Like, Share, Subscribe: Influencers at AUBG

Influencer. A word with two meanings. Similar in definition but different in connotation. A person who inspires or guides the actions of others, or a person who generates interest in social media, usually through promoting a consumer product, you decide. Or even more powerful, the influencers themselves decide.

Three student influencers, or in their words, content creators, sit down and share their different and not-so-different experiences as people with exposure on social media.

 

Teona Sima

Teona is a content creator who helps people speak languages and recreate accents. Her business profile @thelanguageblondie has 716k followers on Instagram, and her most viral video has over 50 million views and 5 million likes. She started her account as a joke to pass her time in the summer, thinking only her friends would see it.

 

 

“When people call me an influencer, I am like ‘No, stop,’” says Teona. “I am just a girl with a phone who loves making videos and has a lot of fun doing it.”

Her goal is to follow her passion. Through that, Teona hopes to inspire others and help them learn languages. She does not see herself as an influencer.

“First of all, I do not think I am telling anybody what to do necessarily on my account. If I get to help somebody with a tip that has helped me, then, perfect!”

 

 

But the numbers kept rising, and soon she ended up with over 700k followers. She felt the pressure to meet their expectations.

“I am thinking about too many things. I am writing scenarios in detail, thinking of puns. I have lost that spontaneity, unfortunately, and I do not like that.”

This attention turned into self-doubt for Teona, and at some point, she started questioning her whole social media presence.

“I was just stuck in that loop of thinking who wants what, but ‘what do I want?’ What about the people who want to learn tips, but then the ones who follow me to just hear accents unfollow me?”

Teona gave herself a break from posting because it exhausted her mentally. She was trying to find the reason why she was doing it again.

“So I was really struggling because I did not have the why. I wanted to enjoy being a student. I will create content for years, but I will never get this time back.” Even now, she says that she likes to leave her phone away for some time. 

“What matters is who I am when my phone is in my pocket, and you do not attach any numbers to my worth. Numbers do not determine how nice of a person you are.”

 

 

Although the follower count is just a number, real people are behind it. Teona is always eager to meet these people in person.

“They always make my day, and I hug them, but the most interesting part is when they recognize me in places where I do not expect to be recognized,” she laughs.

“I was randomly walking in Vienna with my friends, and an Iranian guy asked us for directions. He followed me, and he said, ‘Hey, excuse me, are you that girl from Instagram?’

For now, Teona just embraces being a senior and making the most of her time as a graduating student, but the future outside of the university is slowly approaching.

“I am finding it (‘the why’) again because I realized that it could be my full-time job, and it could grow into something way bigger.”

 

 

Pavel Dimitrov

A former reporter for the independent medium Glasat na Sofia (The Voice of Sofia), Pavel started making videos with his friends as a joke by asking people questions in public. But suddenly, their videos gained millions of views on TikTok and thousands on Instagram. That was when they realized that being an influencer could be turned into a job.

 

 

“I do not regard myself as an influencer, but rather a young boy who makes videos on the internet as his hobby,” says Pavel.  

“I do not do it because it would bring me fame or money, but for the sake of it – to have fun.” But he is having fun carefully. The exposure he receives is a responsibility to sustain his reputation, but more specifically, he says, how he influences children.

“Children are highly influenced by social media, especially on TikTok, so I do not do anything negative they might copy from me.”

He also uses his reach for charity through the initiatives “Shared Christmas and Shared Easter.” He and his team visited elderly people who lived under difficult conditions and shared a meal with them for the past two years.

“Through these initiatives, we wanted to remind young people to take care of and respect the elderly people in their lives.”

 

 

A favorite part of his job was meeting people, but the chance to meet the ones to whom he looked up when he was younger was mind-blowing for him. One day, he was invited to cover a music festival, where he met two famous Bulgarian rappers.

“I was sitting at a table with the people I was a fan of ten years ago! We spent the whole evening chatting, and it seemed unreal!”

Pavel looks into the future to continue his path as an influencer: “I am working on something bigger, on many bigger projects that will unveil the more serious part of me.”

 

Savelii Timokhov

Savelii is a first-year student who started creating content eight years ago to develop his social and communication skills. He started sharing his life as a Russian in Bulgaria, but then took another turn, and continues to do so.

“I think I found a niche when I started interviewing elderly people. I enjoyed it. They wanted to talk too, so I made them public, especially so the younger generation could learn from the wise words these people say.” Those videos gained millions of views and thousands of likes.

He devoted himself to social causes – airing protests about corruption in Bulgaria, against the war in Ukraine, and talking to politicians.

“I had a lot of hate speech towards me and even threats, especially when I did interviews with Bulgarian politicians because I naturally do not agree with most of them.” 

He was 16 when he interviewed Kostadin Kostadinov, a far-right Bulgarian politician from the Revival party. Savelii says that afterward, he was astounded by the amount of hate speech he received. “I do not take it personally because I would have gone crazy by now.”

But his crazy ideas continue to circulate, and he implemented one of them at AUBG – starting his own podcast – Yapping Americano. He was inspired by what was said during an info session of the Media Studies Department.

 

 

“‘With all the respect to student media, we do not have a genuine, brave media that represents students, staff, and professors.’ And I thought, why not do it?” 

He borrowed the idea from a Canadian YouTuber and piloted it here. He invites guests to the library, where the atmosphere is more intimate.

“I think other people would like to hear the people they meet in corridors, they have lectures with, on a deeper level, individually.”

Savelii had already met with Lilia Petrova, the President of the Student Government, Professor Lucci, Steven London – The Writing Center Coordinator, and Georgi Lisichkov, the former Canteen Chef. 

There was a backlash after the last episode as the Instagram account of the podcast posted a message from the former Canteen Chef stating he had to resign after the episode.

 

 

“I was so surprised, I thought it was a joke the whole time. I could not believe this could happen at all,” says Savelii. 

“I want to bring a wide audience to the podcast, and when the freshmen come here next year, I want to make something good to attract them.”

 

Edited by: Niya Manditsch and Toma Krumov