While some students use breaks between classes to grab a snack or take a nap, others set up tripods and hit record.
Many of Brown’s content creators have found striking success in building a community of thousands online, whether centered around daily life or entrepreneurship or art. The Herald spoke with five College Hill influencers to learn what they try to bring to the internet.
Rosie Volpintesta ’27: Track and TikTok star
Rosie Volpintesta ’27, a track and field athlete, believes social media isn’t about perfection — it’s about honesty. She began posting on TikTok to fill a gap she noticed among fellow influencer athletes.
“I wasn’t seeing any representation … that really spoke to me,” she told The Herald. “I want to show the real highs and lows of being a student athlete.”
By posting videos that capture her training and her daily student life, Volpintesta has amassed more than 12,000 TikTok followers. Her audience, she said, is largely made up of female athletes between the ages of 16 and 21 who come to her page not for highlight reels, but for reassurance.
“You just see these people who blow up, and they’re beautiful and also incredible at their sport, and they never have a bad day,” she said. “But it’s not like that. It’s never like that.”
For Volpintesta, showing the moments that don’t make it to the podium is part of the message. On her page, she aims “to inspire a lot of confidence for female athletes” while also showing how she pushes through the occasional “shitty day,” she said.
The attention that came with her social media popularity “used to freak (her) out,” she said. But now, Volpintesta feels much more at ease, even though she can’t attend a track meet without encountering multiple people who recognize her.
Volpintesta takes pride in the community she’s built. At least once a day, she receives a message from “a young girl asking for advice on recruiting or body confidence or nutrition or just track in general,” she said.
“And I always respond … because that’s what little Rosie would want,” she added.
Janya Kaur ’26: Startups and self-empowerment
Creating content is something Janya Kaur ’26 has dreamed about since she was a teenager.
“I have letters from my 14-year-old self asking me to start something,” she said. “I always wanted to do it, but I was either too scared or too busy.”
It wasn’t until last year — after a newfound focus on her physical and mental health — that she finally felt ready to share her journey online.
“Creating content,” she said, “became a way to celebrate that growth.”
That leap of faith eventually grew into a platform of over 75,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 36,000 on Instagram. In short- and long-form videos, Kaur documents everything from college life to entrepreneurship and faith.
“I used to think I needed to find a niche,” she said. “But people are so dynamic. Now I just post about all the different parts of me — school, faith, my startup — and I think people follow for my personality, not just one thing.”
Kaur approaches her content with intention and flexibility.
“I’m a full-time student, and I’m building a business, so content is third on the list” of priorities, Kaur said. “I post when I feel inspired, but I still plan around big life events.”
Kaur’s online presence has opened unexpected doors for her startup, Melaa, an Airbnb-style app for “idle cafés after hours.”
“Because of social media, a Stanford (University) class reached out to help me with my business,” she said. “Now, I have a full team working with me because they saw my content.”
Ultimately, Kaur hopes that her videos impart a single message: self-empowerment through self-awareness.
“The biggest shift in my life was moving from a victim mentality to a hero mindset,” she said. “When you take responsibility for everything in your life, things change. That’s what I want people to take away from my content — because if I can do it, anyone can.”
Gia Shin ’27: Content and connections
For Gia Shin ’27, a contributing writer for The Herald, social media has always been about connection and impact. She began posting when she was in high school in hopes of reaching ambitious peers with whom she could share lessons from her own journey.
“I built a personal brand around helping other people, especially people younger than me, to achieve their goals through LinkedIn and through networking and building their own passions,” Shin told The Herald.
As her platform grew, Shin began receiving professional opportunities, including messages from recruiters, unexpected mentorship and brand deals, she said. Her partnerships with companies like LinkedIn and DoorDash have helped her work toward financial independence.
“Social posting has allowed me to pay off my loans or make steps towards retiring my parents,” she said. “I’ve realized through content creation that there’s not only one path to reaching success or to reaching financial freedom.”
Her content, which she shares on LinkedIn and TikTok, focuses on transparency and reflection. Shin has over 11,000 followers on LinkedIn and over 6,000 on TikTok. Creating transparent content, she said, comes from her desire to make ambition feel attainable.
“I love investing into younger people, one on one … to be a sort of role model for these people, but also do it in a relatable way,” Shin said. Messages from students who’ve found internships, transferred schools or built their networks through her advice “really, really (make her) day,” she said.
Even as her content evolves, Shin has one goal in mind: “Through every walk of my life, I’m kind of just trying to hold the door open for the people behind me,” she said.
Desen Celik ’29: Posting for productivity
Desen Celik ’29 ventured into content creation when her habit of watching study videos inspired her to try filming her own study sessions. Now, she has 6,400 followers on TikTok and a new productivity strategy: Recording herself meant she couldn’t get distracted by her phone.
Celik’s content has since evolved to blend study vlogs with college application advice, offering guidance for international students navigating the U.S. admissions process. As an international student from Turkey, Celik wanted to create videos where she could share her “knowledge with others in Turkey who want to go through this opportunity and basically help as much as I can.”
Celik said her workflow “depends on what I’m creating at that moment.” She switches between scripted informational videos and spontaneous day-in-the-life vlogs.
While maintaining a consistent posting schedule can be tough, Celik’s motivation comes from the community she’s built on her social media.
“People message me about how exams work or how the application process works, and I try to reply to everyone,” Celik said.
Celik’s advice for anyone hesitant to start creating content is simple: “Don’t push yourself too hard to get famous. This should come naturally. If you start and keep it up for 21 days, it becomes a habit.”
Harris Earls ’30: Surrealism and satire
For Harris Earls ’30, a Brown-RISD dual degree student, sharing his art was nothing new.
“Everyone in my family is an artist,” he said. “Posting online just felt like a normal part of that process. My dad’s a designer, my brother’s in social media, so sharing what I was making never felt like a big decision.”
Earls’s Instagram account, which boasts 24,500 followers, showcases his large-scale oil paintings in short-form videos. For Earls, painting is a way to translate the intangible — “a mood, a misunderstanding or a weirdly beautiful moment” — into color and form, he said.
Relationships, “both platonic and romantic,” are often at the heart of Earls’s painting, he said.
These relationships “end up superimposed onto the canvas whether I want them to be or not,” he said. “Every piece carries a bit of what I’m feeling, my mental state at the time.”
Often, Earls finds that the content he puts the least thought into sees the most success on social media.
“There’s something kind of funny about how seriously everyone takes the internet,” he said. “I like letting that irony sit in the work.”
When asked to sum up his artistic identity, Earls didn’t hesitate: “Surreal, satirical, sincere.” Recently, he has embraced “pieces that feel dreamlike and slightly disoriented,” he said.
While platforms like TikTok and Instagram can push artists to “make work faster, and honestly, sometimes a little shittier,” Earls doesn’t let algorithms dictate meaning. Instead, he treats the constant churn of social media as part of the rhythm of sharing his work.
“It’s cathartic in a weird way, watching the work exist inside that cycle,” he said. “The most rewarding part is staying consistent through it, showing up no matter the circumstances.”
Summer Shi is a senior staff writer and illustrator for the Brown Daily Herald. She is from Dublin, California and is currently studying design engineering and philosophy.
