Uorfi Javed loves a good scandal. She was thrilled when she got her first death threat. “I felt like a star,” she says. She thinks throwing a party for her haters would be great fun. May as well “monetize the hate.” When she is not making news, she asks her PR team to cook up a controversy to shake things up. To get things going, she offers to post something provocative about getting breast implants on her Instagram page that has 5m followers.

We know all this through Uorfi’s new reality show ‘Follow Kar Lo Yaar’. Over nine episodes, the influencer lets us into her home, her work meetings, and her constant hustle to be rich and famous. Put simply, she wants to be the Indian Kim Kardashian. She isn’t coy about her ambitions or the things she does to achieve them. We learn that she has spent crores till date on fillers and Botox.

“I want to look 20 when I am 50,” she says. She’s hired a talent management team to get her work. There’s a Chinese fast-food brand that wants her to go to a cricket match wearing a dress made of wet noodles. Another makes her wear an outfit that looks like a giant loaf of bread. And then there’s her unique talent of turning household items into outlandish costumes. So far, she’s used eggs, tennis rackets, ropes and spoons, to name a few.

This isn’t your standard struggle story, and her stardom isn’t the usual movie star kind we find more palatable. “We felt there’s aspiration in her story. A small town girl from Lucknow, breaking into an industry where she knows no one. She’s come out of nowhere,” says Meghana Badola, executive producer of the show.

In 2016, Uorfi did bit parts in television shows. In 2021, she appeared as a contestant on the widely watched reality show Bigg Boss OTT, where she struck out early. Steadily, she took over our Instagram feeds wearing risqué costumes that earned her a lot of attention and a bunch of legal notices. Uorfi fairly credits her stardom to the paparazzi who, as we see on the show, are literally a phone call away. She returns the favour by providing crazy engagement on their social pages.

“While everyone else is selling perfection, Uorfi uses negativity,” explains Viral Bhayani, a senior photojournalist with millions of followers.

“Initially when I started posting her photos, my wife threatened to leave me because she felt I was promoting nudity and vulgarity. I communicated this to Uorfi and she understood. She’s worked towards bringing innovation and creativity in her outfits. People can see she’s intelligent, smart and funny. Now when brands approach me for projects, I pitch her over Bollywood celebrities,” he adds.

Uorfi’s popularity forces us to reframe our understanding of fame, and who deserves it. Even amongst influencers, personalities like Uorfi and Orhan Awatramani (known as Orry) are aberrations. They can’t be slotted under comedy, food, beauty, travel, dance — the most common categories of creators. Then why are we so invested in their lives?

“Uorfi is a new-age creator whose category is shock value, so her journey is a little different. There’s no good or bad, that’s just her niche,” explains Aditi Shrivastava, co-founder and CEO of digital content company Pocket Aces that also owns the influencer management company Clout.

She adds that this is now a legitimate skill. “What is beautiful about digital is that it is so democratized. Influencers are not dependent on an executive. Instead, they’re dependent on the millions following them. And money follows followers,” she adds.

This is true for Orry too, who is famous for having famous friends and attending parties. We don’t know what he does (remember ‘I am a liver’?). He’s made a career out of not having one. This can be infuriating to many, but as long as he’s got you hooked to his reels, it’s all good.

“Orry is a social experiment. He’s the most famous plus one. We are all talking about him. If that’s the goal, then that is achieved,” says Kim Sharma, executive vice-president New Media, Dharma Cornerstone Agency, the company that represents Orry. She points out that recently a theatre chain chose Orry to be the face of a campaign to bring people back to the movies. “They could have used any actor, but they called him because he moves the needle for the brand,” she says.

In that case, is it fair to discount them as vapid internet stars? Uorfi has aggressively shut down anyone who dares undermine her celebrity status. And there’s been a fair bit of that. That said, she shows remarkable self-awareness while dissecting her stardom.

“I haven’t achieved anything to have fans. I only have haters,” she says when invited to a fan event for creators. In a moment of vulnerability, she also wonders, “What if this goes away? I don’t have family money.”

Perhaps, she knows that at some point, shock value may run its course. Her next goal is to be taken seriously as a female entrepreneur. As she gets there, she will probably weave some new scandals and leave the cameras on.