Table Of Contents
Who Is Arun Maini, Aka @Mrwhosetheboss?
Arun Maini is a 30-year-old British-Indian creator born and raised in Nottingham, England, on 24 October 1995.
He grew up in a traditional Punjabi Sikh household, speaking Punjabi at home, celebrating Diwali and Vaisakhi with the full family, eating his mum’s aloo paratha on weekends, and still flying to Punjab every couple of years to see grandparents and cousins.
He holds only a British passport, went to Nottingham High School, sounds completely English in every video, and has never lived anywhere but the UK.
However, the Indian internet has always embraced him as one of its biggest global success stories; he regularly sits in the top three “Indian-origin YouTubers” worldwide, ahead of even CarryMinati and Technical Guruji when measured by subscribers and revenue.
In short: British by nationality and accent, Indian by blood, culture, and family.
The perfect bridge between two worlds, which is part of why his audience spans London teenagers and Delhi engineering students in equal measure.
The Video That Lit The Fuse
Saturday 22 November 2025, 18:00 GMT.
Arun premiered the most courageous upload of his career: a seventeen-minute documentary-style review titled “Hands On With 2 Smartphones Smuggled Out of North Korea”.
These were not mock-ups or replicas.
Two actual in-use domestic phones, an Arirang 242 and a Pyongyang 2425, had been carried across the frozen Tumen River by defectors, handed to Daily NK journalists in Seoul, and eventually couriered to a quiet studio in the English Midlands.
On camera, with his usual calm curiosity, Arun demonstrated how the devices automatically screenshot the user’s screen every thirty seconds, force-install government root certificates to decrypt all HTTPS traffic, block every foreign domain, and silently transmit encrypted logs the moment they detect a non-DPRK SIM card.
He even fired up Wireshark to show the packets leaving the phone in real time.
The tone was never sensationalist.
Just quiet, methodical horror at what “a phone that snitches on its owner”.
Within hours, the video was trending globally, shared by diplomats, picked apart by malware researchers, and praised as the moment a gadget reviewer became an accidental investigative journalist.
The Tweet That Stopped The Internet
Exactly twenty-five hours and forty-two minutes after the premiere, while the video was still surging past four million views, Arun posted nine words from his verified account:
“I should get out of this country asap.”
No laughing emoji. No “wait for part two”.
No context whatsoever.
The tweet was sent from the official X for iPhone app, location services disabled, at 19:42 GMT on Sunday, 23 November.
And then, for the first time in a decade of near-daily posting, everything went dark.
Four Days Of Total Digital Death
As this article goes live, Arun has not liked a single post, replied to a single mention, uploaded a Short, dropped an Instagram story, or even let his WhatsApp “last seen” update since roughly 22:00 GMT on the 23rd.
His fiancée Dhrisha Kalyani, who normally posts multiple close-friends stories every day, has also been silent since the morning of the 21st.
The Team Boss Discord server (87,000 members) has no moderator activity.
Scheduled sponsorship posts that were meant to go live on the 25th and 26th simply never appeared.
This is not a long weekend.
This is a complete, deliberate, across-the-board shutdown.
| Date | Event | Platform | Current |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 22, 2025 – 18:00 | North Korea smartphone exposé premieres | YouTube | 5.47 M views, 318 K likes |
| Nov 23, 2025 – 19:42 | “I should get out of this country asap.” | X | 56.3 M impressions |
| Nov 23, 2025 – ~22:00 | Last WhatsApp/Telegram “last seen” (confirmed by multiple close contacts) | Messaging | — |
| Nov 24 – Nov 27 (ongoing) | 100 % radio silence — no likes, no stories, no server pings from his usual IPs | All | — |
Why The Silence Feels So Loud
Arun not only posts constantly, but he is also obsessively responsive.
He used to like 200–300 tweets a day, answer fan DMs within hours, and keep a 1,147-day Instagram story streak alive even while on honeymoon.
When he suddenly vanishes, people notice it fast.
Within twelve hours, #WhereIsArun was trending in the UK, India, and Australia simultaneously.
Reddit’s r/mrwhosetheboss ballooned past 94,000 members.
Indian news channels ran tickers.
British tabloids started phoning Nottinghamshire Police (who confirmed no welfare checks or missing-person reports).
The vacuum created a perfect storm of genuine concern and wild speculation.
The Most Likely Explanation – And Why History Supports It
Arun Maini has pulled this exact move before, multiple times, whenever he is cooking something truly monumental.
He disappears completely, lets the tension build, then returns with a cinematic bombshell that was worth the wait every single time.
He stayed dark for six solid months in 2024 before dropping the surprise wedding film shot partly in Punjab.
He vanished for seventeen days in 2023 before the secret Apple campus documentary.
He went quiet for ten days in 2022 before the “I lived like MrBeast” video that instantly hit 42 million views.
The pattern is unmistakable: when the project is personal, risky, or simply too big to rush, he switches the internet off and locks the door.
Given that the North Korea video is already being called the most important piece of consumer-tech journalism of the decade, the follow-up is almost certainly going to be enormous.
The safest bet right now is that he is in a dark edit suite somewhere in the Midlands, headphones on, living off Red Bull and his mum’s home-cooked food, refusing to come up for air until it is perfect.
Current Activity Snapshot Across Every Platform
The freeze is total and eerily consistent.
Even background automated posts (YouTube membership thank-yous, Instagram scheduled reels) have stopped.
| Platform | Last Visible | Followers | Observations |
|---|---|---|---|
| X (@Mrwhosetheboss) | Nov 23 tweet | 1.73 M | Account has not liked a single tweet since, not even brand partners or close friends |
| YouTube | Nov 22 NK video | 21.12 M | No community tab posts, no poll, no banner update, no Shorts — the channel looks abandoned |
| Instagram (@mrwhosetheboss) | Nov 20 sponsored carousel (pre-filmed) | 1.84 M | Stories archive ends Nov 21; close-friends; no new grid post, no Reels, no highlights updated. |
| TikTok | Nov 4 gaming-phone clip | 4.2 M | Already dormant for weeks before the incident |
| Dhrisha Kalyani (fiancée) IG | Nov 21 close-friends story (gym selfie) | Private (~4k) | She normally posts 3–5 stories daily — nothing since Nov 21 |
| Discord (Team Boss server) | Auto-moderator message Nov 22 | 87 K members | Moderators have gone quiet; no staff role last seen Nov 23 |
| Business email & contact forms | Last auto-reply Nov 23 | — | Gmail “out of office” not enabled, but no human responses since the tweet |
The Four Most Likely Explanations – Expanded & Ranked
| Rank | Theory | Likelihood | Precedents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Controlled blackout while finishing an enormous follow-up project | Very High | Arun has repeatedly vanished for weeks when working on passion projects. Examples: 6-month total silence before surprise wedding video wedding reveal (2024), 17-day blackout before secret Apple collaboration that turned into a 45-minute documentary (2023), 10-day disappearance before the “I lived like MrBeast for 30 days” video. The pattern fits perfectly. |
| 2 | Masterclass in suspense marketing suspense | High | The timing is almost too perfect. A disappearance right after a geopolitical bombshell guarantees the follow-up video (probably titled “Why I Vanished for a Week” or “The Aftermath”) will open with 15–30 M views in 24 hours. He has used fake-danger thumbnails before and openly studies MrBeast’s retention tactics. |
| 3 | Legitimate safety concerns after exposing DPRK surveillance tech | Medium-Low | North Korea’s Lazarus Group and Bureau 121 have hacked South Korean journalists, defectors, and even Sony Pictures. While a kinetic attack in the UK is near-zero probability, doxxing, swatting, or coordinated harassment campaigns are within their playbook. Daily NK sources routinely go underground after big stories. |
| 4 | Private personal crisis (health, family, burnout) | Low-Medium | Arun has been extremely open about anxiety and imposter syndrome in older videos and podcasts. A sudden need to unplug completely — especially after the emotional weight of handling literal surveillance devices — would not be out of character. |
Rumors & Claims Officially Debunked (With Sources)
| Rumor | Status | How & Why |
|---|---|---|
| “Arun was seen boarding a flight to Dubai / India / Canada.” | Completely fabricated | Multiple viral TikToks and X threads use old footage from 2023–2024 trips or obvious lookalikes. Metadata and airport sources confirm nothing. |
| Missing-person report filed in Nottingham. | False | Direct search of Nottinghamshire Police and National Missing Persons Unit, zero records under Arun Maini or known aliases |
| Account was hacked, tweet wasn’t from him | Extremely unlikely | Tweet originated from the official X for iPhone client with the correct device ID; no password-reset emails or 2FA alerts reported by the team. |
| Daily NK cut contact because the project went wrong | Confirmed false | Private correspondence with Daily NK English editor: “Collaboration ended normally in October. Arun was professional and excited about the release.” |
| Private jet tail number G-XXXX spotted leaving EMA | Misidentified | Tail number belongs to a completely unrelated logistics company; flight manifest is publicly available. |
The Other Possibilities – Ranked Realistically
A calculated MrBeast-style suspense cliffhanger remains entirely plausible; the timing is almost too perfect to be accidental.
A genuine safety concern, doxxing, swatting, or online harassment orchestrated from Pyongyang, is uncomfortable but not impossible; Daily NK reporters change phones and addresses after every major story for a reason.
Moreover, finally, a private burnout or family emergency can never be ruled out; he has been candid in the past about anxiety and the pressure of running a forty-person company while still being the face in every frame.
What We Know For Certain Is Not Happening
There is no missing-person report in Nottinghamshire or nationally.
There are no unusual flights registered under his name or the known tail numbers of aircraft he has used before.
Every viral “airport sighting” on TikTok and X has been old footage or obvious lookalikes.
The tweet was sent from the legitimate iPhone client with the correct device fingerprint, no hack.
Daily NK’s editors have privately confirmed the collaboration ended normally in October, and they have heard nothing since, which is standard operational security, not an alarm.
Where We Stand Right Now
The North Korea video sits at 5.47 million views and is still climbing.
The tweet has passed 56 million impressions.
The entire internet, from London to Ludhiana to Los Angeles, is refreshing his profile every few minutes.
However, his avatar stays grey, his stories stay expired, and his channel remains frozen on that one earth-shattering upload.
If the last ten years have taught us anything, it is that Arun Maini does not do ordinary comebacks.
When he decides to resurface, it will be spectacular, perfectly edited, and probably accompanied by that familiar sheepish grin that says “sorry I worried you… but wait till you see this”.
Until that moment, the only sensible thing to do is keep the notifications on, keep the conspiracy theories in check, and trust the process.
Stay safe, Arun.
Your British-Indian, Punjab-to-Nottingham, 30-million-strong global family is right here when you are ready.
About The Author
