I met Vitus “V” Spehar — the face behind Under the Desk News — a year ago in Washington, DC. I was on location with The Verge filming the TikTok senate hearing along with interviews with senators and content creators for a Verge video about the looming ban. And when we interviewed V outside of the Capitol, V said that TikTok was useful for channels like their own — a news channel that was started because they didn’t believe traditional news sources were accessible enough to younger audiences. V’s TikTok channel now has 3.1 million subscribers.
Every weekday, V sifts through news websites in search of six to eight stories they deem important enough to share with their audience. V then condenses each story into a bite-size snippet, crawls under a desk, and creates a 90-second video that highlights the happenings of the day. It’s this ritual, which started on January 6th, 2021, that has propelled V into TikTok political fame.
But that fame comes with some unique challenges. Under The Desk occupies a tricky space that positions V somewhere between news anchor and internet personality. So while V reports information to millions of people, they view their followers as a community — one that they care about and sometimes give advice to. And when you couple that with the huge divide in US politics, it is a recipe for a whole lot of backlash that V increasingly has to deal with.
In the latest episode of my new creator-focused video series, I spend a day with V to figure out why the hell they continue to do it and, more importantly, how they feel about the looming ban that threatens their main subscriber base.
