The Paris studio behind The Ick is using the same playbook again. This time, it made TikTok believe WhatsApp had launched a new feature.

You might remember The Ick.

Back in November, we covered how Vaste Company, a small studio based in Paris, turned Instagram follow tracking into a $20K MRR subscription business in just 60 days.

The team built a network of 23 TikTok accounts posting cheating and stalking stories in three languages, then let relationship anxiety do the work.

It worked. So they are doing it again.

The new app is called The Cringe. Instead of showing who someone follows, it analyzes your WhatsApp conversations. It looks at response times, message counts, red flags, and how many times they blocked you.

Think Spotify Wrapped, but for your most toxic situationship. It launched 25 days ago and already has 50K downloads and $10K MRR.

Same studio, sharper hook

The Ick’s UGC network was built around drama. Creators posted shocked selfies, jealousy stories, and cheating scenarios, with the app revealed at the end. It worked, but it was obvious. After 10 seconds, most people could tell it was an ad.

The Cringe found a smarter angle.

The best hook across the whole network is simple:

“SINCE WHEN DOES WHATSAPP HAVE THIS FEATURE???”

The video starts with a selfie. The creator looks confused, almost like they cannot believe what they are seeing. Then it cuts to a phone screen that looks like a WhatsApp chat being analyzed in real time.

Connecting to secure servers. Detecting red flags. Analyzing message patterns.

The viewer’s first thought is that WhatsApp added something new and they somehow missed it. By the time they realize it is a separate app, they have already watched the demo. And by then, they want to try it.

That gap is where the views come from. The hook is not necessarily lying, just letting people draw the wrong conclusion for long enough.

A network created for International reach

Vaste did not just copy The Ick’s model. It made it bigger.

The Cringe launched with 16 TikTok accounts. Most of them use a “name_privateacc” handle format, keeping the same “secret account” look the team used for The Ick. In 78 days, the network has posted 185 videos and reached 15.4M total views.

Five accounts have passed 1M views on their own. @privateacc_veroni is leading with 5.2M views from only 14 videos.

But the language breakdown is the most interesting part.

English leads with 5.9M views. Spanish is close behind with 5.3M views from only 14 videos, which means the Spanish videos are performing much better on a per video basis. German, Romanian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian also have dedicated accounts using the same format in their own languages.

The Ick launched in English, French, and Spanish. The Cringe launched in 10+ languages from day one.

The breakout moment

The network started slowly around May 15, with low posting volume and weak results. Then, between May 23 and May 29, three videos took off at the same time. All of them used the WhatsApp hook.

That is what pushed the campaign into its current peak.

The same hook has been used at least six times across the network and averages 429K views each time. That is not one lucky viral video. That is a repeatable format being rolled out on purpose.

What Vaste Company understands

Most UGC campaigns find one hook that works in one language, then stop there. Vaste Company treats the hook as the template and the language as the variable.

The feeling is the same everywhere: people do not want to miss something everyone else seems to know about. That works whether the viewer is in Buenos Aires, Berlin, or Bucharest.

Vaste simply translates the same idea and keeps the emotion intact.

The Ick proved the model works. The Cringe proves it scales.