Liked! Digital darlings

Social media hits: As the new face of entertainment, Internet has captured the imagination of people the world over.

These are that breed of artistes who aren’t on television, aren’t on films, they don’t need any media except their houses, rooms, their own television sets, their own cameras, and they do some amazing stuff.”

That was Bollywood Baadshah Shah Rukh Khan talking to a motley of millennial and Gen Z, at the 2014 YouTube fan fest about a bunch of young men along with him on stage. Nothing new about SRK talking to his audience. But what surprised the slightly older or the 30-plus in the audience was the excitement, screaming and cheering that went up cutting his sentence in the middle when a girl in white loose T-shirt, red cap, red sneakers came from behind him on the stage. Even the Baadshah had to step back to acknowledge her popularity. (The video is still on YouTube)  

[see from 7.09 onwards]

That was Lilly Singh, a Canadian with Indian parentage. All of 28 years old, Lilly is known to her fans as IISuperwomanII, is the new star who, as SRK said, is neither on TV nor on films. In the last three years, her fan base too has doubled. And she isn’t the only one who is more popular than the Khan triumvirate of Bollywood, or for that matter, even pop music sensations like Justin Bieber, Zayn Malik, Selena Gomez and their ilk.

There are other stars who the youngsters around the globe swear by. Stars like Liza Koshy, Ryan Higa, Tyler Oakley, David Dobrik and many others from the West. In India, we have innumerable names, and every day new names get added to the list. The gang of AIB-All India Bakchod (Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi, Gursimran Khamba, Ashish Shakya), EIC-East India Comedy (Kunal Rao, Sorab Pant, Sapan Verma, Sahil Shah, Azeem Banatwalla et al), Abish  Mathew, Zakir Khan, Karan Talwar, Anisha Rickshawali, Kenneth Sebastian, Kunal Kamra, Sahil Khattar, Bhuvan Bam, Sanjay Thumma, Nisha Madhulika, Sanam Puri, Shruti Anand, Dr Vikram Yadav, and the list is endless.

The new breed of stars are very ordinary folks — students, homemakers, musicians, tech professionals, teachers, beauticians, chefs, medical professionals or any others one can think of. They have completely succeeded in enthralling millions of people across the world. The medium they use to reach people is the Internet and video sharing websites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others which are collectively called the social media. They are known as YouTubers, vloggers etc.

They’re all in it
In fact, the social media can easily be labelled as the parallel universe of entertainment. Within a span of a decade, it has become the baap of all entertainment, or the Goliath of all amusement. Every millennial swears by it and each one of them from Jhumri Telaiya to Delhi, or from Timbuktu to LA, are on to it, and talking about it.

And the best part is that none of the current social media stars knew that their one innocuous video or tweet would catapult them into a whorl of popularity.

Karan Talwar, known by the name of Bollywood Gandu on social media, who is more popular on Twitter, started tweeting with irritation by the nadir the Bollywood films had reached. He was wondering as to why there was such a stoic silence from the audience. “Today everyone has become a critique. Six years ago, when I first tweeted about the film I Hate Luv Storys, there was no one and I got about 120 tweets within a couple of hours, and none of them were from my friends’ circle. I was pleasantly surprised and thus started my saga on Twitter,” recalls Karan. Today, he has more than 1.83 million followers on Twitter, and on Instagram the number is 61.6k, and about 1.15 million likes on Facebook.

Similar accidental venture into this medium is by another comedian Anisha Dixit, a YouTuber, who is better known as Rickshawali. The particular name as her life on social media started in an autorickshaw in Mumbai. Anisha, who was born and brought up in Germany, after studying acting in Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in LA, had come to Mumbai to get a foothold in the Hindi film industry.

“Had done several rounds of studios, auditions etc. Did some theatre work also. But it was a no-good breakthrough. Then in November 2013, I was in a rickshaw going from Andheri (a suburb in Mumbai) to meet a friend. I had a brainwave of making that rickshaw with colourful pink interiors as my backdrop, my iPhone as my video camera, and started talking about the film Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela. I casually uploaded it on YouTube. The kind of response I got baffled me, and so here I am, a YouTuber,” says the chirpy Anisha who, within three years, has nearly two lakh subscribers on YouTube, 1.74 lakh likes on Facebook, and nearly 7k followers on  Twitter.

Imagine the humungous number of followers of these stars. Lilly Singh has 11 million YouTube subscribers with 1.7 billion viewers, and her channel IISuperwomanII is in the top 100 most subscribed. The 28-year-old was ranked 3rd on the Forbes list of world’s highest paid YouTube stars in 2016 by Forbes, reportedly earning $7.5 million that year. And to think that she is only six years old on YouTube! And here we have the sensational Tanmay Bhat, who has more than 4.5 lakh likes on Facebook, and his gang of AIB has 2.9 million likes and 6.72 lakh followers. In fact, in 2016, the gang was ranked 82 by Forbes India’s top earning celebrities list, and 73rd in the fame rank. And they are just three years old in the business. In fact, most Indian YouTubers and vloggers are about three years old in the ‘art’.

Nothing but the truth
In an earlier interview, 29-year-old Tanmay had said, “Nothing changes by these rankings. I literally got yelled at by my Mom for not getting my haircut.” That may be so in their personal life, but, for the outside world, these social media stars are the icons! 
   
What makes these stars sensational is that they aren’t hampered by any dictates from anyone. They can and do take on any subject under the Sun — sex, parent troubles, films, politics, education, society, gender, law, food, fashion and any other subject that actually touches the youth of today. They make candid statements, tongue-in-cheek, and use the jargon of the youth or the Gen Z, which is the population between 13 and 18 years old, and millennials under 25 years of age! So, in a video, the usage of words like F**k, Chu***a, Teri M***i etc are regular. In fact, while viewing the videos, though the staid and plus-40s might get offended initially, later on one will realise that it’s the language the youth uses today. Cuss words are regularly and harmlessly used. (One hopes parents of this age group get used to hearing these words without getting scandalised or offended).

These stars also dress casually like any ordinary teenager — jeans, T’s, loosely hanging sleeves-rolled shirts, sneakers etc. Even if they wear jackets, it’s very casual — they wear it over a T rather than on a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. The youth relate to this. The vloggers talk straight to the camera, making the viewer feel as though they are personally talking to every individual.  

Vijay Nair, the CEO of OML (Only Much Louder) Entertainment, which manages a maximum number of stand-up comedians, musicians, storytellers and their social media accounts in India, feels that just getting traffic, increased tweets and likes isn’t enough. “Anybody can have their own YouTube channel, post a video and tweet. It’s easy to become a one-time sensation. But to sustain popularity, there has to be substance in what they are talking about. It has to be relevant, should touch a chord. Only then can one survive on social media and make a career out of it,” says the man who heads a multi-crore business organisation.

In his early 30s, Nair knows the pulse of the youth as he himself started his career at the age of 18, after dropping out of college and started managing well-known music bands. “I go by my gut feeling. I know what the youth, the Gen Z, is thinking, and we at OML recognise people who can deliver this,” he says. He feels that as long as the smartphones get smarter, and the Internet flourishes, the popularity of the parallel universe of entertainment will not subside.

And it’s not only the entertainment industry of comedians, musicians and their ilk that is getting famous. Cooking videos are the second-most popular videos viewed on YouTube. Especially newlyweds, who have zero knowledge of cooking, hungrily latch on to these vloggers who become their lifesavers in their in-laws’ homes.

When Noida-based Nisha Madhulika uploaded her first video in 2011, she never realised that she would become one of the most sought after cooks for vegetarian dishes on YouTube. At 56 years of age, dressed like any normal homemaker, talking in simple Hindi, and cooking in a kitchen that looks like one’s own kitchen without any exotic gadgets or décor, she is perhaps the oldest YouTube sensation. She has uploaded nearly 1,200 cooking videos. She is also one of the very few who doesn’t take any sponsors or advertisers on her channel. In 2016, she was clubbed as one among the top 10 Indian YouTubers.

Then there is the Moradabad-based Dr Vikram Yadav. While studying for his MBBS, he realised he and his other friends depended a lot for information on the Net. After graduation, he decided to help others get this information easily. So he started uploading videos of the information he had gathered, the problems he encountered while handling a case, and the treatment he had administered. That got him unimaginable responses. So now he uploads a minimum of two videos a week — Sunday and Wednesday — and has 3 lakh subscribers for his YouTube channel titled Medical and Educational Videos.

The question, how and how much money these social media stars make?

According to Aditya Gupta, co-founder of iGenero, an interaction social media agency which helps brands find their feet on the web, on mobile, and on digital media, “Consumers of television, films, print media etc are getting tired of advertisements. This is forcing brands to be more creative. So they have started latching on to social media stars. A clever Twitter handler will use a name of the brand without being blatant about it, and he or she gets paid depending on their popularity on the social media.”

He says people get paid anything between Rs 50 and Rs 20,00,000 per tweet, depending on the popularity of the social media star. A YouTuber might get paid more for the use of brands in their video.

Rickshawali says, “I charge according to the work the sponsor or the brand is doing. If it’s for a good cause, like women’s empowerment, children’s health and education, I might do it free. But if it’s just the use of brands to go with my name, then I charge accordingly.”

Bollywood Gandu says, “When brands started approaching me to use their names for a payment, initially I was a bit surprised. Then I found that it was good money! It was like bonus money. I certainly wasn’t saying no!” Brands that use his name are Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Cadbury etc. They sometimes ask him to hashtag or use pre-written messages in his tweets.

Komal Lath of Tute Consultancy helps brands reach their target, zeroes in on the YouTubers or Twitter handlers whose name could help the particular brands. “We identify these people for our brands and do the negotiations with their managers for them to use our brands either in their tweets or videos.”

So the new parallel universe entertainers make money while we get entertained almost at no cost, sitting in the privacy of our homes, while travelling, in office, or anywhere, as long as we are glued to our smartphones, and are hooked to the Net!