Bad Science Jokes, which now boasts an audience of 594K followers on Instagram, was launched ten years ago by the creator Melissa Miller who, in a previous interview with Bored Panda, said that it all started from a Tumblr for a high school project.
“My junior year science teacher said she would give us extra points for a joke on the back of a test. After that, though, we would write jokes and doodles on the back of every test or homework assignment. I would document the ones I thought were funny and put them on Tumblr,” Miller recounted previously.
In her first year of college, around 2016, Melissa created Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. After attending digital marketing classes, she also realized she had made more of a splash than the professors had and continued to research on her own. With her self-taught knowledge, Melissa ended up working for major agencies, like “Google Partners” and her Bad Science Jokes project acquired huge success!
Today, Bored Panda spoke with Melissa again and since it’s been almost a year since our last interview, Melissa updated us with the news she had about Bad Science Jokes. “This has been an interesting year,” the creator said. In fact, just a month ago, Melissa won an award from Women Lead Change because of the work she was doing with Bad Science Jokes.
“I was told someone sent them a comment thread, with a nomination, of followers of Bad Science Jokes explaining how BSJ has helped them learn! The main thing with BSJ is to help people learn in a way that feels unthreatening,” Melissa told us.
On a more personal note, the creator of Bad Science Jokes got married this year “to a wonderful man named Sam. So, my name is now Melissa Church. And my business, Digi-Buzz, won an award for a best marketing agency in my local region! Woo-hoo!”
Right now, Melissa is busy working at trying to bring more of a face to Bad Science Jokes. “There are plans to do short-form videos of assorted facts, and potentially interviews with science personalities in the coming months.”
“Moreover, Instagram specifically had so many big changes this year and it was a bit overwhelming to keep up with it all! At one point the only thing gathering attention was Reels (Instagram's short-form video content) and just as fast Reels began to get no traction either,” Melissa explained.
Meanwhile, “with Twitter and the controversies around it, Tumblr losing momentum, Facebook being 'dead' as some say, and Instagram having an identity crisis - it is a bit nerve-wracking for anybody who regularly uses the platform,” the creator of BSJ said.
“What will be different when I wake up tomorrow? I've been working on slight rebranding of the content on BSJ to get even more educational, adding more content per post, switching up the types of content posted, while still staying true to why people followed Bad Science Jokes in the first place.”
It's no secret that there has been a big boom in education content on social media, which has become super popular lately. Melissa said she has surely noticed the increase in educational content on assorted social platforms. “I think some of it is a fad, an easy copy/paste article with a good clickbait tagline. On the other hand, there are a lot of people wanting to genuinely share the information they are passionate about,” she said.
According to Melissa, there is always someone looking for what you can share. “Whether you have knowledge on ancient eating habits, science jokes (good or bad), or ballroom dance lessons, there is someone looking for this sort of content. At the end of the day, you don't know what you don't know and it seems these algorithms know what that is.”
The creator of BSJ is always happy to see more educational content. “I think bringing more education to these platforms, as opposed to the barrage of celebrity gossip and influencers, is a great thing. It's cool to be smart.”
When asked how she manages to keep BSJ relevant with such tremendous competition on social media, Melissa confirmed that it can get difficult, for sure. “It'll be 10 years of running Bad Science Jokes in January of 2023 and a lot of things have changed online. I try to study analytics on a regular basis. What content is getting more engagement, was it a one-liner or a longer joke? Puns?”
