With his feet on the ground and apart from any kind of controversy or boast of fame. This is how Ignacio Gil and his popular alter ego Nachter are shown. Under this pseudonym, this business globetrotter of Valencian origin who worked as a magician or intern in the marketing department of McDonalds designing flyers, has become the main Spanish reference for white and family humor on social networks.
Currently, Natcher brings together a community of followers of 10.4 million people on TikTok and more than three on Instagram. After nearly seven years uploading videos to the Internet, eight months ago he decided to give his innate talent and his obvious telegenics a definitive business boost by professionalizing a ‘work 3.0’ that thousands of adolescents dream of -and not so young- in Spain and in the rest of the world.
“Many times we leave our passions aside because people want to throw them down,” Ignacio cries out to ABC, who, despite the idyllic siren songs of this incipient and seductive digital profession, encourages “trying, searching and promoting the talent”; and more “when you are young and you don’t have so much responsibility”. “At least, don’t stay in not having tried,” he adds.
He, while combining his university studies in Business Administration and Management (ADE) and his later job as purchasing director of the Saona group, tried it. And wow he got it. What started as a hobby and a private account has ended up being a renowned viral video laboratory that has made it a real rage among children and their mothers who share smartphones and tablets.
In search of the lost ark, it tries to “embrace everything” and “make all audiences laugh”, although “by far the funniest are the mothers and the ones I like to reach the most”, clarifies Nachter, with a master’s degree in Service Management , Products and Companies and a doctorate that deals with the trust of managers in workers and how it affects the consumer through social networks.
Some of his ingenious parodies of stereotypical families, through basic characters such as Mother or Middle Brother, exceed seven million reproductions, such as the one that ridicules the incomprehension generated among the elders by the convoluted jargon of ‘Generation Z’.
The turning point in Nachter’s meteoric rise came during the confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic, when he took advantage of “being locked up at home to make more family videos”, many of them becoming authentic viral phenomena both on social networks and WhatsApp. . “The turns that life takes”, reflects Ignacio, because he never imagined dedicating himself exclusively to the creation of online content. “As a child my big dream was to be an actor and the reality is that acting is what has brought me here,” he stresses.
The clarity of the ideas and processes that have led this ADE graduate to establish himself as a TikTok and Instagram star is striking. To do this, he has the help of his wife, Rose, whom he met in the last year of his studies during his stay in the Philippines. Both have designed an action plan and an ambitious short- and medium-term strategy that is diametrically far from the improvisation and lack of business knowledge that reigns among the vast majority of content creators.
If there is something Nachter likes among so many audiences, as Ignacio explains to this newspaper, it is because “he tries to be as neutral as possible”, but not only in humor, “but in all aspects of life”. “Imagine a political party that is as neutral as possible, although it is difficult to conceive, it would possibly have a large number of voters,” he compares.
“If, for example, I say that I am from a soccer team, people who feel linked to others will not want to follow me or they will like me worse. If I show my personal life, maybe there are people who don’t like it or if I say my opinion on a specific issue or the political party I vote for, imagine the people I can have against it”, argues this comedian who admires the absurd humor of José Mota, his main reference.
Despite the quantifiable success, he avoids the term ‘triumph’ and the tagline ‘the tiktoker with the most followers in Spain’: «Now I am having a little more success but next year I may not have it. I make videos without taking into account the number of ‘followers’ and my life was the same before as it is now », he clarifies.
He enjoys what he does, although he considers it “complicated” to disconnect. «You have to fight a lot psychologically because you inadvertently get hooked on the mobile. In this case, my wife has helped me a lot because we have established that weekends are sacred for sports and other activities that minimize mental pressure, “says Natcher.
In his day-to-day life, he meets with his creative team in the morning, then shoots and edits videos until lunchtime, and in the afternoon he dedicates himself fully to other business projects. «I do this work and this humor my way of being, not thinking about the business. You can’t make videos thinking about fame, but about making content that makes your parents and grandparents laugh,” explains this tiktoker, who encourages the elderly to try to understand the new hyperconnected world in which their children live.
Nachter hasn’t looked at Twitter for more than a year, preferring to flee from sterile controversies that can undermine his work. «What I do is continue my day to day and be super sure and happy with what I do and I don’t want more». Ignacio shows a total refusal to continue feeding “salseos that people like” about some controversies that have revolved in recent weeks around his figure.
Perhaps other content creators, younger and less experienced, prefer to extend discussions and confrontations to increase their number of followers, but Ignacio is a tanned thirtysomething with clear ideas who “has never liked the sauces of movie celebrities” .
Some content creators, such as comedian David Pareja, have publicly accused him of plagiarizing videos from other accounts without acknowledging the original source. An accusation that he prefers not to comment on and from which he completely distances himself. “What I had to say I commented on a video and I’m going to stay there, I’m not going to talk anymore, because all the time I dedicate to a salseo I’m leaving it to help people with serious people who need to laugh,” he says.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was an article in the newspaper ‘El País’. which described him as the tiktoker with the most followers in Spain thanks to his “innate ability to forget to quote those whom he plagiarizes” and “by stealing ideas”. In his replica video, Nachter brings together his main fictional characters and reviews the success of his most viral pieces, all of them homegrown.
Apart from this, Ignacio intends to continue being a prophet in his homeland -Valencia- and does not contemplate moving to Madrid or other places with greater professional opportunities. “I feel very Valencian, I am in love with this city and I want it to be valued more because we have plenty of talent”, he concludes.
