TikTok goes beyond memes: science videos have gone viral on the net

a TectoK It’s more than just dances and memes. a Request From new dynamic short videos to social networks With a series of influences, music, languages ​​and popular algorithm, which delivers a large audience for creators who go past the steps designed for dance.

This is the case for creative people Antonio MirandaAnd the Anna Christina DuarteAnd the Louisa Liao e Emerson Espendola. They entered the platform less than a year ago, encouraged by the boredom of social isolation caused by the pandemic Corona Virus. And they weren’t the only ones: only between February 2019 and 2020, The number of app installs has increased by 992% among Brazilian users.

With completely different styles, the four started producing science-oriented videos and found millions of users who not only like but want to learn through TikTok. Meet the creators:

“I get messages from students who say, ‘You should be my teacher, because what you teach me in 30 seconds, I don’t learn in class.’ Unemployed due to the pandemic, the actor was selling bread to help with his bills when he first downloaded TikTok, ” says Emerson Espendola. Once in August 2020.

While producing videos, things changed for Spindola when he did TikTok to explain what happens in the human body when drinking water. By proxy, he wore a blue T-shirt to make the character of Water and decided his passage would be a representation of the esophagus.

Without knowing it, she was limiting her content for the next few months. The videos have exploded with curiosity about the human body, mixing humor with performance. Always with this style, Espendola has amassed 1.7 million followers and 33.4 million likes In less than a year on the platform, plus Partnerships with Bradesco SegorosAnd the pharmacy e Rap 10.

Despite his interest in science, the actor did not go to college in the area, as is Miranda, Duarte, and Law. And he listened to his followers’ response to the content, he realized that a lack of scientific knowledge, in the academic sense, could be a positive thing.

“I don’t have a vision of a man who understands it deeply, so I try to convey it in a way that I understand and that’s fun,” said Espendola. “The body is a really small machine, so everything is very mechanical. This mechanic has flaws that can be quite funny, depending on the look you’re giving it.”

@ mister.emersonWhat happens when water gets into the ear ??? #ComediaTiktok # forgiveness of God #Water #he heard♬ original sound – Emerson

Espendola isn’t the only one who brings a touch of humor to his science videos. It seems like Antonio Miranda, a nanotechnology student and theater and communications enthusiast, has the perfect formula for creating content on TikTok. His series, “Fatos Curiosos com Antonio”, mixes creative video releases with topics covering a wide range of topics, from “How do you extract your DNA?” To “Do you know how fast a rifle bullet is?”

Miranda says, “Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been so sad when I didn’t have an answer to a daily question.” “What I want to work on is scientific communication, which makes the passage of knowledge more smooth.”

Before publishing his first video on the platform, try to develop strategies to ensure that the content won’t have the same result as his content. Rollers No Instagram – There, its most successful one has 2,700 views. Things aren’t the same in TikTok: At five months on the app, Miranda already has it 2.6 million likes And 292 thousand followers.

@ antonio.miranda42How do bears change color? ## agoravocêsabe♬ Original sound – Antonio Miranda

For Abel Reis, digital media specialist and co-founder of consultancy Logun Ventures, TikTok promotes rapid deployment as Miranda: “It’s an always intriguing phenomenon for people who have not been on the platform one day and three months after their explosion of followers, precisely because TikTok favors the effect. Content weighting and availability of this type of result. “

Anna Christina Duarte, who recently graduated in Biological Sciences, also understands the phenomenon of viral spread. I started with a ClipeCasa account in June 2020, as I pursued the challenge of sharing things for free, from clothespins to someday you get a home. Currently, it has already achieved the equivalent of 15,000 riyals.

The fallout from ClipeCasa was enormous, to the point where the rival has implemented TikTok. Kwai, Signed a contract with the creator to produce 25 videos per month, but the exchanges were not very frequent for many of the videos. So she decided to combine three interests: teaching, editing videos and seeing things through a microscope.

Embed a TweetI was slightly horrified at the end♬ Originally – Anna Cristina

“People liked it and they said,“ Show an ant, show honey, show a lobe of skin, ”they were saying what they were curious to see. So I took it and posted it on my TikTok profile, where I had very few followers,” says Duarte.

Nowadays, videos with the microscope are more successful than ClipeCasa. Although it was created in March 2021, it has already bypassed the personal account 7.2 million likes And 765 thousand followers. For comparison, the video-sharing account has 3.6 million likes and 462.5K followers, after it was created nearly a year ago.

“What is remarkable is what is disgusting.” Duarte said, in a video of an egg yolk, there was nothing and no perception generated. Despite this, she claims that her followers were asking for more explanations, so she is looking for ways “to reconcile the fun part of The thing “with scientific communication.”

About science content on TikTok, Reis rates the following: “We know what a math class or history is on YouTube, but we don’t know exactly what it will be on TikTok. Structured knowledge and science seem to take a long time and this is not exactly the nature of the platform. On the other hand, It might be interesting to think about how to create engaging and engaging content in a format like this. ”

Like Duarte, an aspiring mechanical engineering student and astronaut, Luisa Liao, she also wants to combine teaching with fun. “I love talking about astronomy, and when I joined TikTok and saw a lot of people interested in hearing my talk, I thought, ‘Wow, I’m going to talk now! Leão says.

In its content, the young woman gives advice to students who, like her, want to be an astronaut someday. Taking advantage of the app’s set of influences, music and languages, she also talks about her curiosity about life in space and about space travels by international agencies.

On the social network since February 2021, Leão has 872K likes and 83.7K followers. Like Duarte, she was invited to be pushed by Kwai and the opportunity led to “publi” with Ban Bank. The young woman also had a prominent model: the astronaut and the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Marcus Pontes, Who re-published Lion TikTok and still is Provide a text of thanks For an aspiring astronaut.

Embed a TweetNew news for you! #Mars Astronomy #NASA♬ Formula – Labrinth

Understand TikTok’s algorithm and viral spread

According to data from Priority dataOh Brazil It was TikTok’s third largest audience in 2020 with 34.7 million installationsIt is followed by the United States (45.6 million) and India (99.8 million). In all, TikTok has been downloaded more than two billion times in the world, according to the consultancy Sensor tower.

The app audience is mostly made up of people under the age of 30, and they represent 63% of the users. For the 51% who open the app 1 to 3 times a day, the average is about 45 minutes on the social network, as mentioned before. Business applications.

For specialist Abel Reis, the short videos application brought different semiotics to network dynamics. In contrast to the tests in Youtube And on Instagram, TikTok has managed to prevent the bubble effect from spreading across the platform, thanks to an algorithm that detects the contents that users view the most.

“You don’t have an hour to tell us in detail about a chemical or physical phenomenon and be a little idle to create an opportunity for ads,” explains Rees, referring to YouTube. “It’s a platform whose architecture and language was born in favor of content crushing, which is packaged in a way that catches your eye for a short period of time.”

Espendola explained that any video posted on the platform is played by 100 people. From this number, TikTok analyzes when each user watched the video and what the interaction was – If you have likes, comments or shares –But the main factor is time. Depending on the outcome, the content will play for more or fewer users, etc.

In this dynamic, the first seconds become essential. Miranda, who says she always pleads with something interesting comments: “It saves three seconds to convince a person to watch your video, so attracting a natural human’s sense of curiosity is the main thing” to ensure visualizations, such as editing scenes to pretend you’re falling from a building or crashing into a car .

“A content creator approach tends to be more performing [no TikTok] Than other platforms. Something is more entertaining than informative in its classic sense, “Rees assesses.