Hunain The Cringe Boy

Hunain built a following by embracing the insult. The Cringe Boy is a name you give yourself before anyone else can, and the reels work on the same principle — the joke is usually on him, delivered at the exact moment of maximum embarrassment, with a caption that translates roughly to "unbelievable disrespect".

The humour is broad, fast and entirely local: the friend who takes a joke too far, the roast that goes one line past safe, the reaction shot held until it hurts. He works between Nagpur and Wardha, and the audience of nearly 49,000 is overwhelmingly young and regional, the group that decides which phrases a city is repeating next month.

That is where the value sits for a brand. A creator whose comedy comes out of his own expense can carry a product without the video feeling bought, because the joke was never on the audience in the first place.