless hilarious TikTok videos about middle aged people “on a mission to take over Tik Tok.” It is great to see people my age who have such a youthful spirit and the ability to laugh at getting older. There even seems to be an “age pride” movement where people in their forties and fifties are “coming out” about their age.

Like many people around the world I am in the position of having to reinvent myself. Until lockdown came along I was a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL). We are very much the human pigeons of the teaching world, darting and diving for the crumbs of jobs that come and go due to the ever - changing international student market. Nowadays, when the government says it’s all about “bums on seats” – I think they mean English teachers on park benches. Hopefully the education industry will take off again soon. Only time will tell. TikTok …

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