With “Bimbo University,” Nikita Redkar leans into femininity to explain the news

The data is in: News creators and influencers are a major source of news for Americans, especially people under 30. This is the latest edition of Creators of Record, an occasional series of interviews with popular creators about how they do their jobs.

Nikita Redkar: I started in 2022, kind of accidentally. I did standup comedy for five years before the pandemic. I was always doing political humor. I took many political science classes in college, I wrote for the college newspaper, and I always had an interest in politics.

In 2022, I had a video that really took off — like millions of views within a few hours. I was explaining the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a silly metaphor about Russia being a jealous ex that doesn’t want to see his ex thrive and be independent.

I tried that formula again a couple weeks later…about NATO and fears of World War III. I explained exactly what would be affected. I said there’s not going to be a world war, but things are going to get really expensive, which happened. I also used a girly friendship metaphor for that video. That’s when I started doing that formula — leaning into hyper-femininity to explain these complex geopolitical topics.

Redkar: I feel like my work has made a lot of these daunting topics a little bit more accessible. I incorporate a lot of humor, which is important because there’s a lot of doom and gloom on social media. It’s a normal reaction to have toward everything that’s going on, and I feel it myself, too. But when I talk to my audience, I intentionally give them hope. I don’t just tell the news, but tell them, OK, if we really locked in and held these corporations and the government accountable and we were intentional in our activism, this is what the world could look like.

It’s important to make information accessible because we are going through so much news-wise and not all of it is easy to understand. I enjoy bringing this information I’m naturally interested in to people in a way where everyone [can] get involved.

When I was starting, I was not [a stereotypical] history buff or a news junkie. I would like to think that someone who looks like me and talks like me should be just as interested in politics and just as interested in the outcome of this country.

Redkar: That was the whole reason I created Bimbo University. I wanted to get more women on board with being interested in politics and history in particular, because history is seen as such a male-dominated [field].

It was really important to me to bring, colloquially speaking, the girls and the gays and the theys into the space, because it is fascinating and it provides context to what we’re going through right now. It makes the present a little less daunting when you study historical cycles and realize that people 100 years ago dealt with [similar things to what we’re going through now]. How did they come out of that?

Redkar: My niche is educational. Bimbo University is a place where anyone can start no matter where they are [in their political education]. My audience [ranges from] people who are just getting into politics to people who maybe were triggered by a specific event in the news to start paying more attention to it.

I feel like leftist content creators all operate on a spectrum. You have people who are getting really deep into Marxist theory, for example, and things like geopolitics. I’m at the beginning. I’m the person who’s holding the door open and being like, “OK, you just got here, this is what we’re talking about right now.”

Redkar: I got into this huge argument with my best friend’s mom, who was a second-wave feminist in the 70s and 80s.

She was upset that I called my page Bimbo University. She was like, “You’re dumbing yourself down. Women shouldn’t dumb themselves down. You are just as smart as a man, if not smarter than a man.”

That was my lightbulb moment of, oh, your feminism has always been to measure your worth as equal to a man and by the standards of men…working toward a man’s acceptance. In some industries, you’ve got to do that. I don’t blame [people] for thinking like that.

But the reason I dial so deep into this hyper-femininity — leaning into these girly things like getting ready with me or walking with my outfit showing — is because I want to show that you don’t have to sacrifice those parts of yourself to be taken seriously. You should be taken seriously no matter what.

Redkar: On Mondays, I have a researcher and we go through the topics that people are talking about on social media. We pull up some news sites and see what the big stories are, and we leave some room for breaking news throughout the week.

My week is [split] between videos [on topics] that the general public is talking about, and videos that are just interesting to me. That’s how I stay sane in this business. I’m lucky to have the flexibility of doing that. My researcher combs through news sites and research papers and compiles all that information for me, then I put together a script.

I used to dress in pink all the time. I kind of got bored of that, so I stopped, although from time to time I’ll still dress in some pink stuff.

Redkar: It’s definitely my favorite color, but it’s like the chicken and the egg — I don’t know if I liked it before I was doing this.

I pick whatever outfit I feel cute in. In getting ready with me videos, I start with a completely bare face, so at least the outfit has to be giving a little bit.

[The process] revolves around very women-specific issues. Like, if my hair wash day is tomorrow, I spend today doing Instagram grid posts. I save my filming for the day I wash my hair. A lot of my peers are a little bit more spontaneous — they can pick up a phone and just start talking. I can’t. I have a Google doc and I memorize one line at a time.

Tameez: Tell me about the Get Ready with Me videos. How do you decide what’s a GRWM and what’s a walking video?

Tameez: Tell me about how you combine being funny with being factual and accurate.

Redkar: If I get a fact wrong, I’ll do a follow-up video. It’s rare that I’ve gotten a fact wrong because between me and my researcher, that’s two levels of checks before something hits the internet.

For one video, I didn’t factually get it wrong, but I should have included more of the story. It was about the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and how Indians were expelled from Uganda, which is kind of how we got both Zohran Mamdani and Charli XCX [living in the U.S.], because both of their parents were part of the group that was expelled. I disregarded the racism that local Ugandans faced because of the Indians. I just focused on the expulsion and I framed Indians as the victims.

A lot of people in the comments were like, “Hey, like, you really should have said this other part too.” I just deleted that video, because I didn’t want this to spread and only give half of the story.

It’s kind of aggravating to have a ton of comments descend on you like that, especially when some are like, “I trusted you. I used to love your videos.” And it’s like, goddamn, I just made a mistake.

Redkar: My favorite video in recent memory was about girls on the first date, how we’re all so vigilant these days about dating men. I had so much fun doing it because I was talking about how life is affected by politics, instead of just politics. I think that video did really well because a lot of people connected to it.

Last year I did a video that I called “How we went from Brat Summer to Hitler Winter” and talked about the hedonism of the 2024 summer and the fascism that followed. I related it to the Roaring 20s transitioning to the Great Depression to the World War. I incorporated a lot of pop culture [references].

I use pop culture as an anchor a lot. I’ve done at least two videos where I talk about songs I enjoy and how they relate to the broader context of what’s going on right now. One video that did really well took the song [“Ain’t in L.A.” by Adela], where she’s celebrating all the baddies around the world who don’t live in Los Angeles. I did a video on how the American dream has changed: People used to immigrate to America for a sense of validation for what they did with their lives. But now, seeing America kind of crash and burn, people are like, “Actually, I think I’m happy right here, and I’m going to focus on my home and how to make it the best.”

Redkar: Constantly. I posted a video about the Cornell professor who invented the term sexual harassment. I thought it was so interesting and timely, but it did not do well at all. The problem with content creation is sometimes you can’t tell if people didn’t like a video or if you’re being shadow banned.

I judge it a lot on views and likes. [Usually], people are not watching [a video] past, like, 20 seconds. There’s definitely a chunk of my audience that does watch the whole thing, and that’s kind of the reason why I make them a minute and a half. But for the most part, people are not watching.

Redkar: I really love Liz Plank. She’s @feministabulous on Instagram. I love her coverage and how she leans into current conversations in pop culture.

I really like Charles McBryde. He’s not talking about just news — he’s very foreign policy-focused as well.

@MissEatingGood on Instagram is a great explainer of what’s going on and the historical context.

To be honest with you, I follow news creators because they’re my friends and I want to support them. I’m not really watching what they’re doing because, mentally, I can’t take that much. I’m also a little scared to be influenced by what they’re doing, as opposed to what I want to do.

Redkar: Just finding ways to work together. I think there is so much benefit in that. I know countless creators who take a journalist’s article and dissect it down. Maybe [the journalists] should be the ones doing that.

I would happily pair up with journalists and teach them the ins and outs of content creation and how to make a short-form video article that’s also attention-grabbing. That’s just the reality; people are on social media, everyone’s attention span is shot, which sucks. We could try to fix that, but at this moment, we’re not fixing it. It’s really helpful to go on social media and talk [about your reporting] because journalists work hard on their articles.

Creators [should] take more time. We rush way too much. It’s not our fault, because these platforms reward you for making content more frequently and punish you if you take a few days off. [Not rushing] sucks, but what can you do? It’s better than putting incorrect, or rushed, or incomplete information out there.

That’s why I have a Substack — it trains my brain to look at more angles of the story. It’s kind of why I want to get into YouTube as well. I’m feeling a bit fatigued with the nature of short-form media and how everything has to be less focused on information and more focused on getting an emotional reaction.