During a three-part special about the crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that aired last November on “Dr. Phil,” daytime talk show host Phil McGraw played a TikTok video of a 27-year-old woman named Stanzi Potenza as proof that true-crime fandom had gone too far. In the video, Ms. Potenza said she was so obsessed with Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” that she came home from work in diapers to binge the series uninterrupted.
It turned out that Ms. Potenza had made a video satirizing true-crime obsessives and Dr. Phil took it as sincere.
Ms. Potenza is a cringe comic and actor who describes himself as a “sketch comedian from hell.” She has gained millions of followers on TikTok and YouTube by posting mansplaining public service announcements, sarcastic impersonations of Satan, and bone-dry parodies of the horror movie “The Purge.”
“Personally, I think some of the best comedies are a little bit painful,” she said. “It hurts so much.”
As a concept, cringe is deceptively difficult to describe. As a content category, cringe is huge, encompassing everything from outdated cultural norms to a strategy music artists use to reach real fans. Cringe isn’t one thing, but you know it when you see it. On TikTok, you can make a career out of being cringeworthy on purpose in a niche area of the platform known as CringeTok (I know this because my brother, a former lawyer, has been making a living off cringe videos since Spring 2020).
Ms. Potenza has a theater degree and completed a six-week acting program at New York’s William Esper Studio, so she feels natural in front of the camera. She ventured into posting cringe comedy videos during the pandemic as a way to keep working on her craft while venues were closed. An early TikTok video of her crying while applying clown makeup gained hundreds of thousands of views and encouraged her to post more.
She now has over 3.8 million followers on TikTok – a following large enough to translate into lucrative brand deals, bonuses and merchandise sales. Her videos, she said, have earned her more than $200,000 annually.
Making a CringeTok video
Popular creators on TikTok can make a living in all sorts of niches on the platform, including doing makeup, handing out watches, being old — even drinking flavored water. But CringeTok is more like putting on a show.
To create the perfect CringeTok video, creators mine the depths of the internet and their own experiences for traits they can exaggerate. Identifying behaviors that make us cringe, such as complacency and ignorance, requires an ironic amount of self-reflection. Cringe comedians often build sketches into their schedules. Filming can last as little as an hour, often from the comfort of the makers’ bedrooms.
These videos are different from unintentionally cringe-inducing videos in which an overabundance of seriousness combined with a lack of self-awareness causes viewers to feel uncomfortable.
In those cases, “we’re not laughing with you,” Ms. Potenza said. “We laugh at you.”
Riri Bichri started posting CringeTok videos in 2020 and by April she had quit her job as an electrical engineer to create content full-time. She has built a following of 800,000 subscribers by drawing inspiration from 2000s rom-com tropes, fan fiction, and her own creepy behavior.
“If I’m not ashamed of what I did yesterday, if I’m not cringing at what I did yesterday, then I haven’t grown,” Ms Bichri said.
Brad Podray, 40, is an orthodontist in Des Moines whose TikTok account, the Scumbag Dad, was originally a riff on the work of another TikTok creator, Nick Cho. Known online as Your Korean Dad, Mr. Cho plays a wholesome, fatherly figure who treats viewers as if they were his beloved children.
“Much of my main comedy is based around identifying trends and deconstructing them to the point where they are no longer recognizable from the original inspiration,” said Mr. Podray.
His POV style videos feature a series of short skits in which the Scumbag Dad exposes his fictional child to increasingly volatile situations. At the beginning of Season 1 of the parodies, Mr. Podray steals his child’s prescription painkillers, and by Season 6, his child helps him kill drug dealers.
“Unfortunately I was never able to complete the series as TikTok banned me too many times,” Mr Podray said. TikTok bans videos featuring youth exploitation and abuse, fictional or otherwise, in its community guidelines, but Mr. Podray continues to make other types of parody videos. He said he made about $150,000 a year from his content on TikTok and YouTube.
How the cringe creator economy works
In July 2020, TikTok established the Creator Fund to reward popular accounts and encourage content creation. It initially promised to pay out $200 million and now expects the fund to grow beyond $1 billion. However, how much each creator gets can vary.
“Creator Fund payouts are based on a number of factors,” said Maria Jung, TikTok’s global product communications manager. “These factors include what region your video is viewed in, engagement with your video, and the extent to which your video complies with our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.”
It’s been widely reported that eligible creators typically get a few cents for every thousand views of a video, though Ms. Jung wouldn’t confirm that number.
Creators with millions of followers and views per video can earn a few thousand dollars per month from the Creator Fund. Having an engaged TikTok audience also allows creators to expand their reach on other social platforms. Meta discontinued their Reels Play bonus program in March, but creators can still monetize Facebook Ad Reels, a program that works similarly to YouTube’s revenue sharing model.
Cross-posting content to increase revenue streams is a common practice among creators.
“It wasn’t until I started making money on YouTube that I really started making money,” Ms. Potenza said. “In order to live off this, you have to use a lot of different methods to make it sustainable.”
YouTube’s business model differs from TikTok’s in that it shares 50 percent of its ad revenue with its creators.
The combined revenue from social platforms can be significant, but the most lucrative opportunities come from brand partnerships.
Ms. Potenza recently did a skit playing John Wick’s therapist to promote the latest movie in the John Wick franchise. Mr. Podray’s sponsors include Insta360, a camera company, and Lovehoney, an online sex toy store.
As their follower count and average views per video grow, so do their rates. Ms. Potenza closed her first brand deal in 2020, filming a branded video for $150. The following year, as her account grew and she hired an agent to help her negotiate, her rate increased to $5,000 per video. These days, she wouldn’t accept anything less than $10,000 for a sponsored post.
Ms. Bichri has signed brand deals with companies like CashApp, Bubble Skincare and Pluto TV, but she’s not sure how much money she’s made because, she said, her agency hasn’t paid her for the work she’s done.
A nationwide TikTok ban, proposed in Congress over Chinese ownership of the app, would call into question all creator revenue streams — not to mention hard work.
“It was really embarrassing to see a bunch of congressmen talking to the CEO of TikTok about things they don’t understand,” Ms. Potenza said. “It makes me super pro-China right now.”
Everything is shrinking
What doesn’t cringe today may cringe tomorrow. Like death and taxes, eventually everyone comes to cringe. So it should come as no surprise that brands are interested in participating. Being authentically embarrassing is still authentic.
Wendell Scott, 32, is an Atlanta-based production coordinator who instructs Delta Air Lines on how to create effective social media content. He uses his spare time to create TikTok videos showing one side of a chilling conversation in a duet or stitched video with other creators. In one video with nearly two million views, he plays a founding father who discovers John Hancock’s large signature on the Declaration of Independence.
“For me, cringing is something we’ve all experienced, but we don’t like to talk about it,” Mr. Scott said. “Everyone has had a strange, unusual moment or something they think is off-putting, but it’s actually very real. And I love bringing that to life.”
