Jake Rupp has been a beloved teacher for almost 20 years, but more than his popularity among students, Rupp has also gained popularity on one of the most known social media platforms, TikTok.
With over 50k followers and 7 million likes, Rupp emphasizes how his social media life would have been unfathomable to him as a teacher at the beginning of his career, “I was a teacher who I remember having to film myself on a VHS tape for a college class and being paranoid that students were taking photos of me on camera.”
Overcoming these doubts, three years ago he started his TikTok journey, not for his own use but to be cool in front of his kids, “my daughters were under the impression that TikTok only gave accounts to important people, so if I was posting on TikTok, it’s because TikTok chose me,” continuing, “I did it as a dad flex because my kids fundamentally misunderstood the platform.”
What started as a harmless joke turned into one of Rupp’s daily exercises. His contract with Erie High School ends at 3 o’clock, and before he has to go pick up his daughters 20 minutes later, he uses this time as his “TikTok time”. What is a full-time job for many influencers is as simple as “putting my phone on the bookcase, putting myself in frame, hitting play, and recording” for Rupp. With a note in his phone about various topics to talk about, he records, edits, and posts all under half an hour.
Rupp uses his humor, wit, creativity, and Master Degree in Rhetoric to capture intriguing videos for many audiences, also striking viral multiple times. Whether it’s supporting highschool lifeguards and the work they do, which got over 1.8 million views, or jokingly accusing his daughters of “smoking lead” from their pencils, which got over 4 million views and over 500k likes, his videos never seem to fail.
Although these videos gained lots of attention, there was one video that truly made Rupp “viral”. The video contains Rupp finding a checkbook in his car of a woman named Jessica, to which he had no idea who she was, so he made a video explaining that if your name was Jessica and you lived in colorado, he had your checkbook and it really looked like he was cheating on his wife. Prior to this video he had 1k followers, and three days later he had 45k followers. This video was filled with comments calling him a narcissist and a cheater, but what shocked him the most was days later, when “I was driving my kids to school and they were talking about me and my video on the radio,” but this fame quickly disappeared, “It was wildly stress inducing, then it just suddenly went away.”
One of the most notable videos of his is titled “Helen Keller is an actual person and it’s wild I have to say it so often,” to which he calls out the large section of people who believe Helen Keller is fake. This video got 4.3 million views and over 480k likes, which with the creator fund made Rupp a few thousand dollars.
The video was filled with hundreds of hate comments which repeated the idea that blind and deaf people cannot do anything. Rupp responded, “it’s like a fundamental ableist misunderstanding of a person’s abilities. That’s disgusting,” but with this fame, “I went ahead and donated it to the Tiger Cafe, full of kids with special needs doing the same damn thing, but that comment section says they can’t,” finalizing, “if I never make another dollar off of that video, I feel like i’ve done the right thing.”
This generosity continues, as Rupp uses his platform to spread awareness and help raise money for his fellow staff members and friends in need. Erie senior Kunga Palmo notes his TikTok about assistant principal Justin Carpenter, who lives with Amyotrophic lateral Sclerosis, or ALS. Rupp spread awareness to Carpenter’s issue through his TikTok page, encouraging people to go support his Go Fund Me. “I know he cares alot about the people around him, and what he did for Mr.Carpenter was truly amazing,” Palmo explains.
Rupp is one of the teachers that will truly pay attention to his students’ lives and listen to anything they have to say, ranging from their hobbies to how locked in they are at school. Many of his TikTok’s sprout from experiences with his students, making funny content for all to watch. Senior Olivia Lang explains how he made a video about an interaction they had in class, and she couldn’t be more thrilled to make it onto his tik tok page, “I tried to teach him that [holding up a peace sign] was cool but then he posted about it and lowkey got bullied, but in the end it was really funny.”
From his humor to good causes, Rupp is a one of a kind teacher with a one of a kind TikTok page, spreading smiles one video at a time.
