During a three-part particular analyzing the crimes of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that aired final November on “Dr. Phil,” Phil McGraw, the host of the daytime discuss present, performed a TikTok video of a 27-year-old lady named Stanzi Potenza as proof that true-crime fandom had gone too far. In the video, Ms. Potenza mentioned she was so obsessive about Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” that she stayed house from work in diapers to binge the sequence uninterrupted.

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

Ms. Potenza is a cringe comic and actor who describes herself as a “sketch comedian from hell.” She has gained tens of millions of followers on TikTook and YouTube by posting mansplaining public service bulletins, sarcastic impersonations of Satan and bone-dry parodies of the horror movie “The Purge.”

“Personally, I think some of the best comedy is a little painful,” she mentioned. “It hurts so good.”

As an idea, cringe is deceptively exhausting to explain. As a content material class, cringe is huge, encompassing the whole lot from dated cultural norms to a strategy that musical artists employ to succeed in actual followers. Cringe isn’t any one factor, however you already know it while you see it. On TikTook, you can also make a profession out of being deliberately cringeworthy in a distinct segment space of the platform often known as CringeTook (I do know this as a result of my brother, a former lawyer, has been making a residing doing cringe movies for the reason that spring of 2020).

Ms. Potenza has a theater diploma and accomplished a six-week performing program on the William Esper Studio in New York, so she feels pure on digital camera. She ventured into posting cringe comedy movies through the pandemic as a option to proceed engaged on her craft whereas venues had been closed. An early TikTook video of her crying whereas making use of clown make-up garnered lots of of hundreds of views and inspired her to publish extra.

She now has greater than 3.8 million followers on TikTook — a following massive sufficient that it can translate into profitable model offers, bonuses and merchandise gross sales. Her movies, she mentioned, have earned her greater than $200,000 yearly.

The making of a CringeTook video

Popular creators on TikTook could make a residing in every kind of niches on the platform, together with by doing makeup, dealing watches, being old — even drinking flavored water. But CringeTook is extra like placing on a present.

To craft the right CringeTook video, creators mine the depths of the web and their very own experiences for traits they will exaggerate. Identifying behaviors that make us recoil, like self-absorption and obliviousness, requires an ironic quantity of self-reflection. Cringe comedy creators usually construct time for dreaming up sketches into their schedules. Filming can take as little as an hour — usually from the consolation of the creators’ bedrooms.

These movies are completely different from unintentionally cringy movies by which an overabundance of earnestness mixed with a scarcity of self-awareness leaves viewers feeling uncomfortable.

In these circumstances, “we’re not laughing with you,” Ms. Potenza mentioned. “We’re laughing at you.”

Riri Bichri began posting CringeTok videos in 2020, and by April she had give up her job as {an electrical} engineer to pursue content material creation full time. She has constructed a following of 800,000 subscribers by drawing on 2000s rom-com tropes, fan fiction and her personal cringy habits for inspiration.

“If I’m not embarrassed by what I did yesterday, if I’m not cringing about what I did yesterday, I did not grow,” Ms. Bichri mentioned.

Brad Podray, 40, is an orthodontist in Des Moines whose TikTook account, the Scumbag Dad, was initially a riff on the work of one other TikTook creator, Nick Cho. Known on-line as Your Korean Dad, Mr. Cho performs a healthful, fatherly determine who treats viewers as in the event that they had been his beloved youngsters.

“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 mentioned.

His P.O.V.-style movies characteristic a sequence of brief sketches by which the Scumbag Dad exposes his fictional child to progressively risky conditions. Early in Season 1 of the parodies, Mr. Podray steals his baby’s prescription ache medicine, and by Season 6 his baby helps him assassinate drug sellers.

“I never got to complete the series, unfortunately, because TikTok banned me too many times,” Mr. Podray mentioned. TikTook prohibits movies that includes youth exploitation and abuse, fictional or in any other case, in its group pointers, however Mr. Podray continues to make different kinds of parody movies. He mentioned he earned about $150,000 a 12 months from his content material on TikTook and YouTube.

How the cringe creator economic system works

In July 2020, TikTook established the Creator Fund to reward in style accounts and encourage content material creation. It initially pledged to distribute $200 million and now expects the fund to develop past $1 billion. How a lot every creator will get, nevertheless, can differ.

“Payouts from the Creator Fund are based on a number of factors,” mentioned Maria Jung, TikTook’s ​​international product communications supervisor. “These factors include what region your video is viewed in, engagement on your video and the extent to which your video adheres to our community guidelines and terms of service.”

It has been widely reported that eligible creators sometimes get a couple of cents for each thousand views a video will get, although Ms. Jung wouldn’t verify that quantity.

Creators with tens of millions of followers and views per video could make a couple of thousand {dollars} a month from the Creator Fund. Having an engaged TikTook viewers additionally permits creators to increase their attain on different social platforms. Meta discontinued their Reels Play bonus program in March, however creators can nonetheless earn cash from Facebook Ad Reels, a program that operates equally to YouTube’s revenue-sharing mannequin.

Cross-posting content material to extend income streams is a standard apply amongst creators.

“It wasn’t until I became monetized on YouTube that I actually started making real money,” Ms. Potenza mentioned. “In order to make this a living, you have to utilize a lot of different methods to make it sustainable.”

YouTube’s enterprise mannequin is different from TikTok’s in that it shares 50 % of its advert income with its creators.

The mixed income from social platforms may be vital, however probably the most profitable alternatives come from model partnerships.

Ms. Potenza not too long ago created a sketch by which she performed John Wick’s therapist to advertise the most recent film within the John Wick franchise. Mr. Podray’s sponsors embody Insta360, a digital camera firm, and Lovehoney, an internet intercourse toy retailer.

As their follower counts and common views per video develop, so do their charges. Ms. Potenza secured her first model deal in 2020 and filmed a branded video for $150. The subsequent 12 months, as her account grew and he or she employed an agent to assist her negotiate, her price elevated to $5,000 per video. These days, she wouldn’t settle for something lower than $10,000 for a sponsored publish.

Ms. Bichri has gotten model offers with firms like CashApp, Bubble Skincare and Pluto TV, however she’s not sure how a lot cash she has earned as a result of, she mentioned, her company hasn’t paid her for work she has completed.

A nationwide TikTook ban, proposed in Congress due to the app’s Chinese possession, would put all creator income streams — to not point out exhausting work — into query.

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

Everything’s cringe

What isn’t cringe in the present day may be cringe tomorrow. Much like demise and taxes, cringe comes for everybody ultimately. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that manufacturers are thinking about collaborating. Being authentically embarrassing continues to be genuine.

Wendell Scott, 32, is a manufacturing coordinator in Atlanta who instructs Delta Air Lines on make efficient social media content material. He makes use of his downtime to create TikTok videos by which he supplies one aspect of a cringy dialog in a duet or stitched video with different creators. In one video with practically two million views, he performs a founding father who discovers John Hancock’s massive signature on the Declaration of Independence.

“For me, cringe is something that we’ve all experienced, but we don’t like to talk about it,” Mr. Scott mentioned. “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 bringing that to life.”