Welcome to Small Talk,??? ??? ??? ??? ?? a series where we catch up with the internet's favorite Extremely Online individuals offline.
The Washington Postisn't a regular newspaper, it's a cool newspaper.
Yes, it publishes hard-hitting, breaking news; but when Dave Jorgenson — video producer, editor, writer, and resident Funny Guy at the Post— created the company's wonderfully weird, witty, and topical TikTok account in May 2019, he also added an unmistakably current factor to the 143-year-old paper.
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Over the past two years, the internet has watched Jorgenson bring some of his most outlandish ideas to life in the form of comical, well-executed, surprisingly informative TikToks. While the platform is certainly an unconventional approach for boosting the young readership of a serious newspaper, the 30-year-old's efforts are clearly paying off. He's created hundreds of videos, amassed close to 900,000 followers, and helped inspire a whole new generation of Washington Post readers along the way.
Since March 2020, Jorgenson has been embracing the chaos of quarantine and faithfully cranking out daily TikToks from his Washington, D.C. apartment. To mark a full year of Jorgenson TTFH (TikTok-ing from home) I called him to chat about his career, his dream TikTok guest, and, of course, his love of Spam.
Mashable: Were you ever expecting your TikToks to take off as much as they have?
Dave Jorgenson: Um, I think! I don't want to sound like cocky about it. I didn't expect it from when I pitched it... but after the first three or four I posted, I was like, "Oh, this is this is significant."
Before that I had been working on a YouTube channel for the Post called The Department of Satire. And that was fun. It was like high-quality, crafted, three-minute videos. I think we had maybe3,000 subscribers, and I had 3,000 subscribers within like 10 minutes on TikTok. It was sort of like whiplash. So I didn't expect to get here, but pretty quickly I set my goals really high. Once we reached around 50,000 followers, I was like, "OK, I want to try to get to one million as soon as I can." Obviously, still working towards that, but yeah.
@washingtonpost How to make a Washington Post newspaper hat 📰 🎩
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It's clear the TikTok account has impacted you professionally, but how has it impacted your personal life? Do people recognize you out in the world?
It's a very specific time for this to happen. Obviously I was doing the account almost a year when the pandemic started, but it was not quite where it is today. It has twice the followers, so that helps. You may or may not be aware of the joke or concept, which I think is very real, that Washington, D.C. is like a high school. So now that's just sort of emphasized for me now. There are certainly some people who seem to be aware of who I am if I'm in D.C., but outside of D.C. no one has any idea who I am.
That's wild, because I feel like I'd recognize you instantly without a mask on.
[Laughs] Yeah maybe if I walked down your street or your office's block in New York. And that's actually kind of nice, because I feel great when a stranger says something nice. But of course having a mask on... the only way people recognize me now is if my dog is with me.
"It was sort of like whiplash... I didn't expect to get here, but pretty quickly I set my goals really high."
I've read that the dad-jokey character you embody on TikTok was inspired by your own dad. Does he like the TikToks, and does your family understand what you do?
The best way to sort of give the barometer of who in my life understands things is my parents probably get it even more than my sisters, because they're on Twitter more than anyone else in my family.They don't really tweet, but they'll like everything and they're pretty in tune.Sometimes I have to explain the joke. My dad's not gonna get — I can't even think of the most recent thing — but he's not gonna understand it. But I like to think that that I'm introducing them to whatever that dumb joke is, so that's good.
My wife isn't on Twitter or TikTok, so she's just totally outside of that world and it's actually kind of nice to have that separation entirely. But, yeah my dad totally gets it. (Huge news: Since this interview took place Dave's wife HAS indeed followed the Washington Poston TikTok.)
Something you weren't anticipating is having to record daily TikToks from your apartment in quarantine. And I unfortunately think today is the one year anniversary of your first quarantine Tok.
It is and I've put a lot of pressure on myself already today.
@washingtonpost ##duet with @washingtonpost Happy anniversary! ##PandemicYear
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Oh gosh. Well it's an honor to talk to you on this horrible anniversary. I guess my question is, are you OK? [Laughs]
[Laughs] Oh, yeah. You know, if you were following in the beginning I was really leaning into the "Is this person OK, or actually is this person crazy?" thing. And when it became clear that it was gonna be a while — more than three months or whatever we had thought — I was like, "I have to slow this down. Because I will actually just turn into a crazy person if I speed up." Three weeks in I already had a talking Spam can. [Laughs]
So yeah, I am OK. And I'm excited because there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, maybe in the fall, that we go back to work. So I'm sort of trying to start bringing back a little bit of the "Is this guy going crazy? Who is he talking to? What's happening?" But I am OK. And I always think it a compliment if someone asks, because that means I'm doing a good job.
@washingtonpost 😦 #happyathome
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I know it's probably a tough choice but do you have a favorite TikTok you've recorded?
I get this question on Twitter once a month and I and I always end up picking a more recent one. I'll give you two...but they're all my children. And certainly there are children I like less, but there are a lot of children I like a lot.
There was one pretty early on where I was really proud of the concept, because it totally popped into my head fully formed and just came out like I wanted it to. You know that "six foot, seven foot eight foot," song? So I fall over and then I thought, "Well, if I'm trying to show distance with my body I'm technically a little bit more than six feet, so I should cut off part of my body." I ended up taking off my own head; decapitating myself. After I finished it, I was like, "I don't know if I'm gonna top this ever." And then the the sea shanty one with all of Congress singing. As I made it I was like, "If I can pull this off, Hollywood here we come."
What's your most unhinged TikTok?
Any of the ones where I'm talking to multiple versions of me — you're meant to feel weird about them. But my most unhinged is this:
@washingtonpost Egg prices are going up, but I found a solution. #HatchAnEgg
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You've had quite a few special guests in your TikToks, and also the opportunity to cover the 2020 election on this platform. Who out of the 2020 Democratic candidates do you think was most excited to make a TikTok with you?
Oooh! Most excited was Cory Booker, hands down. There's no question. He did a very did a good job. I remember that was the fourth [presidential candidate TikTok]. And I kept thinking, "How are we going to keep topping these?" I think the ones after that were fine, but that one, the concept was so goofy.
In the process of shooting it I was like, "Please, Senator. Tackle me harder," and he was like, "Alright." And so the take you see is the one where he really went for it. Airport security came up to us afterwards and they were like, "We were gonna stop you, but then we saw who you were," to Senator Booker. And they said, "Anyway, can we have a picture with you?"
Oh, my god. Amazing. [Laughs] I like to think Senator Booker really saw this as an acting opportunity that he could seize to impress Rosario Dawson.
[Laughs] Yes. Well she's somewhat related to the whole thing. The night before we were in Atlanta for whichever Democratic debate that was, and I saw him and I said, "Hey, I'll see you tomorrow. I'm the guy!" And he was like, "Oh!" He was so excited. And I'd already talked to Rosario Dawson that night and told her we were doing it, and so I don't know, I'm guessing she must have said something because he was just so excited coming into it.
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My team is all about manifesting lately, so I want to ask who is your dream TikTok cameo?
Oh, man. So my favorite movie of all time — if you know it, you'll recognize my Twitter banner — is That Thing You Do. In my mind, the best TikTok would be with Tom Hanks playing his character from that That Thing You Do, like trying to manage me, because he plays a band manager.
TikToks aside, what are some hobbies that have helped get you through this past year?
Basically all my hobbies that I already had, just dialed up. I watch TV shows like it's homework. So I've been doing that even more so, and my wife and I will like trade who picks the show. Then what happens is after I watch these shows or movies I spend the next day reading about every aspect of production, and the actors, and how they were hired in the casting process, and the scripts. So my hobby is really just getting way too into whatever I just watched.
While we are on the topic of comfort shows, I know you love The Office.Do you have a favorite character or cold open?
The basic answer I would give is Jim was always my favorite. I think if you watch a lot of TikToks — especially when we were back in the office — I would intentionally emulate even the shooting style to make it look sort of like a mockumentary. If we ever did a sort of Officemoment I would look to the camera.
My favorite cold opening is "The Injury" episode, because within three minutes you just get so much information. Dwight runs into the pole, throws up on his car...there's so much.
@washingtonpost President Trump was impeached again today in the House in a 232-197 vote, which included 10 Republicans. ##Impeached ##Trump
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Anyone who's a fan of your TikToks knows you have regular guests, Sam and Pam, two cans of Spam. I would love to hear when you first fell in love with Spam.
I remember vividly. In college I worked at a camp in the Florida Keys. It was a Boy Scout camp called Sea Base. I jokingly called it Survivor Camp, but basically you went to an island off the Keys and you lived there for a week. I was the island mate, as we called it, so I would take this group of kids every single week all summer, and we would live on the island. And we were given a certain amount of supplies, and one of those things was always Spam, because the food that we got we couldn't refrigerate. Out of these non-perishable items, Spam was always the best thing, because if you slice it really thin and cook it like bacon, it's better than all this terrible condensed milk and whatever else we had.
So that's so that was when I first fell in love with Spam. I've loved it since. It's very hard to find anyone else that feels passionate about Spam. But I will say the flavored Spams are almost always awful. Those are just gimmicks. I would I would want to make that clear. Pumpkin Spice Spam was terrible.
@washingtonpost Make sure to cover your nose and mouth! #facemasktutorial
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I promised my team I would ask you one of our favorite ice-breaker questions. If you could have any two liquids come out of your thumbs (not water or coffee) what would they be?
[Laughs] Alright, the boring answer is one thumb would definitely just have like just a straight up lager. And the other...I recently just started going back to Taco Bell, and the drink I've always gotten since I was like six is Mountain Dew Baja Blast. So that would be the other thumb, because it's only sold at Taco Bell. But now it would also be available in my thumb.
What, aside from a daily dose of laughter, do you hope people take away from theWashington Post's TikTok account?
"If [people are] getting some source of verified news from a reputable news organization on an app where otherwise it's jokes, I think that's pretty great."
I think the other aspect of it, and this was kind of the plan all along, is really trying to actually inform people. Obviously you can only say so much in a 10 to 15 second TikTok, but you could probably scroll through more recent TikToks and see in the comments where people are like, "I can't believe this is how I heard about this." I take a lot of pride in that.
I certainly don't think that people should only get their news from TikTok obviously. But if they're getting some source of verified news from a reputable news organization on an app where otherwise it's jokes, I think that's pretty great. As a policy, I would like to make people laugh as well, but I am very happy when they get a little bit of both.
Any parting words of wisdom or advice for the good people of the internet?
This is another recent policy of mine. Don't get negative on Twitter, unless it's a really funny joke. Internet negativity overall will just make you feel worse. I think if you're spending all day just angry at Twitter it's not gonna be good.
Most of the time if I'm saying something angrily I'm trying to make it a joke, too, because I don't want someone to read what I wrote and also feel angry. I'd rather them at least laugh. There's just so much negativity going around. I know it sounds very "sunshine and daises" but I think there's a level where you can try to walk between the two a little bit.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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