The Journey From Engineer to Comedy Influencer

To the clueless bystander, RJ Abhinav with his beard style would probably come across as a slight doppelganger of the lead’s mask from V For Vendetta (2005), but to his four million Instagram followers, he’s someone who regularly entertains them with his comic sketches.

Being a content creator was never the plan, in fact during any career counselling session, the only terms he used to hear was engineer or doctor, which is what most of his classmates opted for. “Eventually I did a degree in Computer Science Engineering. But the one thing I was very interested in was listening to the radio right from my school days, because of which I would end up winning a lot of the radio contests where one had to dial in and answer the questions. So I knew what the entertainment world looked like from the outside,” Abhinav tells us.

“After college I didn’t get placed, so I started freelancing with a radio channel, after which there was no looking back as I found it to be a fascinating industry and got a lot of recognition. The appreciation was great, and after two years I also started making videos on YouTube since I wanted to utilize my acting skills. Although now when I look back at my earlier videos, it’s what the present generation would refer to as cringe content!” he says.

The first time Abhinav’s content went viral was when he did a parody on DJs at Indian weddings, which ended up being shared by a lot of DJs themselves. Regarding some videos not doing well, he believes that is something which is bound to happen, although the tricky part is when content backfires because people misinterpret it in another way, which he had not thought of. In that scenario there have been cases when he himself has deleted the video, if he felt that the content had a chance of being misunderstood, a tough decision, but being flexible is an important trait. With competition increasing with more content creators sprouting up every day, his plan for 2023 is stick to what he does best, and not be influenced by other creators, the increasing competition or changing algorithms.

The author can be reached at [email protected] and Instagram.com/kabirsinghbhandari