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A yr in the past, Jonathan Ostrander was nonetheless a bit baffled by TikTok.
“I could not determine how you can use it. You realize, I am a ‘geriatric millennial,'” he stated.
Now, the stay-at-home Yukon dad has acquired a legion of followers on the video-sharing web site, and a line of merchandise emblazoned together with his moustached face or his on-line deal with — “Sandwich Dad.”
“Principally what I do is I make sandwiches and narrate making sandwiches,” he stated. “That is just about the lengthy and wanting it.”
Ostrander is only one of many Yukoners who’re utilizing TikTok to search out massive audiences hungry for … sandwiches, positive, but additionally for different brief and vibrant glimpses into life the North.
Joey O’Neil is a singer-songwriter who lives in an off-grid cabin close to Dawson Metropolis, and she or he initially joined TikTok to share her songs.
“I heard that for those who’re a musician otherwise you wish to be, you need to most likely be taking part in music on it since it is so sound based mostly,” O’Neil stated.
She began posting movies of herself performing songs at house, however she’d additionally publish movies that simply confirmed off her rustic way of life. It was the life-style movies that appeared to seize extra individuals.
“I simply acquired such good response from the cabin-video stuff that I actually put the music on the again burner. I’ll do like a efficiency each few movies, simply to remind folks that I’m a musician,” she stated.
A 15-second video displaying O’Neil performing some routine cabin chores — chopping wooden, emptying gray water, filling her oil lamp — has been seen greater than 613,000 occasions. One other, displaying the spring breakup of the Yukon River, has been seen greater than 580,000 occasions.
“I feel particularly in the course of the pandemic, when so many individuals had been simply caught in cities and simply needed that escapism to love some place with area and greenery … I feel it was like an actual breath of contemporary air for them,” she stated.
Ostrander is somewhat bit extra mystified by the recognition of Sandwich Dad. His 33-second video of assembling a peanut butter-and-pickle sandwich has topped 134,000 views.
“I get instructed that I’ve, you realize, a really healthful and calm approach of placing collectively a sandwich, I suppose,” he stated.
“I do not know precisely why [people are interested], however I am definitely glad for it. I feel that possibly sandwiches are simply often on development, possibly — I am undecided,” he stated.
Yukoner named to TikTok ‘accelerator’ coaching program
One other Yukoner has been utilizing TikTok to share one other view of life within the territory, from an Indigenous perspective — and she or he’s simply been accepted into a brand new program designed to assist Indigenous creators develop their affect on TikTok.
Jocelyn Joe-Strack — “auntyjocey” — is the Analysis Chair in Indigenous Information at Yukon College. She posts movies through which she shares science and conventional information, displays on her setting, and explores what it means to be an Indigenous lady in 2021.
“It is fairly enjoyable. I simply make little brief issues. So like yesterday, I made one about respiration with a tree, only for a second of presence,” Joe-Strack stated.
“It’s making an attempt to make individuals really feel good and calm and present them a little bit of the gorgeous Yukon.”
This week, Joe-Strack was introduced as one among 30 Canadians accepted to the brand new Accelerator for Indigenous Creators program, a partnership between Tik Tok and the Nationwide Display Institute (different Northerners embody Christina King of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., and Lori Ann Tulugak-Kopak of Naujaat, Nunavut). It is a web-based coaching program meant to “empower storytellers to develop their TikTok presence,” based on this system’s web site.
“It is fairly thrilling as a result of there’s a complete group of Indigenous creators, and they also’ve acquired a few of the fairly outstanding individuals on there,” Joe-Strack stated.
“They’ll train us issues like lighting and how you can work with the platform itself, but additionally how you can, I feel, join with the group at giant.”
‘One thing foolish that younger individuals did’
Joe-Strack additionally admits that she began out, not that way back, as a little bit of a TikTok sceptic. She considered it as “one thing foolish that younger individuals did.”
Then she began exploring, and discovering content material from different Indigenous creators in Canada and past. Now she has a complete community of buddy contacts.
“We share our tales with one another, and yeah — it is simply actually rewarding and hopeful and galvanizing.”
For Joe-Strack, TikTok gives a extra pure technique to be on social media. She’s by no means taken to Fb, Twitter or Instagram the identical approach.
“Right here, it is video. And so you may embody issues like inflection of your voice or your hand actions. It feels much more pure,” she stated.
Ostrander and O’Neil additionally describe TikTok as a extra “genuine” expertise in comparison with different social media platforms. In addition they describe it as a extra optimistic on-line group, with fewer trolls seeming to hang-out the remark sections.
O’Neil says she’ll often have individuals attempt to right her wood-chopping approach, or warning her in regards to the creek water she’s been safely consuming for years, however total, “individuals are variety.”
“I do not know if it is possibly as a result of I am like feminine-presenting, or simply, you realize, like alone within the woods,” O’Neil stated.
Ostrander says Sandwich Dad has additionally helped him join with different food-related creators all over the world, together with one other TikToker who recreates sandwiches from history.
“It does really feel such as you’re much more related,” Ostrander stated.
“Particularly after the pandemic, particularly as somebody who’s a dad who hasn’t left his home in, it seems like three years!”
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