It hasn’t been a great week for those tasked with keeping events from being ruined by uninvited guests. On Tuesday, DJ Greg James found himself in an awkward situation when a mysterious caller called into his Radio 1 show and played a tape of a woman making sex noises over the phone. Ta.
And of course, there was the Baftas, which saw a bit of unexpected drama when YouTube prankster Rizwani snuck onto the stage. oppenheimerproducer of emma thomasdirector christopher nolan When their film won Best Film, it starred Cillian Murphy.
The Bafta invasion was much bolder than the BBC Radio invasion, but in reality it was completely overlooked by most people. Mr. Rizwani did not do anything or say anything, and after Mr. Thomas finished his acceptance speech, he quietly left the stage with the others, at which point security took him away. He also didn’t bother his A-list audience, which included the Prince of Wales.
But this is the latest in a long series of gate-busting stunts by YouTube and TikTok prank star Rizwani, who has previously snuck into the Brit Awards, the FIFA Ballon d’Or Football Awards and the Reading Festival. .
Of course, pranks come in all shapes and forms, from the classics like a whoopee cushion or a bucket of water hanging on a door, to a drunk student jamming a traffic cone into a statue, or the annual April Fool’s joke. There is a size.
But have public pranks become increasingly destructive and even dangerous?
Attending an awards ceremony and potentially ruining the high point of someone’s career definitely speaks to this narcissistic social media age. So what if you get more hits, but it ruins someone’s precious moment?
It feels very different from the relatively benign pranks of the 1980s that the emcee personified. Jeremy Beadle.his popular ITV show About Beadle He was loved for the tricks he played on unsuspecting people, such as making them believe that their car had been crushed or that aliens had landed in their gardens. The stunts usually ended in a lot of laughter from each other and no real harm was done. (Only once did an enraged man punch Beadle.)
Fast forward to 2000, an American TV show. jackass, and that alien ploy looks downright cute.The cast members are like this Johnny Knoxville, bam margiela And Steve-O regularly puts himself and the viewers who rush to imitate him, despite warnings “not at home,” at grave risk. Margiela released a live crocodile at her parents’ home and, perhaps unsurprisingly, ended up trapped in a hole with her biggest fear: a snake. Mr. Knoxville was tricked into having his face smeared with horse semen (which he thought was sunscreen) for months. Body fluids were a childish metaphor that was repeated.
of jackass The cast became stars thanks to their violent, gory, and gory stunts. But opinions are currently divided over this frat boy-style prank. Many people criticize it, but thanks to an increasingly fragmented audience and social media platforms egging people on, today’s pranksters are trying to get attention. People are taking more extreme measures than ever before.
Last year, TikTok star Mizzy was jailed for 18 weeks after violating a court order for sharing a video without a stranger’s consent. He has previously broken into people’s homes, kidnapped a pensioner’s dog, knocked people off their bikes and torn up library books.
Most recently, in January, a coroner ruled that 13-year-old Christopher Capessa died after his friend pushed him into a river in south Wales in a “dangerous prank.”
There is no doubt that this trend is getting out of hand. But with services like TikTok offering the lure of fame and fortune, pranks are more popular than ever.
Jarvo69, as his name suggests, is obsessed with sex and has managed to incorporate his boyhood sex noise into several high-profile events and broadcasts. Last month, he pranked the bowls championship. Victims so far have been given a lottery ticket for Euro 2024, today’s match. To be fair, the latter got a good laugh from Gary Lineker.
Similarly, Troll Station is home to Britain’s pranksters who think big, and sometimes political, things. Their acts of sabotage range from invading the pitch for a UEFA Europa League match to pretending to commit an art heist at the National Portrait Gallery. The latter caused a panicked crowd, some people were injured, and three pranksters were arrested. Troll Station has also staged an ugly confrontation involving a Muslim woman wearing a burkini on a Southend-on-Sea beach, commented on France’s burkini ban, and most recently projected the Palestinian flag onto Big Ben. .
Pranks may have an anti-establishment vibe, but Archie Manners is a proud public school prankster and a friend of Prince Harry. Manners runs a YouTube channel with Josh Peters and has scammed celebrities including Katie Hopkins and Piers Corbyn. The two have also dipped their toe into activism (or more accurately counter-activism) by infiltrating and disrupting Just Stop Oil events, an inherently controversial protest group. giving them a taste of their own medicine. Last year, they disrupted the group’s Beyond F—ed Banquet by setting off a 150-decibel rape alarm hidden in a helium balloon.
As modern pranksters continue to try to outdo each other with increasingly large and dangerous pranks, they inevitably get into trouble and some end up putting their lives at risk. You may think that you will serve them right. Indeed, some people seem to use the nickname “prankster” as an excuse for some pretty despicable anti-social behavior.
Tanner Cook, who runs the Classified Goons YouTube account with his friends, tried to prank (or, more accurately, harass) strangers in the food court of a North Virginia mall, and ended up getting hit hard. I was in for a surprise. When Cooke got up to Alan Colley’s face and held up his cell phone, the message “Hey Dips, stop thinking about my sparkles” played repeatedly, but Colley pulled out a gun and shot him. I was shot in the chest.
Cook survived, and a jury later acquitted Colley of aggravated malicious wounding, finding he acted in self-defense.
It’s no wonder Cook continues to make videos of him tailing strangers in department stores and pretending to vomit in Uber cars, and his videos reportedly earn him $2,000 to $3,000 a month. isn’t it.
Another controversial prankster is Brit Sam Pepper.former older brother The contestant first caused controversy in 2014 with the “Fake Hand Ass Pinch” prank, in which he approached a woman, asked her for directions, and then pinched her butt. Several people have since accused him of sexual harassment.
Worse will happen. In 2015, he kidnapped a fellow YouTuber and forced him to witness the apparent murder of his best friend. Metro likened the prank to his ISIS-style execution, and over 100,000 people signed a petition calling for Pepper to be removed from his YouTube.
Pepper later rebranded, switching from pranks to vlogs and stunts, and from YouTube to TikTok, where she now has 4.6 million followers. But he hasn’t completely lost his mean spirit. His recent videos include one in which he creepily attempts to pick up a girl in a supermarket, and another in which he hides a fake spider in his hand to scare strangers.
It’s easy to denounce this as the stupid behavior of a boy who never grew up (and yes, the majority of these pranksters are men). However, unlike jackass Franchising is not something others can choose to avoid. The innocent visitors caught up in the crowd at the National Portrait Gallery didn’t want to star in a prank horror movie.
But as long as enough people watch these videos (unfortunately, Pepper’s Spider Hand has ~26 million views), social media platforms will prioritize such engagement. As long as it’s monetized, pranks will continue to become more public and more outrageous regardless. How will it affect the rest of us? And there’s nothing weird about that.
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