The American Psychology Association states that 73% of students spend at least 3 and a half hours scrolling on social media a day, however we have two students who have been building an audience on it instead. Victor Stanev, a senior at LACES has been editing content/video montages since he was nine years old, and is now 18 continuing to do what he loves. Another social media upriser here at LACES is Dage Gilson-Walker, a freshman at LACES who has been posting three videos on TikTok everyday since July and has gained over 11k followers.
Stanev, started out young and said how he always had a love and passion for creating content, when he came to the realization that he wanted to start doing it as a genuine hobby which then turned into his job.
“I wanted to create montages. Eventually, I branched out into music videos and different games, and I started posting and taking videos more seriously when covid hit,” said Stanev.
He has spent over 5,000 hours editing and has accumulated over 2,000 different projects over the years. From this he started trying ideas such as music videos and gaming. When first learning he took inspiration from @sc6ut, a popular tiktoker who creates edits and has over 500k followers. However all his video ideas now are original and gives credit to himself when thinking of ideas on the spot. At first his goal was to reach 10k followers on tiktok but then he soon realized that, “followers don’t mean much if they don’t convert into clients or a stable community,” said Stanev.
His current goal is to establish his company and partner with Santa Monica High School graduate Lucas Ellison. He landed his first client in his company this month, to create a video for him. His favorite video that he has done so far was a music video “$wag Nightmare – the nightmares for Carrington, another famous tiktoker.
“We had a ginormous studio to ourselves, and a blank slate for my team to create their vision,” said Stanev.
As for Walker, a current freshman at LACES, he has always been into fashion. He thought that posting on social media would be the most efficient way to get his ideas out there at his age. His biggest tip when starting out is to be consistent.
“Consistency is the number one thing,” said Walker.
The first video that he went viral for was a birth month clothing challenge, which was posted in September. He takes much inspiration from Danny Wynn, a popular person on Instagram people take inspiration from for fashion. Now since Walker has built a wide platform on both TikTok and Instagram he is able to come up with most of his ideas by himself, in which he thinks his audience would find the most entertaining.
His big goal he wants to accomplish is to create his own clothing line, and to obtain a bigger following on his socials. He wants to gain a bigger audience so that his brand can succeed to his greatest potential. The next steps he wants to take is to create something that is unique to him and that he can be recognizable for.
Stanev and Walker have shown how social media doesn’t have to just be for scrolling but can take you a step further if it’s what you love. Both of them said their biggest tip is consistency and how you should always go after what you love. You can follow them on Instagram @dage_gw and @vicccsta.
