A brisk winter’s afternoon. Murray Street mall. Shaking, pacing, trembling. Sweat leaves a two-tone stain on the comedian’s black shirt as he paces up and down with his microphone. Daggers pierce his skin from the glares of evasive passers-by and a pit forms deep in his stomach. The camera is rolling. The gimbal’s working overtime to keep up. No one wants to talk. Jasky Singh, Australia’s self-proclaimed number one street interviewer, considers surrendering, clueless to the following he will have amassed in four years’ time.

His format is loose and haphazard. Literally fronting people and asking slightly disconcerting questions. They pause and give random vox-pop answers. That’s it. Quick, snappy, funny grabs from people on the street.

With 700,000 followers across four platforms, ‘MrSikkant’ has made a living in the world of entertainment by leveraging his comedy skills on social media. But Singh hasn’t always been MrSikkant.

He grew up Sikh in an immigrant family. He attended Rossmoyne Senior High School and completed a double degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UWA. He worked in the corporate world—but then something changed. A desire to leap out of the nine to five life began to burn and MrSikkant was born. A career in comedy followed his departure from the white-collar grind as he became one of Australia’s most followed social media personalities.

Singh began his small screen career four years ago in a bid to improve his crowd work—fame was never the goal. While you would think comedy is one industry where confidence is key, Singh wouldn’t say walking on air is something that came easy to him.

“I’m not that confident” he says, “but I can mask the ability to be confident. I’ve always been an extravert which is weird, right? Saying that you’re not confident and an extravert, it seems to be two polar opposites.”

MrSikkant producer, cameraman and longtime friend of Singh, Tim Kershaw, remembers their first try, on that brisk day in Murray Street, like it was yesterday. Even the buildings seemed to be watching on as their confidence was crushed to an all-time low. After rejection-upon-rejection, they were left with no content worthy of posting and an overwhelming sense of discouragement.

“I just remember us having a really bad time. I felt very uncomfortable about filming people and Jasky was having a terrible time trying to talk to people. He felt terrible about getting rejected,” says Kershaw.

“We did about 35 minutes and then we were both just like, ‘Wow, this was the worst idea.'”

Singh says the second week he and Kershaw faced Murray Street Mall was the real beginning of Mr Sikkant. It was a combination of enthusiasm and absurdity from the people he came in contact with, as well as a number of aspiring rappers using the platform to showcase their skills, or lack thereof. The next few videos took off and began to achieve virality. Over half a million people watching Jasky’s content. Confusion, excitement and a spark brewed within and Mr Sikkant never looked back.

So why does it work? What is it about the street interview format that gets engagement on social media?

Short form content is increasing its hold on content consumers. According to a study undertaken by Professor Amanda Lotz and Dr Gabriela Monteiro Lunardi at the Queensland University of Technology 87 per cent of Australians use social media with Facebook, Instagram and YouTube leading the way as the most popular platforms. Short form content dominates this space with over half of respondents reporting these platforms exclusively as the only platforms they used.

Meaning ‘a voice of the people’, vox pops have been around since the early 1900s with evidence of the Latin term, ‘vox populi’ dating back to the nineteenth century. Common in journalism, it is a style of interview where everyday people are asked questions to gain their opinion and gauge public views on a specific topic. PhD candidate in Internet Studies at Curtin University, Faye Mercier, says while the style is nothing groundbreaking, it can be a viable model to achieve engagement on social media.

Mercier’s time working with Curtin University’s Influencer Ethnography Research Lab led her to examine the socio-cultural and political impacts of social media influencers. While Singh does not have significant impact on Australia’s political make up given Mr Sikkant’s entertainment intent, his style of content gives viewers a glimpse of the people of Perth. It is within the power of the content creator to choose how people, places and things are represented, and doing so truthfully and respectfully is essential.

Mercier explains: “People enjoy the opportunity to hear diverse perspectives on something from people who are maybe part of their community.”

She says the street interview business model is on the savvier side of social media channel frameworks given its low-cost and reasonably low-effort nature. For a creator, the model has got everything going for it—but what is it about the vox pop style that engages audiences?

A huge part of the format’s success is the relatable and unexpected nature of street interviews. Viewers appreciate the authenticity of a host like Jasky, as well as the concept that it could be them or someone they know on the other end of the microphone.

What keeps people from scrolling to the next video is curiousity about what’s coming. Street interviews like Singh’s are filmed, edited and posted to a channel with a large viewership. Not everything filmed is used, The selection process is key. Everything has made the cut for a reason, so viewers stay to find out what that reason is.

From the moment each question is asked, scrollers sit with the same anticipation as the interviewer waiting for the response. Outlash, laughter or tears? Viewers don’t know what to expect and that is what keeps them watching. Scrollers are gambling their time in the pursuit of the pay-off, a feeling some sort of mental stimulation.

Mercier says: “I think the difference between the vox pop writ large and what we’re seeing now on social media is that there’s not always a clear question being asked. Tt tends to just be a bit more general like ‘What are you doing today?’

“There’s something in that unexpectedness that is engaging. You’ve got no context to anticipate what’s gonna come next in the interaction, so it’s intriguing for that reason.

“It kind of reminds me of a reality TV show. Reality TV can so often be boring, but it’s also unexpected and I think it works in the same way. You just don’t really know what you’re gonna see.”

The vox pop format has laid down the framework for this social media phenomenon to expand into different genres, with creators like Simon Squibb (@simonsquibb) and The School of Hard Knocks James Dumoulin (@theschoolofhardknocks) using TikTok as a platform to educate people on business culture. With 9.1 million followers on TikTok, Squibb uses his entrepreneurial background to help everyday workers achieve their dream, while Dumoulin boasts a priceless contact list from interviewing some of the richest people in the world. Track Star (@trackstarshow) has pioneered a style where people are given a pair of headphones and told to guess the song, which has developed into content adopted by other creators where passers-by are asked, “what are you listening to?”

Then comes the type of content that stays relevant because of its divisive nature. Avi Yemini (@aviyemini) follows the same vox pop style of content but takes his interviews to hostile protest settings filled with passionate people — the perfect cocktail for engagement. Mercier describes the the way algorithms fuel divisive content in a symbiotic cycle. Since people are more inclined to engage with topics they are passionate about and especially ones they might disagree with others about, these videos get more clicks and views. Then they are put in front of more viewers and so creators are encouraged to continue making contentious content.

She says: “The way social media platforms work is that if you, as a creator, want to gain a following or gain visibility, you need engagement, so that you’re picked up by the algorithm.

“That means that people make more and more content that’s divisive. The danger is that people are constantly kind of pushing the limits because within this social media ecosystem, breaking boundaries is how you become popular.”

For Singh, impartiality comes second nature with his comedic style of street interview.

Singh says his aim is to have no bias, no opinion and nothing preplanned that he is going to ask them. His challenge to himself is to be good enough to make whatever comes up interesting.

“Give me something, I’ve got to find the funny.”

Kershaw is clear that the intention of the channel is to represent people in their true form by avoiding cutting clips erroneously for the sake of views.

He says: “I spend a lot of time trying to not manipulate anyone’s story. That’s a focus of ours because if we ever cut someone up to say something different, we would lose trust with social media and that would be the end of our channel.”