Orry and the rise of the show-don’t-tell influencer

Conventional wisdom says influence (the modern kind) and visibility are correlated. The expansion of one automatically translates to growth in the other. Empirically, at least, that’s how you would define the modern influencer. A person who seems omnipresent, his reach and social mobility part of the impact we loosely categorise as ‘influence’. Simply put it’s the ability to be your own product, medium and distribution, a one-person media business so to speak. Reach and numbers are therefore obvious metrics. More the better. But to every conventional pattern of study and analysis, the zeitgeist every now and then throws up the curveball of a phenomenon that few can understand, deconstruct or emulate. In 2023, this phenomenon had a name and a face–Orry.

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Over the course of the second half of the year, everyone was at some point sharing one of the many pictures of Orry (Orhan Awatramani) with A-list celebs. Initially, it was the way he literally attached himself to these famous people, like a benevolent lizard hugs the dusty, warm summer wall. Orry would randomly show up in pictures with the likes of Deepika Padukone, Jahnvi Kapoor and who’s who of tinsel town.

Quirky, unconventional, intriguing, bizarre or even embarrassing. Whatever the review, the motif was proximity to power and stardom. At first it felt like a harmless spin-off of a popular B-town buddy, a momentary meme-level event, until it snowballed into what is now the most fascinating branding drill this country has witnessed in recent times.

Also read: Decoding the Orry phenomenon: Who is Bollywood’s BFF? What’s his claim to fame?

More than just madness

Commentators and marketing experts (are they really?) have already drawn parallels between Orry and the Kardarshians, the media-savvy American family that is ‘famous for being famous’. But even in the case of the Kardarshians, there is at least the trickle-down effect of Kanye West’s polarising cultural progeny and the fact that Kim – the most famous of the lot – has in the past applied her sensuality, as a device to get where she is at.

Orry, for the most part, doesn’t even look like he is trying. Which is probably what makes his ‘can’t give a damn’ cluelessness, all the more attractive. Maybe we care too much. But there is some method to it all.
The awkward body hugs, the quizzically nervy body language, the oblique answers to basic questions like ‘who are your parents’ and ‘how do you know all these people’ are part of the process of both showing and hiding.

Orry didn’t exactly shoot to fame as much as he gradually rose to meet it, after realising that it was the fog of myth that made him available but also elusive, ever-present but also missing. The day he opens up, Orry risks becoming known, seen and subsequently, unremarkable.

Orry with Shubman Gill (Photo via X/Insane__Emi)

What makes Orry different

There is obviously a keen attention to the attire, to the milieu and to the long line of questions that cannot be answered. As the curious circle him with intent, Orry has worked doubly hard to erase his previous life. People have posted screenshots of his work history, of old Facebook photos and have unearthed a rough calendar of his many pit-stops. But that still only says so much until the person himself acknowledges it.

Most influencers will tell you what they do and how they do it. Orry, on the other hand, seems to want to only say ‘do your thing and leave me to do mine’. It’s uninviting but also undeniably fascinating. It’s Charlie Sheen but milder, Rakhi Sawant, but classier. Ironically he has managed to pull it off without courting abject controversy or bilious social scrutiny. Instead he has quite simply walked onto stage, stood in the corner until someone in the audience has begun to wonder, discuss or interrogate, if there is a purpose to his presence and his being. It would be a tad overrating it all but it kind of does feel absurdist and Beckett-ian. So much so that a marketing thesis titled ‘Waiting for Orry’ might be on its way.

Kareena and Karishma Kapoor with Orry (Photo via X/Kareena Kapoor Khan FC)

Will the Orry phenomenon last?

The question should be, does it really have to? History suggests men and women who become popular for puzzlingly unspecific reasons, disappear from social consciousness just as swiftly. The peak is usually short-lived, because art and stories eventually take over. But for the moment at least, there probably isn’t a brand device so indefinite yet tangible as the air around a man who seems to be everywhere and nowhere really. He’s on your Instagram feeds, in dreary photo-ops, at film premieres, mixing at parties and parking his chariot of intrigue and mystique at whatever event opens up next. But you know and will continue to know little about him. Does he care? Of course, he does. Should the brands lining up to work with him? Not really. Marketing has always been about manufacturing appeal, and done right, at the moment there is enough of it to Orry’s many lives - the ones he lives and the ones he pretends to live. So much so that you dread knowing too much about either.