Tim Curado is a professor of physics and chemistry. Every week, in front of his students in Montpellier, he talks about kinetic energy, atoms, isotopes and the macroscopic scale. But, when he has an hour between classes, he grabs his phone and records videos for TikTok. He makes short skits about his job as a teacher: he talks about end-of-school snacks that don’t always go well, about students who ask to go to the bathroom five minutes before the end of class, and about scenes that we can witness during class. representative elections.
Tim Curado launched himself on TikTok during lockdown in 2020. He didn’t expect his videos to do as much as they did: today he has 1.7 million subscribers on the platform. “I think bringing a little lightness and seeing the profession in a different way attracted a lot of people,” he told BFMTV.com. “I always try to make people laugh and show that although today we consider that it is not an easy job, there is always something positive.”
Like Tim Curado, for several years, many people have used this platform to talk about their profession. They are garbage collectors, tile workers, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, who show their daily lives and popularize certain notions of their work. Sometimes to the point of obtaining income as important as that of their profession.
“Transmitting knowledge”
Carla Valette, for example, talks about health, in addition to her work as an intern in general medicine. For example, she explains the concept of postpartum depression to her 2.7 million subscribers and gives them tips on what to keep in their first aid kit before traveling. “I want health information to be accessible to everyone,” he says.
Robin Goncet, resident in visceral surgery, also explains that “he loves to transmit knowledge and familiarize the general public with the world of surgery.” To do this, he records videos in which he manipulates fruits and vegetables. Colonoscopy on a zucchini, lumpectomy on a pepper, vasectomy on a mango… “Fruit surgeries,” as he calls them, which require several hours of preparation, currently incompatible with his intern schedule: he says he works an average of 70 hours a week and stopped their publications.
Sometimes blurred lines
These creators are successful because they have “a talent for telling stories, formatting, creating humor or disseminating” and they talk about sectors, such as education or health, that “resonate” in the daily lives of those who watch them, deciphers Corentin Gaillard. PhD student in information and communication sciences at the University of Poitiers.
This content creation specialist points out, however, that this type of influence is “double-edged”, since the lines can blur between the traditional activity of these TikTokers and their content on social networks. Which sometimes creates uncomfortable situations. Some knew how to confront the prejudices that surround the influencer profession: Tim Curado experimented with some of his fellow teachers. “It wasn’t always easy, at first there was reluctance because a professor who had more than a million subscribers on the networks was something new,” says the professor of Physics and Chemistry.
“But once we explain things, that we are not ‘jeopardizing’ national education, but trying to show that a teacher is not so terrible, that it can always be a great job, there is no reason for it to be frowned upon.” ” he believes. Even today, some teachers around him “are a little less communicative, there are some for whom a teacher who appears on the networks is a little more difficult to accept.” But he says he also gets a lot of support, especially from his management.
For Carla Valette, discomfort arises when patients ask her for a photo while receiving treatment or undergoing an examination in the hospital, because she does not want to disturb the work of her colleagues. He would also like strangers to stop sending him, via email or private message, details about their health problems in the hope of receiving a diagnosis. “It is prohibited to have a medical consultation outside the doctor’s office, so we do not make medications without a prescription, we do not have to receive information from patients who are not in the office, in consultation, in a well-connected place. defined place,” he insists.
A main activity that is not always very profitable
Thanks to the number of views they get on TikTok and the ads they make for companies on their social networks, these creators get paid for their online activity, which takes them, according to their accounts, between one and two hours a day. If they avoid going into details, they notice that they can earn more thanks to social networks than thanks to their initial profession.
This can be explained by the fact that the TikTokers interviewed by BFMTV.com have in common that they work in jobs that are not among the most paid. According to the site vie-publique.fr, the salary of a secondary school teacher at the beginning of his career in France is 30,935 euros gross per year. Among doctors in training, the gross annual remuneration ranges between 19,406 euros in the first year and 28,448 in the fifth, to which are added the bonuses for on-call staff.
“What is happening in the public hospital in terms of the salaries of the inmates is very serious,” denounces Robin Goncet. “We are essential for the surgery service, and for 2,000 euros a month we provide consultations, prescriptions, we are in the operating room, it is not an auxiliary job,” continues the visceral surgery intern.
Therefore, for Robin Goncet, contrast is important in content creation. “If I had focused on that, I would have lived much better compared to what my intern salary brings me for much less work,” he says.
But this situation is also due to Tiktok’s economic model, according to Corentin Gaillard. “Tiktok is a platform that in recent years has been the easiest to make money among social networks. The platform was new and generous and allowed creators to make money quite quickly,” explains the researcher, who points out, However, the situation has changed. It has changed a bit since the platform became popular.
“Life is easy when you are an influencer and it works well: you are invited everywhere, people pay for your food, your Uber… It’s not exhausting, it’s just fun,” says Robin Goncet.
Unstable income on social networks
However, none of the creators interviewed plan to leave their traditional job to launch into content creation full-time. Tim Curado has been teaching part-time for two years, but he assures that it is not because of social networks: he was preparing a program that began filming in September.
For Carla Valette, it is “unthinkable” to leave medicine to make a living with Tiktok: “You can make money with social networks, on the other hand, it is extremely unstable. You can spend several months at zero, so being an intern, I have a stable income every month,” he emphasizes.
Tim Curado agrees with her on this: “Social media is very unpredictable, collaborations remain occasional. What I love to do basically is really teach, and then as a teacher it brings me a financial security that is far from ‘ be the same on social networks.
“I feel useful being a teacher”
These people are also passionate about their work, as they take the time to talk about it on their social networks. “The initial job of a doctor is to care for patients and it would be difficult for me to consider a digital career, that’s what I didn’t study for. For me, medicine will always be ahead of networks. Furthermore, when I started with Tiktok, there was no remuneration,” he assures. Carla Valette.
“They already asked me to stop working to dedicate myself 100% to creating content and I refused because I like to get up in the morning because I feel useful being a teacher,” says Tim Curado.
Especially since leaving his main profession would also mean changing his editorial line on social networks. “My content creation is associated with my status as a doctor, so I would not have been credible making videos about surgery if I had left medicine,” emphasizes Robin Goncet. Same story with Professor Tim Curado: “If I no longer have my job, what do I share?”
Source: BFM TV
