Image courtesy of Riley Savage.
The “college experience” has long been a staple of modern culture; a time when young adults move away from home for the first time, begin specific studies and above all socialize. This, of course, can be viewed as one of, if not the most, formative times in a person’s life. Furthermore, people build habits and passions that play impactful roles in steering the direction of their young lives. In some cases, students may end up in careers they never intended to pursue.
That has proven to be incredibly true for Riley Savage and Graydon Weaver, two people whose friendship blossomed at the University of Cincinnati where they started their hypersuccessful YouTube channel HIVEMIND. Since its inception in 2018, their channel has exploded to nearly 500 thousand followers. In recent years they have also started three other channels: HIVEMIND UNLIMITED, HIVEMIND LIMITED and Hivemind Cheap Seats.
“I started the idea for the project as like a capstone thing in graphic design school,” Savage said. “I was trying to essentially use what I had learned in graphic design to make an approach to making content that was segmented, where pieces would work kind of like as a whole. So it was like breaking content down, it was, like, about attention spans and stuff like that. But generally, it was supposed to be kind of music journalism in a certain way was the original approach, but doing it with, like, a little bit more of a fun twist, I guess.”
In recent years, professional content creation has transitioned from the fringes of career options to something that has proven to be incredibly successful for a wide array of people. Content creation comes in many shapes and sizes, with TikTok and other short-form mediums becoming increasingly popular in recent years.
“I think as long as people are being authentic and not just hopping on trends it’s really cool,” Deepa Reddy, a third-year student majoring in biology at the University of Nevada, Reno said. “As long as you are still in touch with your humanity and having fun, it seems like a good thing to get into. You can also make some real money doing [content creation], which is definitely something that is pretty crazy… I’ve seen a few different people on campus doing content creation for their own channels and whatnot, and that seems pretty cool, as long as you’re still respectful of everyone else.”
Though the value of a four-year degree still remains vital to young adults getting into white-collar industries, it is no longer the only path for success. For many, a college degree signifies more than just an expanded knowledge on a certain topic. It’s a testament of one’s ability to work for and earn something.
“I got my degree. It was mostly like, I needed some agency for my parents,” Savage said. “I mean, they’re great, but I think they were like, ‘please get your degree because you want to be a YouTuber, and I don’t know what that is’… If it doesn’t work out, you have a degree. But it did take a long time to work out. So [my parents] were nervous there for a second, but here we are.”
Savage graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in graphic design, while Weaver never graduated — he dropped out of a local state school after transferring from Ohio Wesleyan University, though Weaver continued to live with his friends attending Cincinnati.
“I’m really grateful for what I learned. I stuck it out and, like, got that degree because I still use it every day,” Savage said. “I design all the thumbnails for the channel. I did all the branding. I designed our merch. I do a lot of graphic design work still, but it not being the primary focus is kind of exactly how I wanted it to go.”
What was once just a music page now has six people working on it, not including Weaver and Savage themselves. Since then, the channel has branched out to other genres of content, touching on sports, politics and other forms of entertainment. The page notably features a plethora of game show-like content, that mainly revolves around trivia-type material.
“The other aspect of it is COVID changed a lot. We couldn’t vlog or do podcasts during COVID,” Weaver said. “It was a lot of like, what can we do with just us quarantined sitting at a desk? We found that the game content and then eventually brackets and all that stuff was what got the best stuff out of us. We had the most fun doing [game content]. We did music videos for a long time and most of that team is still with us doing stuff.”
University is known to be a time for many new adventures, from undergraduate students’ infamous relationship with alcohol and substances, to a young adult’s first steps into a professional world. It was through these experiences where the channel’s striking name, HIVEMIND, was born.
“HIVEMIND is actually an inside joke name with our friends, where that was what we named a group chat after,” Weaver said. “A few of our friends were on psychedelics, and for some reason, the repeated phrase throughout that trip was, ‘we need to connect to the hivemind.’ And they kept saying this. I was sober. So I found this to be just very funny, so we just named our group chat HIVEMIND.”
For Savage and Weaver, what started as a college side project has turned into a full-time career. Their experience is a microcosm of a broader shift in what success can look like in today’s ever-changing world. While university still plays an important role in shaping skills and opportunities, the “college experience” has become less about staying on a set path — and more about discovering possibilities along the way.