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Last November on “Dr. Phil,” the host played a TikTok video as evidence that true-crime fandom had gone too far. In the video, a 27-year-old woman named Stanzi Potenza said she stayed home from work in diapers to binge Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” because she was so obsessed with it. 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 with millions of followers on TikTok and YouTube. She creates mansplaining public service announcements, sarcastic impersonations of Satan and parodies of the horror film “The Purge.”
Cringe has no straightforward definition. It can encompass everything from dated cultural norms to a strategy musical artists use to reach real fans. Cringe comedy creators exaggerate behaviors that make us recoil, like self-absorption and obliviousness. Identifying them requires a certain level of self-reflection and creativity.
On TikTok, creators find a niche in the “CringeTok” area of the platform. While some creators can make a living by doing makeup, dealing watches, or being old, for example, CringeTok is more like putting on a show.
Riri Bichri is a creator who quit her electrical engineering job to focus on content creation. She has built a following of 800,000 subscribers by drawing on 2000s rom-com tropes.
Creators with millions of followers can make a few thousand dollars a month from TikTok’s Creator Fund. Cross-posting content to increase revenue streams is a common practice among creators, but the most lucrative opportunities come from brand partnerships.
Brand partners pay to have their products or services featured, and deals can grow from there. A nationwide TikTok ban, proposed due to the app’s Chinese ownership, would put all creators’ hard work and revenue streams into question.
Cringe creators mine their own experiences for traits to exaggerate. Being authentically embarrassing is still authentic. It’s a concept that appeals to brands and audiences alike.
“For me, cringe is something that we’ve all experienced, but we don’t like to talk about it,” said Wendell Scott. He’s a production coordinator in Atlanta who creates TikTok videos in his downtime. “Every single person has had some sort of odd, off-the-wall moment or something they think is off the wall. And I love bringing that to life.”
