A mindreader, a gamer and a dance crew walk into the YouTube Fanfest... There’s no punchline. Just a closer look at India’s new generation of content creators. It’s no longer unfamiliar territory. They’re not afraid of cameras. They know a troll from a bully. They’re sharing the love and hustling hard. They’re also just human, sharing moments of self-doubt, apologising for missteps and struggling to explain their jobs to their parents. See what the creator life is like in 2024.

Payal Dhare (@PayalGamingg)

Gaming content creator

Like everyone else, Dhare, 23, played PUBG Mobile (now BGMI) in Rungta College Bhilai in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh. “I was not into sports. But gaming was interesting,” she says. Unlike everyone else, she kept at it as she grew older and set up a YouTube channel in 2019.

Those first videos on YouTube weren’t part of a strategy. Dhare was merely putting a part of her life online. But viewers seemed to like her gameplay hacks and the easy-going vibe that made gaming seem like anyone, at any age, could do it. They cheered her on, now forming a subscriber base of 4 million.

Fans watch and rewatch her videos for walkthroughs, interactive live streams, reactions to industry developments, and memes. One video, titled Yeh Bhi Theek Hai, of her commenting and laughing along as an Indian man tries to chat up women online, got 9.8 million views last year. She won first place at the Streamer Quest Battle in 2022, taking home ₹5 lakh, and money streams in from other wins, ad revenue, and collabs with gaming brands.

She still does it all from Chhindwara, a city better known for its fort and tribal museum than for breakout gamers. So, Dhare’s parents were initially sceptical about what their BCom++ graduate daughter wanted to do for a living. Her father came around first. “He convinced my mother. And now that they can see that I earn by making gaming content, it’s all good,” says Dhare. She bought them a car with her earnings last year.

Content creation, a decade after the boom, is a financially viable career, but not an easy one. Unlike creators in the previous generation, competition is fierce, and building a fanbase takes time and strategic moves. Dhare, unusually, also manages her own social media accounts. It means she’s directly connected to her audience, feeding off their ideas and energy, but is also exposed to the worst of what lurks in DMs and comment sections. “People judge my gameplay but also my looks. I ignore most of it,” she says. “My male friends cheer me up when I win, though sometimes they struggle to accept it too,” she says, with a laugh.

Suhani Shah (@TheSuhaniShah)

Mentalist and magician

Shah, 34, was six when she watched a magic show on TV at home in Ahmedabad. This is the point where most stories talk about a smitten child going up against apprehensive, discouraging parents. That’s not Shah’s story. “They were fascinated too, and they encouraged me to pursue it as a career,” she says.

By age seven Shah was doing magic shows, guessing with her eyes closed the exact Gujarati word people were thinking. She’s skip school to tour villages and cities with her act. She trained under local magicians and their assistants. She got so good, people would come up to her after an event, convinced that her magic could solve their life’s problems.

Then, she put up her videos online and the world started taking notice. The videos showed her guessing phone passwords, deducing which non-family member Kareena Kapoor Khan was close to, and performing other mentalist tricks. They got her 5.6 million views. By the time India went into lockdown during the pandemic, Shah was ready to perform live, making objects disappear and manipulating reality. A fan base emerged – they call themselves the #SushaSquad. It now stands at 2 million followers on Instagram and 4 million subscribers on YouTube. She’s also performing in the US and London in the coming months.

“Both magic and mentalism are carefully crafted illusions,” Shah says. “They incorporate psychology, science, linguistic deception, body language, hand-eye coordination, and have a steep learning curve. But they can be a career path even if it’s off the mainstream.”

And it’s one field where sceptics are welcome. “If people question what I do, it means I am doing it well,” says Shah. Of course, things go wrong. “I laugh, and the audience laughs with me. But I always have a backup plan.” She pivots to Plan B with the same smoothness as when she figures out a password.

The Vixen’s Crew (@TheVixensCrew)

Dance group

Bengaluru dancers Medha Naidu, Megha J, Bhavana V, Vibha Vinod Shekar, Anushka Gowda, Ketaki Vaze and Renee Kadakia were part of their dance crew at Mount Carmel College and loved it. When some of them graduated, they realised how much they missed dancing as a team, and formed the street-dance team Vixens, now called The Vixen’s Crew, in 2023.

Then, a video of them performing their own choreography to Libianca’s song People went viral on Instagram and YouTube, and they found themselves in the spotlight. Follower counts exploded, DMs were full of collab requests. The crew now has 522K followers on Instagram and 2.56K subscribers on YouTube. Between dancing, brand endorsements and promos, it’s now a full-time job for them all.

The Vixen’s Crew excel in Hip-Hop, Afro. K-pop and waacking, even though some dancers are trained in Bharatnatyam. They rehearse together almost every day, posting BTS clips and new routines. “We meet, we shoot, we eat, we dance, we hang out together,” says Gowda. The crew of seven split earnings equally among themselves and their manager Kevin Thomas. “It works out best for us as our first circle of friends is each other.”

And they look to YouTube for street-dance moves posted from around the world. “We’ve learnt more about dance than someone who’s only trained in traditional forms,” says Naidu. “It’s also helped us understand each form’s approach, which makes us stronger as

a team.” Fans have noticed. On Instagram ,user @im_seriously_joking comments that they rewatch The Vixen’s crew “to see each of you separately, each of you bring your own unique characters into the choreos... I love that”.

As for the trolls – audiences who comment that they should gain weight, lose weight, dance closer, dancer farther apart, jump higher, bend lower – it’s part of being online. “We don’t post thirst traps,” says Naidu. “We do get hate for things like our outfits, complexion, sometimes positions. We’ve learned not to let that impact us or our content”.

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