Headline, June 16 2022/ ''' '' SOME CRINGEWORTHY SOUP '' '''

''' '' SOME CRINGEWORTHY

 SOUP '' '''

' IT HURTS SO GOOD ' : CRINGE COMEDY GOES VIRAL. On TikTok, creators gain followers and brand deals by playing terrible people.

During a three-part special examining the crimes of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that aired last November on ''Dr.Phil,'' Phil McGraw, the host of the daytime talk show, played a TikTok video of a 27-year-old woman named Stanzi Potenza as evidence 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 stayed home from work in diapers to binge the series uninterrupted.

As it turns out, Ms. Potenza had made a video satirizing true-crime obsessives and Dr. Phil mistook it as sincere.

Ms. Potenza is a cringe comic and actor who describes herself 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 film ''The Purge.''

''Personally, I think some of the best comedy is a little painful,'' she said.'' It hurts so good.''

As a concept, cringe is deceptively hard to describe. As a content category, cringe is vast, encompassing everything from dated cultural norms to a strategy that musical artists employ ro reach real fans. Cringe is not any one thing, but you know it when you see it.

On TikTok, you can make a career out of being cringeworthy in a niche area of the platform known as CringeTok.

Ms. Potenza now has more than 3.8million followers on TikTok - a following large enough that it can translate into lucrative brand deals, bonuses and merchandise sales. Her videos, she said, have earned her more than $200,000 annually.

Popular creators on TikTok can make a living in all kinds of niches on the platform, including by doing makeup, dealing watches, being old - even drinking flavored water. But CringeTok is more like putting on a show.

To craft 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 recoil, like self-absorption and obliviousness, requires an ironic amount of self-reflection.

Cringe comedy creators often build time for dreaming up sketches into their schedules. Filing can take as little as an hour - often from the comfort of the creators' bedrooms.

These videos are different from unintentionally cringy videos in which an overabundance of earnestness combined with lack of self-awareness leaves viewers feeling uncomfortable.

In those cases, ''we're not laughing with you,'' Ms. Potenza said. ''We're laughing at you.''

Riri Bichri started posting CringeTok videos in 2020, and by April she had quit her job as an electrical engineer to pursue content creation full time. She has bquilt a following of 800,000 subscribers by drawing on 2000s rom-com tropes, fan fiction and her own cringy behavior for inspiration.

'' If I'm not embarrassed by what I did yesterday, if I am not cringing about what I did yesterday, I did not grow,'' 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 : '' A lot of my main comedy is based on identifying trends and deconstructing them to the point where they are no longer recognizable from the original inspiration,'' Mr. Podray said.

His P.O.V. style videos feature a series of short sketches in which the Scumbag Dad exposes his fictional kid to progressively volatile situations. Early in Season 1 of the parodies, Mr. Podray steals his child's prescription pain medication, and by Season 6 his child is helping him assassinate drug dealers.

As their follower counts and average views per video grow, so do their rates. Ms. Potenza secured her first brand deal in 2020 and filmed a branded video for $150. The next 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 sponsor post.

A nationwide TikTok ban,proposed in the U.S. Congress because of the app's Chinese ownership, would put all creator revenue streams- not to mention hard work - into question.

''Watching a bunch of Congresspeopel talking at the C.E.O. of TikTok about things they don't understand was really embarrassing,'' Ms. Potenza said. '' It makes me super pro-China at this point.''

What isn't cringe today can be cringe tomorrow. Much like death and taxes, cringe comes for everyone eventually. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that brands are interested in participating. Being authentically embarrassing is still authentic.

Wendell Scott, 32, is a production coordinator in Atlanta who instructs Delta Airlines on how to make effective social media content. He uses his downtime to create TikTok videos in which he provides one side of a cringy conversation in a duet or stitched video with other creators.

'' For me, cringe is something that we've all experienced, but we don't like to talk about it,'' Mr. Scott said. 

''Every single person has had some sort of odd, off-the-wall moment or something they think is off the wall, but it's actually very real. And I love to bring that to life.''  

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on ' Cringe Comedy ', continues. The World Students Society thanks author Kate Ryan.

With most respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless