Create a community on networks by sharing what you like

Like many, during the pandemic, Naya Yurie (25 years old) suffered from depression. He lived in a small apartment with his family and had no space to relax. Do scroll on her cell phone on TikTok, it occurred to her to venture out and upload her own fashion videos and advice makeup. “I thought I had something valuable to say and that’s why I took the risk. My videos worked fine, but they didn’t show my face and my username didn’t say my name. Then when I got more followers, I changed to a username with my name on it and started showing off. I was no longer so embarrassed, because I had the support of followers,” says Naya (@nayayurie), a medical graduate who has 38,000 followers, a number that on TikTok is considered an emerging content creator.

For several years now, the trend of videos of Get ready with me (GRWM) or deal with me takes a lot of content from fashion, beauty and lifestyle influencers, although it’s not just profiles with hundreds of thousands of followers who create this content, but also women – mostly between 20 and 30s – who record videos while getting ready to go out, share advice beauty or tell personal stories like hobby or even get out of your comfort zone and dare to try something new.

Naya has struggled with her depression for years, which began while she was still at university studying a degree that didn’t fully satisfy her. When she started uploading videos, she discovered what made her happy and what she would eventually like to pursue. Creating content has also helped her cope with her depression and the generation of community that occurs in the comments left by her followers motivates her to continue on this path. “One of the things that inspires me the most about uploading videos is generating that sense of community. I love interacting, responding to comments and making people feel identified with my videos. At first I was trying to make everything perfect, I’m not going to lie, but after a while I started talking a little about my severe depression. People started to be interested in my approach and to share their experiences with me. There, I realized that, even if I share very small pieces of my life, there will always be people who identify with me. It really inspired me to continue telling people about myself so that people wouldn’t feel as alone as I did at any given time,” Naya says.

Fernanda Vásquez (24) also uploads videos of this style to TikTok as a hobby. She enjoys every creative process, from thinking about the idea to editing it, but one of the things she enjoys most is undoubtedly the community generated by her followers and the feedback they receive for support her. “I really appreciate the support from the other girls. It’s one of the most beautiful things to know that you contribute something, even if it’s very small. It’s rich to receive back other girls who don’t necessarily upload videos. I was very lucky, because my videos are aimed at the audience they are aimed at, which is to say women,” says the graphic designer, who has almost 15,000 followers on the social network (@ fernanda.vsqz).

This year, sales engineer Paula Vega (23) undertook a 366-day series showing her outfits, so he documents his choices for different occasions on a daily basis. One of the motivations for developing this idea was to use all the clothes she has in her wardrobe and thus demonstrate to others that it is not necessary to buy new clothes all the time to innovate. “One of my goals is also to make people understand that it’s okay to use the same thing two or three times a week, that it’s okay to repeat clothes and outfits. Often we see that some influencers have new clothes every week, which is not bad, but we also have to play with what we already have,” explains Paula, with 174 subscribers on the social network (_.mylifeaspau. _), and who decided to upload videos because she likes this content and the feeling of sharing data with more women in a space of solidarity and not of envy.

Constanza Carillo (26 years old) was long insisted by her family that she put videos online before daring to do so. After earning his business engineering degree, while looking for a job, he took the time to strategize to start uploading content to TikTok: “I wanted to look for a topic that would be sustainable for me to long term, over time and in practice, and that’s why I started with the get ready with mewhich were fashionable. I also thought it could be a good work tool when looking for a job with my knowledge of social media management and content creation. I see it not only as a pleasure, but also as a way to find work in my region. » » says Constanza, who chose to specialize in marketing and business management during her career.

While uploading videos, he was confronted with one of his biggest insecurities: his dark circles. She was afraid to go out without makeup, but creating content was presented as an opportunity to face that insecurity and show herself for who she is. “I felt vulnerable. I was really worried about my dark circles, but I realized that what I wanted to offer as a content creator was transparency and for people to see what I really look like. In the first videos, I wanted to go out without makeup, so that people wouldn’t say later that I was fake or something like that. I want you to know my face, makeup is an option to enhance one’s beauty, but we should not depend on it,” says Constanza (@constanza.fcp), with almost 14,000 followers.

Many women who start creating videos say that discovering this new hobby is a consequence of stepping out of their comfort zone. Pilar Orfali, psychologist Psicoenred.cl , explains that it is important to understand the meaning of the comfort zone because “it doesn’t always mean being comfortable. Often it generates the opposite, like discomfort and discomfort, and we stay there because it is what we know and it is easier to tolerate this discomfort. The comfort zone is not bad, but it can prevent us from doing new things, having new habits, discovering hobbies or interests; This is why you have to go out from time to time.

Constanza Carrillo remembers that when she started uploading videos, she was afraid that they would not be accepted, but it was enough for one person to tell her that they liked her content, her data or her story, so that this feeling goes away. “When they tell you, ‘Thank you, that helped me a lot, that helped me,’ it’s really very comforting, even if it’s just one person telling you that. My audience is 98% women and it’s very nice to receive support. Fernanda Vásquez shares the same opinion: “The goal of videos is not to make money, but to show the beautiful things you like and share them with more friends who are not necessarily friends. With other content creators, we have become great friends. It’s a pleasant environment. There is definitely someone in the world who will like your video and be interested in your content.

Showing daily life in videos helps generate a sense of belonging among those who consume these videos. Psychologist Pilar Orfali assures that “these communities arise from the collective, where girls talk about their feelings, show what they like, so that a person can connect with the feeling of belonging by seeing that they have something in common and seeing that they are interacting and a link is generated. “This is how these spaces strengthen each other, just as connections are created in face-to-face spaces.”

For Pilar, it’s interesting to examine these trends from a feminist mental health perspective, in a context where women have been relegated to private spaces and ordered to view others as competitors for our validation . “It’s wonderful to see that there are these spaces where we’re talking about the beauty of another woman’s self-confidence, whether it’s creating this content showing what her daily life is like or what she thinks or what she feels. This shows us that it breaks a little this pattern that has always told us that we are not enough and that is why we must look at others to compare ourselves and see what we are lacking. In a way, we can connect with our sense of collective and thus, as women, create many more spaces online and in person. We can also see it as a way to heal together and understand that we have never been insufficient and that together we are stronger. Explain.

Naya Yurie feels more productive when she sets out to create content: “Sometimes when I’m going to record a vlog, I want to get up early because I’m so excited to record. On the one hand, in the world of social media, a hundred people is very few, but in real life, a hundred people is a lot of people watching you. I’ve enjoyed clicking with this for a long time, I think it’s an achievement to reach this many people.

Cristián Leporati, professor of political and government communication at the Diego Portales University, assures that sharing our data and what we like through social networks is a natural form of communication for the millennial and Z generations. “They are born in these terms of communication and contact. in these virtual worlds. For them it is natural to operate in these patterns, all these digital community processes are happening again during and after the pandemic, so these generations see it naturally and spontaneously. What the digital world inherits from us as a communication system and as a social system of communities is the ability to see each other and be in permanent contact, Even if you have a hundred or a thousand people following you, they are important to you, because they are part of this new system of sociability, which is the way of being with people and interacting,” explains the academic.

From the same perspective, sociologist Carlos Porter considers that in the digital age, each person, influencer or not, is a medium in themselves, because they have the capacity to generate their own model and communicate it through networks. “Each user is a medium and each user has their level of influence in relation to the people who follow them and the people that the algorithm presents to them. What is interesting to analyze is what used to be called massive phenomena, which now really are because people have a power that they did not have before. Each person finds their own communication model and lives in it as they see fit. Today’s influencers have truly become people who influence,” says Carlos, Director of Porter Advertising.