BUFFALO, N.Y. — The way we consume information continues to evolve as well as the audiences who take it in. One LGBTQ internet news presenter is hoping to change the way people think about news to bring people closer.

"I was a cook in D.C., and I worked a lot of political events, and there is no better way to find out what the government thinks than being a waiter or a cook," said Vitus "V" Spear. "They just speak openly to you and they don't think you're listening or even care."

That was the beginning of a transition from culinary to internet education.

"I mean, if I had been in an office, it would have been in the butler's pantry, because that's where we usually whisper to each other. But I wasn't. I was at home alone during the pandemic, watching TV, and it was Jan. 6, actually," they noted. "I was like, 'OK, well, let me just get under my desk and explain to Mike Pence what the 25th Amendment is, and cases unaware of his powers right now.' "

Friends urged them to continue getting back "under the desk" and that brand of news took off.

"And I can remember my first 700 followers and I still make content just for them. Like I'm constantly thinking, 'my gosh, JJ's going to think this is the best story.' You're like, 'Roseann, Iowa is going to love this,' " V said. "It grew from this authentic wanting to share information that I had with people in a really easy way."

It's no secret that more people are turning to websites and social media to get their news for the day.

"So a new report just came out from Reuters. They did it in partnership with the University of Oxford in London on digital news and its impact. And I was the only woman and the only queer person listed," they said. "It was me and 11 dudes, and they compared me and Tucker Carlson's audience and they said, 'well, Tucker Carlson will have more name recognition when it comes to' ... if you walked up to somebody in the story and said, 'do you know who Tucker Carlson is?' They might say yes. But when it comes to influence, power and follow-through and engagement rate, I'm higher."

Those are high marks for someone who built an audience and continues to put out videos five days a week on one of the least forgiving platforms.

"The way that I stay, what a lot of people will describe as unbiased — which I think is adorable, because everybody has bias, of course — it's just sort of like how you responsibly manage that when you're telling a story," V said. "More than anything, or what stories you pick is to really look at how is this affecting people? I could very easily get on there and start screaming and probably have six times the followers and trigger everybody's anger and get everybody all worked up all the time. But I choose not to."

They treat the channel as an audience of family members, trying to bridge political gaps while getting caught up at the end of every weekday.

"Then you're a little less likely to write people off or to be so sided or to be so short tempered, because you want to have a relationship with these people," V said. "So you have to listen and give a little and hope that they listen and give a little."

That hasn't gone unnoticed.

"The New York Times recently called me the 'Walter Cronkite of Gen Z,' they noted. "Which is funny because Gen Z doesn't really know who Walter Cronkite is. And I ... I don't know about that. That's pretty generous. But I think they mean in the ways that I can take a story that's really complicated, add emotion without opinion, and really get it across really quickly."

At the end of all the reels, TikToks and feeds, Under the Desk and content creators know they're part of a comprehensive information ecosystem.

"I am not brave. I think that's the fun part. I literally do the news from under my desk because I am not a brave person," V said. "I'll tell this story and I'll stick up for people that I believe deserve advocacy. But I'm not going to be boots on the ground in Ukraine or something like that. We need real old school media [with] resources to do that and to those brave people."

News is a grind; viewing is understandably just as taxing sometimes, so Under the Desk goes all positive one day a week.

"Thursday night. And time for banana share. Good news only," V exclaimed like their regular Thursday night post-opening. "I cannot miss it; if I miss a banana shirt, people go crazy. And I think that speaks to the fact that we are desperate for good stories. We are desperate to believe that things are moving forward, that we are living in the good time, that innovation is all around us, that things could get better.

"For us to create opportunities to show people that they're not alone, I think it makes them want to be engaged in that social contract that we're supposed to have with each other as a society to participate. And it makes it a little bit easier."