Ajey Nagar (popularly known as CarryMinati) started making videos for YouTube when he was 10. He used to stream games before he started making diss tracks on what he found cringe-worthy on the internet. At 21, he has over 27.2 million subscribers on YouTube, which is among the highest in South Asia. The sharp spike in India’s YouTube users in the last decade, including millions of Gen Z users, stimulated Ajey’s growth. Last year, he was listed in Time magazine’s ‘Next Generation Leaders’ for 2019.
Ajey recently collaborated with music duo Salim and Sulaiman Merchant for a new music video, titled ‘Date Karle’, which released on November 2. The YouTuber talks about roasting, handling criticism online and more. Excerpts.
Can you explain your process of making videos?
I make my videos from scratch. I edit, write and perform myself. I don’t have a team for content creation but I have a team that helps me with graphic work, making thumbnails, static posts, etc. I wouldn’t say there is a fixed schedule because my content is more impromptu. It generally takes three to four weeks from evaluating the relevance of a topic to executing the whole video if there are no skits involved.
Ajey Nagar
Since most of what you do involves the internet and social media, do you feel overwhelmed with the amount of content you consume?
I do feel overwhelmed sometimes because I am absorbing a lot of content at one go. I generally take small breaks when that happens.
Criticism online can be unfiltered and harsh. How do you deal with that?
I believe everyone should be real and honest with themselves. When you are real with yourself, you feel more confident, it doesn’t make you immune to the criticism but at least you can learn to embrace the fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion and then it doesn’t make such a grave impact. You need to remember the criticism you get for your content and the character played by you does not define you as a person. I try not to take it too personally.
While roasting someone, are you cautious of being politically correct?
Most of the time, I go with the flow without being cautious at all. I do, however, try to be careful as far as possible so that I do not intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings. At the end of it, we all have to understand that a roast is a roast and my intentions are not malicious. It is pure entertainment and meant for a good laugh. You can’t always be politically correct and the day you start finding logic in entertainment you just defeat the concept of finding escapism within entertainment.
The people or characters I roast are mostly fine with it, because they understand it is done in good taste. At times, however, viewers start trolling the person roasted. Then it becomes troublesome. When the internet explodes, no one can have control over that!
What is art according to you? Do you consider yourself an artist?
I would like to consider myself an artist and I have always courted the idea of being abstract and misinterpreted. Anything that can evoke a sense of emotion and passion is art for me.
Is being a YouTuber a sustainable career option today?
I wouldn’t say it is completely sustainable because the platform constantly evolves. There is a growing emergence of other mediums for promotions and your content needs to be adaptable and change quite frequently; else there is a sense of stagnation. You need to be careful about what you do and how you are going to do it. If you do YouTube for money and not for the passion of creating, you won’t be able to do it for long.
