If you’ve recently found yourself doomscrolling through the UK comedy side of TikTok, it’s likely you have stumbled across the videos of content creator Auden Barnes. His comedy skits find humour in the relatable, from awkward freshers’ week interactions to the pretentiousness of spoken word poets. I sat down with Auden to discuss his experience balancing student life with online fame.

How long have you been posting videos online, and what inspired you to start out?

“When I’m pretending to be a character, dressing up and everything – it’s the most theatre kid thing ever”

I began posting in secondary school. I was actually most successful when I was 16, which is probably quite sad to say as a 22-year-old! Back then it wasn’t really monetisable and I was just doing it for the love of the game.

Looking back, I was always a theatre kid and maybe a bit of an attention whore. By nature, you don’t really do this stuff if you hate attention. I was in school plays when I was younger but going to acting camps where they’re like ‘pretend you’re an egg yolk’ – when you’re 14 that just feels so embarrassing. I was listening to Digga D and posting mirror selfies on Instagram, so doing theatre didn’t really fit the brand image.

I guess I was using social media as a creative outlet for that side of me, which made my parents really happy at the time. Even now, when I’m pretending to be a character, dressing up and everything – it’s the most theatre kid thing ever.

How similar would you say you are to your online persona, or do you treat it more as a performance for social media?

“TikTok is so saturated as well, so you really have to differentiate yourself all the time”

I would say I’m actually fairly reserved, and I think the more you get to know me, the more that side comes out. I remember when I first met my girlfriend, she was surprised that I wasn’t necessarily the character she thought I would be from seeing my videos before.

When people do recognise me in public, part of me wants to perform for them a bit, because it’s like I want to uphold this vision they have of me. Naturally I do play up to it slightly, but as I’ve grown older I’ve definitely gotten better at balancing that.

But I would say that, in my friend groups, I haven’t really felt like I’ve always been the ‘jester’ of the group. I’ve just grown up around funny people and I think that’s influenced me a lot.

How does it feel to get recognised now, and to navigate life as a more public figure in general?

I have a weird relationship with that – I feel like I never really know how recognisable I actually am. On social media you’re always performing for a specific niche, a specific demographic, and it feels like it’s all completely on your phone. When it starts to affect me in person, that definitely feels strange, but, honestly, it doesn’t happen very often.

“It’s impossible to have any concrete plan when it comes to social media”

There’s also a bit of imposter syndrome, in a way. Sometimes it feels like I haven’t actually got anything figured out for myself deep down, so it’s definitely a strange feeling when people approach me like that.

Do you have any future plans in regards to your content creation, and do you think there is a future for content creation more generally?

I think it’s impossible to have any concrete plan when it comes to social media, and you really have to take it as it comes. At the minute I’m just trying to balance it with uni, but I think getting into long-form content has the potential to be really fun.

TikTok is so saturated as well, so you really have to differentiate yourself all the time, and anyone in any creative industry is now using social media to platform themselves. I feel like back in the day you had to ‘get discovered’ by chance, but now you can actually manufacture an image for yourself online. You see more and more people trying to bridge that gap now, between social media and the mainstream.

What would be your advice to someone wanting to start posting on social media themselves?

Obviously, I would encourage it, but if you’re someone who would be disturbed by the fact that people can see everything you’re posting online, or you’ll want to filter everything you do through the opinions of others, being a content creator simply will not be enjoyable. Unfortunately, people’s reference point of you becomes what they see online. You have to be confident enough in yourself to know who you ‘actually’ are and remember that the people you’re close to know that as well – I’m still not 100% there yet myself, but I’ve definitely gotten better!

If you want to, just start posting. Especially with comedy, the whole point is that you get to be stupid, so there’s no way to mess up.