When senior Curran Van Waarde wakes up every morning, the first thing he does is log into both of his Twitter accounts. While one is used for his personal thoughts, his other account “DwightFalse” is used as a means to make money.
With 9,930 followers, Van Waarde tweets phrases he finds humorous, inspired by “The Office” character, Dwight Schrute.
Only two weeks ago, Van Waarde sold his third account, “SquidwardTweets.” The account was started similar to “DwightFalse,” both based off of popular television shows. With 20,000 followers, “SquiwardTweets” earned Van Waarde $140.
“I started a Twitter account for Squidward Tentacles from SpongeBob,” Van Waarde said. “I heard about people making money on Twitter, so I figured I would give it a shot. I posted relevant stuff to trending topics and various Spongebob quotes.”
Even though Van Waarde is down to one profitable account, both online identities began as a way for him to make peers laugh.
Senior Tristan Welsh believes Van Waarde was able to make both accounts successful because of his unique humor.
“I think what [Van Waarde] does with his SquidwardTweets and his DwightFalse tweets are comical genius,” Welsh said. “The reason they’re so funny is because of the level of creativity that he puts into those tweets. I’m a subscriber, and I really enjoy getting his tweets sent to my phone.”
In order to garner such online attention, Van Waarde must keep his content fresh. One off-topic tweet has cost him hundreds of followers. Van Waarde tries to tweet at least twice a day in order to keep the laughs coming.
As a fan of both “Spongebob” and “The Office,” it is not a difficult task for Van Waarde to use comical situations from the shows and channel them into his various online personas. He uses his extensive knowledge of both shows to craft his tweets to be as humorous as possible. Internet comedy is hit or miss, so Van Waarde takes extra care in his tweeting.
“Luckily ‘Spongebob’ has plenty of funny quotes and stuff that allowed me to keep posting a lot of new and funny things,” Van Waarde said. “It does get slightly stressful when money comes into the equation, though. What I do is tweet an ad every once in a while, and every click that it gets gives me some money. It can be hard to make ads interesting, though. It’s difficult to advertise for a clothing company whilst remaining funny, but it’s really just a hobby to be honest. I never really thought I’d be able to make money.”
Despite the ongoing pressure to conjure up laughs, Van Waarde’s intent was not always to make money.
“I figured it would be funny to make a Squidward Twitter account, and it just kind of evolved into a way for me to make money,” Van Waarde said. “One day they offered to pay me, and I was like, cool!”
While Van Waarde is fairly successful on Twitter, it is his YouTube accounts that make him the most money by posting the songs that he creates at his home studio. Along with his own beats, Van Waarde also posts comedy videos that he makes in his free time.
“I like to make music, you know, the fist pumping techno music that gets your heart pumping,” Van Waarde said. “I actually got 150,000 views on a song I made.”
Through his musical personality, “Curdabur,” he also sells his beats for aspiring musicians to use.
“I once sold a beat for $75,” Van Waarde said. “I also make stupid videos that I think are kind of funny, such as my Crucial Tutorials. Essentially, I just make 10 second long videos that teach someone how to do something dumb like pour apple juice onto a VCR, they’re also racking up thousands of views.”
Between his three YouTube channels, Curranonthecob, Curdabur, and CrucialTutorials, Van Waarde has more than 2,500 subscribers, many of whom are RBHS students. These subscribers to Van Waarde’s channel on Youtube always seem to be waiting on pins and needles for his next video to be uploaded.
“I’m subscribed to Curran on YouTube. I think Curran’s YouTube channel is really creative, and really gets people excited to go to school with him,” senior Colton Gerling said. “He’s a really fun guy to be around, and there are a lot of things that are awesome about him. Curran is just an all around good guy, and he makes some really funny videos.”
Van Waarde’s unique musical and comical creativity on YouTube also pays him through advertisements. This privilege is only awarded to users that YouTube deems worthy through various variables such as number of followers and likes versus dislikes.
“It works the same way as Twitter,” Van Waarde said. “A small ad will pop up either before or during a video, and if someone clicks on it, I get paid a few cents. It’s awesome.”
Van Waarde is an online entrepreneur. He has found a way to make money while doing what he loves. Additionally, he must balance his online career while still maintaining jobs at his church, Woodcrest, and as a automobile sanitation engineer at Tiger Car Wash.
“I like to do funny stuff with my friends, and I like making music,” Van Waarde said. “The best part is I get paid to do it without sacrificing my time.”
By Alex Burnam
Click here to follow DwightFalse on Twitter:
Here is Curran Van Waarde’s most popular song.
