Ben Johnson 101: How an Instagram auteur is defining trendy tennis way of life

“All those videos got over a million views,” Johnson says, “and I was like, oh, what’s going on here?

“Like, this is crazy.”

It would solely get crazier—and extra inventive. In a video from July 2024, Ben shows off a bespoke closet made to effectively retailer and entry his trove of tennis tools, from clunky racquets to his hat assortment to equipment in numerous colorways. He constructed it himself, for about £250, after a visit to Ikea.

That similar month, with Wimbledon going down, he put collectively a two-second clip about viewing habits that turned his hottest video on Instagram: over 391,000 likes.

“You have to sort of go down the funny viral route first,” Johnson says of his timeline, “and then you can start introducing the sort of super niche, kind of luxury lifestyle tennis content that I do now—which is what I love to do, bigger productions with the music, the grading, the cinematic-esque filming.”

There’s no higher feeling I get than ending modifying a video, with the cool music, and simply sitting down and watching it 100 occasions in a row. Ben Johnson

Johnson makes use of the phrase cinema typically in our dialog. It’s the antithesis of most content material that fills social-media algorithms: mind rot, lo-fi if not lowbrow, captured in typically careless methods for the aim to seize a view.

Rather than an inexpensive rating, tennis’ Instagram auteur aspires for one thing rather more.

“I film, edit and come up with all the creative ideas for my page,” Johnson says proudly. “It’s me with a tripod, I fly the drone, I grade everything myself, edit everything myself.

“It’s now my full-time job.”