In July 2024, internet personality Bobby Saputra posted a video of himself living it up at what appeared to be the star-studded, ultra-lavish wedding of Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani, the youngest child of Indian billionaire and Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

The video featured clips of Saputra dancing, feasting and soaking up the “completely crazy” celebrations. He gushes in the voiceover: “It was like watching a Bollywood production.”

The video quickly went viral, racking up 6.6 million views on Instagram, 5.1 million on TikTok, and another 2.2 million on YouTube. Thousands left comments, including some celebrities who claimed they spotted him there.

Except… he never set foot in the party.

As it turns out, he had pieced together clips from a wedding he attended a few months prior — complete with him in full Indian attire, dancing with friends — and spliced in shots from the Ambani wedding that he found online. The result? Social media magic.

Chances are, you have stumbled across a Bobby Saputra video. Also known by his handle “supercoolben”, he claims to be the privileged son of Asia’s seventh richest man and heir to a bottled water empire. 

His videos — which have netted him 2.5 million followers across different social media platforms in under a year — are pure over-the-top fun, packed with lavish yachts, flashy cars, opulent mansions and plenty of beautiful women, capturing the wildly extravagant life of a self-proclaimed “crazy rich Asian”.

Take, for example, Billionaire’s $6,000 Dinner, where he devours mountains of caviar (15.2 million views on Instagram), or Billionaire Dates Thai Girl, where a beautiful Thai woman feeds him and picks up the tab (almost 22 million views). 

These clips are addictive because they play on our fascination with wealth, extravagance and how the top percentile live. In a world where influencers usually curate idealised versions of reality, the exaggerated absurdity often leaves viewers guessing if he is in on the joke or really living it.

So who is Bobby Saputra really, and how did this over-the-top character come to be?

As it turns out, he is a persona created by Ben Sumadiwiria, a 31-year-old chef-turned-content creator. 

“One day, I just woke up thinking how funny it would be if I were so rich — like Chinese Indonesian rich — that I could eat at fancy restaurants every single day of my life. This was almost like a thought exercise of me exploring my own culture because I didn’t know anything about Chinese Indonesians,” he says.

Here’s a bit of backstory. Although his parents are Chinese Indonesian, Sumadiwiria grew up in Germany and London. It was not until he was an adult that he started spending real time in Indonesia, and he was floored by the wealth of many of the Chinese Indonesians he met.

“I didn’t get why everyone kept asking me, ‘Where’s your Ferrari? Where’s your Rolex?'” he recalls with a grin.

His own background is more middle class. Born in a small town near Frankfurt, Sumadiwiria — whose father is a doctor, and whose mother used to run a restaurant – spent most of his formative years in a rough neighbourhood in Berlin, which he says is “not for the faint-hearted”. 

“There was a lot of racism and crime and violence. Every day, we were thrown racial slurs or bullied,” he says.

“The first couple of years were tough. But when you’re 15 or 16 and someone talks bad about you, you just punch him in the face. It becomes very straightforward and that almost translates to life, right?” adds Sumadiwiria who took up judo and martial arts as a kid.

Being bullied, he says, was not necessarily a bad thing.

“It made me uncompromisingly incorruptible. I will not be bullied, I will not be bought. I would not be subject to any easy distraction that would take me away from a goal or a path.”

By his own admission, Sumadiwiria — who studied at a boarding school — was quite a handful. “I was the class clown, always trying to tell vulgar jokes. I never understood school, I thought it was such a waste of time,” he says, adding that he did not complete high school.

Instead he spent a year backpacking through South America before landing at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, first in Paris and then in Kuala Lumpur because he wanted to be closer to Asia.

“I’ve always had the desire for a creative output. Culinary school was for me the epitome of creativity. Cooking requires a skill that is almost divine, I find that impeccably fascinating,” he says.

By 2015, he was working as an in-flight executive chef for Etihad Airways, “cooking on a plane” as he describes it. Although he enjoyed the experience, he soon felt the urge for more creative freedom. 

So, he set off on new adventures, travelling widely — he has been to more than 100 countries and speaks five languages — and diving into a series of distinctive roles across Asia and Europe. He worked as a chef in various restaurants and also cooked for private clients including pop star Adele, Senegalese-American singer-songwriter Akon, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and even Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta.

He got these gigs through agencies and well-connected friends.

Cooking for Dr Ramos-Horta was especially memorable, he says. “It was in his home, which is also the presidential palace. It was actually casual. We would have quite in-depth conversations about what it means to be a man, a leader and president, and what it means to lead a country.”

One day in 2016, he decided he would become a food vlogger.

The reason?

“I didn’t want to pay for my food. I have very expensive tastes, so I said, ‘If I started talking about these topics maybe I’ll get my meals for free.'”

He started a YouTube channel on street food which quickly became popular. In 2016, a video of him trying “Death Noodles” in a backstreet restaurant in Jakarta went viral. The dish — infamous for its intense spiciness from 100 bird’s eye chillies — was so fiery it made him go deaf temporarily. However, the exploit also earned him headlines in newspapers — including British newspapers The Mirror and Daily Mail — and countless other media outlets.

Despite the success, an emptiness gnawed at him.

“There was a lot of personal stuff going on. There was a lot of dishonesty, sleeping around and partying and doing things I was not supposed to do.”

In a pivotal move, he chose to let his faith take the reins, a decision he says led to the birth of his alter ego, Bobby Saputra, and with it, fame and financial success.

“I think everybody knows a Bobby,  a spoiled, entitled little s*** (who) doesn’t enjoy working, lives off his parents and who’s just a bit toxic, obnoxious, racist and misogynistic. And I thought, why don’t I just represent him?”

However, he will have you know he is very different from his online persona.

“I’m serious. I was raised humbly, and I don’t flex. I don’t have a car and I live in my mum’s apartment. I don’t have anything from Louis Vuitton, I barely have 10 pairs of shoes. I only like watches,” he says.

The first Bobby video appeared on Feb 15, 2024. Each Bobby video opens with a signature line, usually as he is preparing to blow absurd amounts of money: “I’m Bobby Saputra, and I’m a Chinese Indonesian. We are the richest people in the world. Let me show you just how rich we are…”

He wraps up each video by giving himself a cheeky score of “China points”. And when asked what China points are, he laughs and says: “I have no idea — I just made them up!”

Bobby’s character is intentionally quirky, he says.

“Bobby’s not very intelligent, but pulling it off requires a bit of smarts,” he explains.

Indeed, for someone who claims not to know much about Chinese Indonesians just a year ago, his videos are very on point.

“I understand things very rapidly. If someone tells me something. I almost never forget it. I also understand media and I understand storytelling.”

It helps that he has a coterie of friends who dive into character with him — like his on-screen dad, William Saputra, played by Virgo Riand. In real life, Riand is the chief executive of investment firm GTG Corp and the founder of several businesses.

Recalling how he was recruited, Riand laughs: “He came up to me at church and asked if I’d play his father. I thought he was gay and hitting on me.” 

But he was soon drawn into the fun, calling his reel son “sharp, astute and extremely creative”.

“He does everything himself, from scripting to acting to editing. And he shoots a video every day,” he says.

Followers of Bobby Saputra are often intrigued by the eye-popping yachts, Ferraris and luxe mansions featured in the videos. 

Sumadiwiria says: “I’m fearless. I just ask. In Asia, we have this sharing culture, and if you have friends, you can ask for favours. People lend me their Ferraris and mansions. They want their stuff to be shown.

“There is all this wealth that people are afraid to show but they’re happy to lend me their Ferraris. They’re like: ‘I will support you as much as I can because I want my stuff to be used and to be shown.’ You can do this in only Asia.”

Authenticity is good but exaggeration is better for social media, he says.

“I think about what’s current, what’s an interesting story, and how I can make it compelling for viewers,” he explains. 

His take on life is simple. He says: “It’s either we joke about everything or we can’t joke about anything.”

“And I err on the side of being able to joke about everything because if we joke about nothing, everything turns grey and I don’t enjoy that.”

Sumadiwiria knows his videos are “on the controversial spectrum”, yet he aims to keep them edgy but not offensive. He shrugs when asked if he has received backlash, especially for videos poking fun at Singapore. One has him describing the little red dot as poor, and giving money and expensive watches to youngsters so that they could move to Indonesia for a better life.

“I’ve insulted this country a few times, but I have the most fans here — 350,000,” he says, adding that he actually receives very little hate mail. 

For those who take issue with his content, he adds: “If you can’t take a joke, that’s your problem, not mine.”

Interestingly, the content creator claims he does not consume social media himself. “I put content out, but I don’t have Instagram or TikTok on my phone,” he shares.

Bobby Saputra has been good for him. With endorsement deals from the likes of Shopee, DBS Bank Indonesia, Grab and private equity firms, plus perks like free meals, flights and hotels, Sumadiwiria says he no longer needs a day job.

Despite his success, he is selective about partnerships and has turned down lucrative deals with whisky brands, wanting to set a good example for young followers.

“Oddly enough, after getting all this fame and financial security, all the stuff that I truly, truly enjoy and love is free. I like surfing. I like playing tennis. And I like cooking dinner with my friends. And if [I] can do all three things, my day is complete.”

As Indonesia’s first English-speaking Indonesian content creator to go global, he is proud of the impact he’s made. 

“I get messages like, ‘I’m so happy to see Indonesia on the world stage’, and that fills me with pride,” he says.

He does not know how long he will continue to do what he does.

“I haven’t given it any thought. I don’t have any plans and I don’t think about tomorrow. I’m not a thinker; I’m more of a ‘faither’.”

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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.