Created by Elena YH Lin • Instagram @elnlnx • X @elnlnx. Available in English (left) and French (right). A full description of the infographic can be found in this document.

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Written by Ive Velikova. Read the article here!

Workshop slides can be accessed via this link. Image alt text are embedded; you can also find them in the speaker notes, as well as in this document.

Workshop recording can be accessed below or via this link. Closed captions are available in English (French to come).

overview • guest speaker • outro

Vi-An

Welcome everyone. Thanks so much for being here!  We’re so excited to welcome you to our event, Walk the Walk, Tik the Tok, featuring the one and only Darrion Nguyen. I am Vi-An, one of the members of SciComm Collective. I use she/they pronouns, and you’ll see that all of the other members of our team also have “SCC” in front of their names. If ever you have any questions or concerns, or some technical issues, you can message either Abbey, or really anyone in our group. Please feel free to reach out to us. I also want to note that we have closed captioning available—or live transcript—and you can find it at the bottom of your Zoom screen. It’s going to look like this and it’s going to say “live transcript,” and if you click on it, you have the option of showing subtitles if you would like. Last thing, I also want to thank Yvan Otu for designing our poster and art for this event. This slide that you see is designed by him. You can look out for more of his art on his Instagram.

Before we get started, I do want to acknowledge that SciComm Collective was founded in Tio’tia:ke, or Montreal, which is from where I am speaking to you. Our work primarily takes place on unceded Indigenous lands, or lands that were taken without permission. Tio’tia:ke has long served as a gathering place for many First Nations, including the Kanien’keha:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat, the Abenaki, and the Anishinaabeg. My fellow organisers are also distributed across Turtle Island, or North America. While virtual gathering spaces might appear neutral, they are also tied to the land. We are gathering today on a platform called Zoom whose closest data server [to me] is in Toronto, on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. This land is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. I invite you to please take a moment to visit native-land.ca to learn more about lands you occupy, and to reflect on why we’re doing this land acknowledgment today.

I want to also talk about some guiding principles that we as SciComm Collective have as a group. These are principles that we try to uphold within our group, as well as with every event that we organize. We always try to uphold spaces that encourage both learning and unlearning, and we want to always bear in mind the three “P”s. The three “P”s are “power,” “privilege,” and “positionality”—the power, privilege and position that you hold will influence how you navigate this world and the perspectives that you have. It’s always important to be aware of this within yourself, as well as within others. It’s also important to respect the value of lived experiences: being aware of experiences other people might have had, or your own experiences.

A few more ground rules. If you would like to share this event on social media, talk about what's going on, what you've learned, we would really be happy if you did—and you can tag us either @SciCommArt on Twitter, or @SciCommCollective on Instagram. You can also use the hashtags #EDIYourSci or #SciCommShenanigans. If you do share things about the event, please also keep in mind to respect the confidentiality of those who share as well as the attendees of the event.

I also want to acknowledge the events of the past week. As many of you probably know, on Tuesday evening last week, eight people were murdered in a shooting—many of whom were women, sex workers, and Asian American. In the past week, many of us have been balancing feelings of grief, anger, and exhaustion. I know that for myself, I definitely have been feeling a lot of those things. But with this event today, we really hope to be holding a space that is centred on joy and humour. I really hope that you’ll be able to enjoy this event today.

Finally, I want to introduce Darrion Nguyen. He is a science educator and a science communicator who creates content under the name of Lab Shenanigans. You can find him @Lab_Shenanigans on various platforms. He has a background in theatre and biochemistry—which, combined, help him make hilarious science content that can be found on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and more. Darrion has over 500,000 followers on TikTok, and some videos going well beyond one million views. He’s cool; he’s funny; he’s self aware; he’s been nicknamed The Bill Nye of the millennials—and is truly redefining what can be done in science communication. Thank you Darrion for joining us, and I will pass on the torch to you.

Darrion

Oh my gosh, thank you for the grand introduction. Before I start, can I ask you guys to turn on your cameras—you guys probably gonna hate me. I sound like that professor but I just like seeing everyone’s beautiful faces, and I just want to talk to you guys. So even though I’m talking today, I see this more as a discussion—you can interrupt me anytime you want.

And I always, always encourage people: please, roast me. It just makes me laugh. I think it’s funny. So, if you have anything to say just drop it in the comments; turn on your mic, just say it, I do not mind. One time I was stuttering and then someone was like, “Mood.” I don’t know, I just thought that was funny and I laughed the entire time.

All right, I’m going to share my screen. I feel like a professor. I’m trying to share my screen guys—can y’all see? OK cool. So, oh my gosh, please do not lag on me today. My computer has been a little bit slow.

So for today’s workshop, I’ll be discussing using social media to communicate your science. My name is Darrion, also known as Lab Shenanigans online. Just a brief background about myself: I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin; I attended the school from 2013 to 2017. Here’s a little picture of me. This is my junior year in college—ugh, my hair—and the grad student that I worked under. I also studied theatre. Here’s a picture of me in one of the plays. I think this was my freshman or sophomore year; I was a little squire.

Then after I graduated, I wanted to gain more research experience, so then I worked as a research technician from 2017 to 2020 at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. Here’s a little picture of me after I sectioned the mouse cerebellum and I stained it, looking at calretinin and parvalbumin, and my PI was like, “Oh my god this is so cute, let’s print it and hang it up on the wall.” I was like, “OK!” I’m just geeking out over this picture.

Then, while working as a research technician, I would often stay late in lab doing experiments, but also just doing some lab shenanigans. This was probably 2018, and Lab Shenanigans served as a safe place for me to just video dump all of my silly videos. The initial intent was just to have fun in lab and just to post silly videos. But then, once I gained a large platform, I kind of felt like Spider Man: “With great power comes great responsibility.” With such a large platform, I wanted to truly make an impact. I decided to turn my entertaining content to be entertaining, relatable, and educational.

Lab Shenanigans started 2018 and then eventually the platform just gained so much momentum that I stopped working in a research lab; I eventually turned down grad school. I got into my dream neuroscience PhD program, but things are just really escalating with social media, so I deferred for a year. And then, after a year of deferring, I just decided to ultimately turn it down. And so, I’ve been a full content creator for the past couple of months. I started out on Facebook and then I went over to Instagram and Twitter, and then finally TikTok. TikTok was a really good app for me to experiment. On the other platforms, I made all of this funny entertaining content but I’m going to shift myself and my content to be more educational. Can I do that on TikTok? This was mid-2019, summer of 2019, and around this time, TikTok still had the Musical.ly residue, so people were like “I don’t want to download TikTok; it’s so cringey.” I was one of the people. I downloaded TikTok as a joke; I wasn’t wanting to take it seriously. But it was also a good time for me to experiment, to see if I can make my content educational—but also make people interested.

I kind of want to just talk about the brainstorming process with how I come up with some of my videos. For those that aren’t familiar with my videos, here is one that I made last year.

In a lot of my videos, I like to personify molecules. This is the cytoplasm arguing with the ribosome, and it’s titled “Ribosomes are passionate about their business.”

TikTok Audio

[Background voices arguing] Maybe if you had a *beep* business that you were passionate about, then you would know what it takes to run a *beep* business. But you don’t, so don’t even act like you know what I’m talking about!

Darrion

Another video is—oh I love this one because it’s so chaotic—I just love the audio. This is a chaperone refolding a misfolded protein.

TikTok Audio

Why do it keep doing that? Like it’s going this way, like no I’m, fucking, I’m fucking trying to straighten it down! This shit keep going like, whoop-a-duh-doop.

Darrion

And then this is the last one. This is when a DNA virus enters the nucleus of the cell.

TikTok Audio

[Character 1] Wanda! 

[Character 2] What are you doing? 

[Character 1] Wanda! 

[Character 2] How did you get in here? 

[Character 1] Listen to me. This whole thing is about Vision. 

[Character 2] Get out of my house! 

[Character 1] Hayward was trying to bring him—

[Character 2] Don’t talk to me about that; I don’t want to hear about it.

Darrion

As you guys can tell, I’m a huge WandaVision fan. Once I heard this audio clip on TikTok, I was like, I have to use it. I have to.

I want to talk about how I create content on TikTok—not only on TikTok, on other social media platforms too.

When it comes to creating content, you always have to think, Who is your target audience? Because every social media platform has a different demographic. TikTok is mostly filled with Gen Z kiddos; and then Instagram, Gen Z/Millennials; and then Twitter, mostly Millennials; and Twitter and Facebook are mostly the older folks. You have to think about who your target audience is and try to make content that you think they would like and understand. 

Also, understand the trends for each social media platform. This is very important. I love TikTok because there’s this notion that we all are inside of an inside joke, like we’re all in this together. TikTok has a really wonderful environment where you can just duet and stitch other people’s content, and the inside joke is just being added on. So, understand the trends for each social media platform.

Then also, What is your purpose? What is the purpose of the video or content that you’re wanting to make? Are you wanting to purely entertain the viewers, the audience? Do you want to teach them science? Or do you want to specifically teach them about this topic? Or do you want to offer advice? Always think about, What is your purpose? 

And then—this sounds so cliche—but practice, practice, practice. I like to make a lot of videos. Most of my content—as you guys know—are in video form. When I first started out making videos, which was probably back in, I don’t know, sixth grade, I was really awkward with the camera. I kind of still am a little awkward, but it just takes a lot of practice getting used to talking to a phone, talking to a camera. So, definitely practice. What’s nice is, if you mess up, you can just redo it! So, practice, practice, practice.

Then also—once again this sounds so cliche—but be yourself. Be authentic and have fun. 

[Laughs at chat comment] “Petition for Darrion to post a video from sixth grade.” I might. I might post it on YouTube one day.

The last sentence is very important not as a science communicator but as a content creator. Because I see a lot of content creators get lost in trying to consistently cater to their audience’s interests, and you lose a little bit of authenticity. You want to make sure you stay true to yourself. Everything that you post, you want to post it not because “I just want to make my audience or my followers happy, so I’m going to post something that they want to see.” Sometimes I do catch myself falling into that hole, but I always have to take a step back and remember, “No the whole reason why I have social media, or the reason why I made this, is 1) for me to have fun, and 2) to teach people, to teach people science.” So, make sure you be yourself, be authentic, and have fun with what you’re doing.

OK, I’m going to take a step back, and just talk about how the mechanics of TikTok—how does TikTok work?

For those that don’t have TikTok, it’s a social media app where you can make videos that are generally about thirty seconds long. Once you open the app, you have these two different tabs. There’s the “Following” page and “For You” page. “Following”: it’s kind of the equivalent to Instagram’s home page. Actually let me back track—there are these three little icons on the side, so you can like a video—

[Laughs at chat comment] I’m sorry, I’m reading Claudia’s comment. I’m just laughing; it’s funny.

OK, you can also comment, and you can share and save a video. This is the one that I use a lot. If I come across a video where I’m like, “Ooh this is funny,” I’m going to share it; I’m going to save it.

Then, there is the “Following” page, which is similar to Instagram’s home page. This is kind of like, you’re watching videos from the content creators that you follow. 

Next is the “For You” page. Most people spend their time on the “For You” page. It’s equivalent to Instagram’s “Explore” page, where you’re watching videos from people that you don’t necessarily follow. I think that’s what makes TikTok stand out from the rest of the other social media platforms—a lot of people spend time on this page; we’re always watching content from people that we don’t follow. It’s kind of like, vice-versa: if you post a video, it’s most likely going to show up on other people’s “For You” page. You have a higher chance of having your content being exposed from people that don’t generally follow you.

Then, on the bottom right, is the audio sound of the video. This is probably the most important thing in every video, in my opinion. Once you click the audio sound, it leads you to the source and all the other content creators that use that sound.

Can you guys see my mouse by the way? No? I’m like moving it. Yeah? Yes, cool.

So, in this particular video, they’re using an audio called “Walking on a Dream,” and a thousand people used this sound. I try to find sounds that are popular, so when this number is in about the hundred thousands or even the millions, that’s when I save the audio. Or I’ll add it to favourites.

OK so, once you save an audio, everything is saved in this little button, this little directory over here. So once you click the save icon, you have your saved—or your favourited videos—your hashtags, your sounds, your effects. For videos, I’ll save a video where I’m like, “Ooh I like the way that they filmed this angle, I’m going to save this video.” Or, “I like the way that they conveyed this emotion.” Or, “I like the way that they explained this, I’m going to save this.” Right now, on TikTok, I’m on the designer side of TikTok, because I’m always trying to find inspiration to make new designs for my merchandise store, so I’ll save a lot of design videos. 

And then hashtags: #LearnOnTikTok #STEMLife #ScienceFair #ChemClout.

The one that I use a lot is the sounds. In fact, this is the WandaVision voice, that’s the one that we just saw earlier. So I’ll save everything in here. 

Then, effects. So one thing I didn’t show earlier is that when a content creator uses an effect, it’ll show up right here. So if this user used the “Psychedelic Clown” effect, it’ll show up right here. It’s always important to see what effects are trending, because if you keep up with the trends on TikTok, your videos, your content, will have a higher chance of being thrown out there, to other peoples’ “For You” page.

Here’s a video that really caught my attention. You’re probably asking, how do I come up with my videos? I know that other content creators, they will think of like, “OK today, I’m going to make a video on DNA replication, so let me try to find the perfect audio sound for DNA replication.” I actually work backwards, where I will just leisurely go through my “For You” page. If I hear an audio where I’m like, “OK, this has potential,” I’m going to save it and then not even think about it. I like to joke around and say that I’m a true gay, I’m the epitome of a gay, because anything that is chaotic, that’s messy, I’m like, “That’s it! I’m going to use this sound.”

So I will click on a sound, save it, put it aside, not think about it. And then once I’m in the mood to create a video—

[Acknowledging chat comment] Yes! I have to support Black Girls Code! 

So when I’m in the mood to shoot a video, then that’s when I go to my saved folder and I go through the audios. If I’m in the mood to make a video based on one particular audio, I’ll just make a video on the spot. I know that other content creators have a really strict schedule of posting videos. I can’t—I’m not that creative to be creative on demand; I kind of have to be in the mood for it, which is kind of hard. It’s really hard, especially since I’m doing content creation full time.

But here’s a video that really caught my attention. I really like the sound, and this audio was really trending on my “For You” page.

TikTok Audio

[Marching band music and a series of pounding sounds] That’s some bullsh—

Darrion

OK so, this video has—oh my gosh, 3.7 million likes. So immediately, I was like, 1) I really like this sound, and 2) it’s trendy. So those are really two good factors that I love to see. So I saved this audio, I didn’t really think about it, and then when I was in the mood to create a video, I had to think, “OK, what am I going to make this video about?”

So after hearing audio, here’s the thought process on how I make my videos. I find a popular audio or an audio that I like. Then, when I’m in the mood to make a video, I’ll analyze the sound and/or the lyrics of the audio. Once I have everything broken down and analyzed, I’ll apply the sound to a science concept. And then next, I’ll film, edit, post. I guess when it comes to filming, editing and posting, that and planning—for a 30 second video, that can take about 15 or 20 minutes. With that particular video that I just showed earlier, I’m going to show you guys the thought process on how I made the video for that.

So, here is... I guess the actor in me just likes to transcribe what I hear in the video. This is the “script,” if you will. Let’s watch this again. 

TikTok Audio

[Marching band music and a series of pounding sounds] That’s some bullsh—

Darrion

The script is very simple. Pounding seven times, “That’s some bullsh—.” OK so, what is a process that involves something pounding? I’m sure we can come up with a long list of all these different processes. I try to find science concepts that middle-, high-schooler, college students, and grad students can understand. Or at least, I try to make it simple enough so that the viewer has a basic understanding of it, and it’ll encourage them to look more into that concept.

So, all right. Something involving pounding. A heart pumping? Maybe like the circulatory system? A molecule trying to pass a barrier? The way that I’m envisioning it is a molecule bumping into a membrane but it just cannot get through, so it’s pounding. Peptide bonds forming between amino acids. In my mind, I’m like, OK maybe when amino acids connect, when a bond forms, it makes a pounding sound. Maybe a Taq polymerase during PCR adding dNTPs to an existing DNA strand.

The other part of that video is “That’s some bullsh—.” Based off that audio, they sound frustrated. Bringing that list back up—which one of these processes involves a molecule being frustrated? I’m sure if I really think: there is something that is frustrated in these processes. But for me, I’m thinking, OK, molecule trying to pass a barrier—maybe it’s trying to pass and it’s getting so frustrated.

Let me try to write out a script for this. Molecule trying to pass a barrier. Maybe a large hydrophobic molecule; it can’t pass through the blood brain barrier, so it’s pounding, and it says “That’s some bullsh—.” Well, that could be funny—but sometimes I like adding two different characters. Going back to Theatre 101, if you can add—if you can make a joke—how do I say this? If you can make a joke contradict itself, or if you can show a character do the complete opposite of the main character, then you can add humour to that. I don’t know if that made sense. So, for me, I’m like, “Maybe this hydrophobic molecule isn’t enough. Let me add the complete opposite: a small fat-soluble molecule that can easily walk through the membrane.” Filming takes a while because I try to be very meticulous on how I express myself and I try to make sure my expressions, my emotions, match the emotions of the audio. I guess, I’m just, like, an actor or something. So, here is the final product of that video.

TikTok Audio

[Marching band music and a series of pounding sounds] That’s some bullsh—

Darrion

OK so, I’m going to show you guys the thought process for two more videos. This one doesn’t have a lot of words; let me try to find other videos or other audio clips that do have more words to them.

Oh! I love this video. First, let me just show you guys the audio clip.

TikTok Audio

[Lighthearted pop music] Uh, I’m not finished. Oh my god. Can you let me do what I need to do?

Darrion

I love this audio clip; I just love Tyler the Creator. Anything that he says is just so funny. This audio was trending for the longest time about a year ago. When this song, Cyber Sex, was really trending and adding various audio clips over this song was just trending all over my feed. 

Going back to the thought process. OK, found my audio. Now I have to analyze the audio. Well, what processes can I apply to this specific audio? What process involves something getting interrupted? Maybe antibiotics inhibiting bacterial protein synthesis. Prokaryotic transcription and translation. Gene inhibition therapy. Or, a virus getting killed before spreading. 

This is my initial list. Let’s go back to the quote: “I’m not finished. Oh my god. Can you let me do what I need to do?” So in my mind, I’m thinking, well unlike eukaryotes, prokaryotes, they transcribe and when they’re not even done yet, the mRNA gets translated. So, I then filmed. With TikTok, I notice that when you use dumb props, or use an item as a prop to teach something—I don’t know why but a lot of people really eat that up. I have this ongoing joke of using toilet paper as DNA and mRNA. So here is just me; this is probably 2am in lab, right before I was going to leave lab, I got to go to the restroom. Oh wait, I’m in the mood to make a video! Let me scroll through my saved folder. What audio can I use? Ooh, this audio is perfect. Ooh, I’m in the restroom, there’s toilet paper. OK, let me make a video about transcription and translation.

TikTok Audio

[Lighthearted pop music] Uh, I’m not finished. Oh my god. Can you let me do what I need to do?

Darrion

[Laughs at chat comment] Wasting toilet paper in a pancreas?

OK so the thing is—you guys are probably going to judge me. In lab, they got really cheap toilet paper. Like, one-ply. It’s really really cheap. When I use number two I feel like I’m about to finger my butthole, because it’s just, like, really thin. It’s just so cheap. But it’s also so thin that it serves as a good oil pad absorber. So, in that video when I was done using it I actually saved it. I still have the toilet paper—a whole roll in my apartment, to make sure that my oil is absorbed. So, I actually did not waste it. Just FYI. Because I’m environmentally-conscious. 

This is my last video. This is actually one of my first videos that I made. This is when I was just kind of experimenting and just testing it out. This audio clip is from Dance Moms and it is so chaotic. I transcribed it for you.

TikTok Audio

[Character 1] I didn’t push you. I moved you out of the way because you wouldn’t move when I asked you to move three times, so I walked through you. 

[Character 2] So you’re saying you could not have walked around me. 

[Character 1] You were all in a line in front of the door!

Darrion

Any video that has a lot of quotes, it sometimes can be hit or miss. Hit, if that audio just happens to perfectly align with a concept, then that’s a huge hit. But sometimes, I’ve had a couple videos that just completely flopped, because in my mind, they make sense, but the execution was poor. But in this audio clip, two areas stick out to me. “I moved you out of the way.” (Because you wouldn’t when I asked you three times.) And also, “You were all in a line.”

What processes involve something moving? Well, that’s literally everything! Every process involves something moving. But for me, the low hanging fruits were: mRNA exiting the nucleus; transcribing mRNA; enzymes breaking down molecules; transporting proteins through membranes; chromosomes moving during mitosis/meiosis; DNA replication; bacteria infecting the cell; viruses hijacking the host cell’s machinery.

Next, what involves something standing in a line? Something lining up. Bringing back our list, I’m sure if I thought really hard, there’s something in each of these bullet points that involves something lining up. But for me, I thought of chromosomes moving during mitosis/meiosis.

Let’s recap on what happens during mitosis. So here are the different stages. There’s interphase. Prophase, where the chromosomes pair up. Metaphase, where the chromosomes line up at the equator and then the mitotic spindle fibres form; they pull the sister chromatids apart during anaphase. And then telophase and cytokinesis—the cell pinches and then two identical daughter cells are formed.

So, something that involves moving, which is all of these different phases. And then something lining up. What involves something lining up? Metaphase!

My next job is to write up a script. Here is the script again, but I like to assign lines to actors. The mitotic spindle fibres say: “I didn’t push you. I moved you out of the way because you wouldn’t move when I asked you to move three times. So I walked through you!“ And the chromosomes say: “So you’re saying you could not have walked around me.” “You were all in a line in front of the door!”

I filmed this video summer of 2019. I think what made TikTok stand out from the other apps is that TikTok has all these different effects and transitions readily available. I was actually in another meeting with some Hollywood engineers and motion picture designers and they were just geeking out over TikTok. They were like, “Yeah, on our end, we spend weeks creating algorithms to use a certain effect. And here’s TikTok, they’ll just throw out these effects and make them readily available to users.” And I was like, “I didn’t know there was a lot of thought that went into making these effects; I didn’t know it took a long time making them.” They’re like, “Yeah TikTok just makes them and then they easily give them out to content creators.” Not only that, they make it so intuitive to use. It’s very straightforward. So, always try to make your content very silly by using these effects. The sillier it is, the more likely the viewer is going to like it.

Here is the final product with me just playing with the effects. I think this took like, probably four or five takes, because I just kept messing up on the words.

TikTok Audio

[Character 1] I didn’t push you. I moved you out of the way because you wouldn’t move when I asked you to move three times, so I walked through you. 

[Character 2] So you’re saying you could not have walked around me. 

[Character 1] You were all in a line in front of the door!

This was one of the first videos I made. I made this just for me. To see, is this video going to work? Are people going to like my educational content? I made this video, I posted it on TikTok, and I didn’t open my TikTok app for like three or four days. At that time, I only had one follower—that was my cousin. 

After posting this video, I opened my TikTok four days later, and I found out that I had gained 19,000 followers. This video reached 30k likes. That blew my mind. Because you get on a social media app to get away from school, to decompress, to not even want to learn anything. It just shocked me to see that, Wow I have these high schoolers and college students watch this video, learn something, or comment something like, “You know, I never really understood this but this gave me a great visual, now I’ll never forget it.” Or, “I actually have an exam over this next week, and I will not forget this because you did a really good job of conveying this information.”

That blew my mind, and I thought maybe it was just pure luck. Maybe it was just this video. I just continued to have fun making this content, and people just really liked it and just ate it up. After making a lot of these videos, I had to remind myself that, yes, I say that I’m trying to communicate science and trying to educate others. But the real underlying reason is, I want to have fun making this content for myself, and I want my viewers and my audience to see me have fun with this and join in on the fun and say, “Oh my gosh, he’s having so much fun learning about science, teaching about science. I want to continue learning about science too.” Or, “I want to continue looking into this science concept.”

With this whole formula, this is specifically for TikTok. Like I mentioned earlier in the very beginning, every social media platform has its own ecosystem—has its own rules. For me, I found that this formula has worked out for TikTok. On other platforms, there are different trends. Right now, I’m slowly segueing to YouTube. And YouTube’s a bit tricky. I’m so used to short form content where my videos are 30 seconds long—at most a minute. I’m not used to making 8, 12 minute video content. The difference between TikTok and YouTube is that: TikTok, every second has to matter; every second has to count. You have to reel in the viewers. Generally, with these videos, with this content, you have to do some kind of action in the very beginning so that the viewer wants to stay interested and watch the whole 30 seconds or the whole minute. With YouTube, every second has to count, but it has to be very quick-paced. It has to be straight to the point, for most content creators. I know that there are other content creators and their style is slow and their followers like that. But, I notice with my followers, I have to make everything straight to the point, very quick. So on YouTube, I am learning how to navigate through that.

With a lot of my editing style on TikTok, I’m carrying that over to YouTube. I’m heavily influenced by Bill Nye the Science Guy—his show growing up, it’s like, the little quirky sound effects. I’m also influenced by a lot of Gen Z YouTubers. I love the way they edit their YouTube videos. I’m thinking of WorldOfXtra, LeRay, Maliik Franklin—I don’t know if you know any of them. Their editing style is very reminiscent of Bill Nye the Science Guy. So, that is the type of style that I’m trying to do on YouTube. And I’m still trying to learn the secret formula on YouTube. It’s been going pretty well. My subscribers seem to like the content I have so far.

That is my little wrap-up for this presentation. If you guys want to follow me, my handle is Lab_Shenanigans on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. And if you want to follow me on Facebook—for some reason we can’t write the underscore, so it is Lab.Shenanigans. And then if you want to visit my website it is LabShenanigans.com and my merch is LabShenanigansMerch, similar to what Alberto was wearing. 

If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask me. Honestly guys, I am an open book—feel free to ask me whatever. It could be the silliest, darnedest question—I’m going to answer it.

Darrion

All right! Guys, thank you so much, I had so much fun talking to y’all—this was a blast. And thank you for turning on your cameras; I love looking at each and every one of your faces.

Abbey

Thank you so much—we really, really enjoyed your talk Darrion, and I think everybody learned a lot. We learned lots about TikTok, and we learned lots about you, so thank you so much for sharing. If everyone could please just stick around for a couple more minutes; we just have a conclusion coming from Michelle.

Michelle

We do have an event feedback survey, so Cynthia’s going to drop that link into the chat. We just ask that you click it, open it, make sure that it’s open—so that after you leave, you can take a couple minutes to fill that out. Finally, thank you so much for joining us; thank you so much Darrion for being here, for walking us through your TikTok creation process, and I hope you all had fun tonight! The rest of the SciComm Collective team will be sticking around for a few minutes if you want to chat with us. Otherwise, have a very restful evening! 

Darrion

Alrighty guys, thank y’all sooo much! I will see you in my next video! Am I a YouTuber? Alrighty. Bye guys!