Yes. You read it right.
Let me explain
YouTuber Armaan Malik, who has two official wives and one rumoured ex third wife, was recently in news because his two current wives, Payal and Kritika, were pregnant at the same time. Armaan and Payal already have one son Chirayu, about 7-8 years old. There are reports that Malik also has two children from his ex wife but there are no proofs regarding the same.
The trio shot to fame on TikTok while making short videos on social issues like domestic violence, women harassment and mental harassment. After TikTok was banned in India, they moved on to platforms such as Instagram and YouTube and garnered a huge following when the two women sat down and told their ‘love story’. How Payal and Armaan met when she was working in a bank and within 7 days of knowing him, she moved in with him. How she had a miscarriage once and had Chirayu next. After that at one of the parties, she met Kritika, invited her home to hang out and after Armaan offered to click pictures for Kritika, the two fell in love and eloped and got married. You can read in great detail about the Maliks here.
Soon after the news of both his wives being pregnant at same time went viral, many trolls had commented how Armaan might now get himself a third (or fourth if rumours of his first wife are true) wife.
Soon enough, amongst the other drama in their lives, like how their Fortuner car got stolen from the streets of Delhi, they brought in a ‘third wife’ too.
Four days back, Armaan Malik, on his own separate channel (they have one ‘Family Fitness’ and one ‘Chirayu Malik’ channels) put up a video on how he has brought in the ‘third wife’. In the beginning of the video, Armaan clarifies how everyone was telling him about the ‘third wife prank’ wherein he pranks his two pregnant wives by bringing in a ‘third wife’. Yes, problematic, very problematic.
But as the Internet is full of cringe content, this, too, has its own separate fan base. Myself included.
But as Internet is Internet, instead of full video, only the snippet of the third wife has gone viral on social media platform without context of it being a prank.
While many felt that his was a prank or staged video, there were many who fell for it. Many genuinely believed Armaan got himself a third wife as surprise for his two pregnant wives and Internet exploded in all sort of reactions. Some were empathetic to women while some cursed Armaan while others wondered on the legality of it all.
And since then, the wives have also clarified a couple of times that the video of Armaan Malik’s third wife was a prank video.
And while all this is cringe and we may dismiss it, the content that is produced by the Maliks is quite problematic. For someone who has a huge audience base of over 10 million subscribers on one channel, over 2, 3 million on other channels, plus Instagram followers. A lot of their content is regressive and the child being involved in these problematic videos and exposed to the Internet where validation and hate from strangers could lead to severe emotional damage.
Chirayu in multiple videos is shown throwing a temper tantrum. He’s 7-8 years old and is given everything he wants and demands. There’s one employee of their’s some Nitin, who doubles up as Chirayu’s caretaker and he also eggs Chirayu to do ‘shaitani’ which is a watered down word for throwing a fit. Chirayu’s ‘shaitani’ involves bunking school, buying expensive things, throwing and breaking things. He also wears these clothes and ‘models’ where everyone in comments section shower praises on him and call him cute.
Except, it is entitlement. Chirayu is growing up believing life is easy. You hardly see any of his friends in frame. They only have ‘fans’ who come to meet them and ‘play with him’. He is never shown going out to play any sport of study. All he sees in his life is YouTube. Hell, he was even part of the ‘third wife’ prank. As a responsible parents, one would assume that they may want to at least protect the child from all the hateful and judgemental comments that might come their way. But no, everything for them is content.
Chirayu also has his own YouTube channel with over 2 million followers. And his account, too, posts similar problematic content like other two channels. One would think that a YouTube channel in name of child may have him doing his things, like some school science experiments or project or some art related things – you know, things normal kids do in normal school, but no.
‘Chachu ko ghar se nikal diya’ is a prank video. Which has over 1.1 million view. Chiku then says how he doesn’t like to go to school. And all these ‘prank videos’ which involve extra marital affairs, random marriages, beating up others, slapping, mental and emotional abuse, Chiku is part of them. It is just very triggering.
They hoard clothes, clothes and more clothes. They have tonnes of clothes and their beds, cupboards everything are full of clothes. They keep getting things for promotion which they wear and hoard. They have a dog too. At one point Chiku had a pet lizard type reptile, but now that’s no longer around. I am not sure if it died, escaped or was returned to whoever gave it to them.
But this is content. And people (including me) are consuming it and hate-watching, too, and because of which likely they churn out more such videos. And with three kids coming their way (Payal is pregnant with twins), one can only imagine the plethora of content that is going to come our way.
