Just Because It's A 'Social Experiment' Doesn't Mean You're Not An Asshole
The recent news about Sam Pepper — a former Big Brother UK contestant and popular YouTuber — is both sad and unsurprising. Controversy arose after he posted one of his "prank" videos, wherein he grabbed women's asses. You know, as a joke. A hilarious joke. Pepper backpedaled by claiming it was part of a "social experiment," and that all of the people in the video were actors who had consented to his advances. The Internet was quick to call bullshit.
But when someone makes their money from groping or restraining women on camera, it takes little effort to also imagine them taking advantage of and soliciting nude photos from at least a few of their 2.4 million fans. Which is precisely what he's being accused of by a multitude of young women, at least one of whom has allegedly filed a police report.
UPDATE: Pepper is now also being accused of rape.
YouTuber Laci Green wrote a now-massively cosigned open letter to Pepper, #ReportSamPepper trended heavily on Twitter and the offending video — as well as its gender-reversed follow-up — were taken down by YouTube for violating its Community Guidelines. Bad person does bad thing, gets exposed: open and shut case, right? Well no.
On Monday it was made apparent that YouTube can't keep up with the volume of its comments, and today, as Laci points out, it's obvious that they can't police their own content, either. Pepper's two groping videos were taken down, but what about the dozens of channels pulling aggressive, misogynistic stunts just like him? They're not some tiny cabal deep within the site's bowels; they're a huge, highly-viewed and highly-connected network sitting right at the surface. And they're making lots of money doing it. For that reason, we will not be embedding any of the videos we mention herein.
One of the most common varieties of these pranks involves tricking women into kissing men, often through some rigged "magic trick." PrankInvasion's method involves declaring "heads I win, tails you lose" and has garnered 2.5 million views. ModelPrankstersTV also adopts a coin trick to show you "how to kiss any girl," using a double-sided coin, of course. BookOfKen employs a weird ball-and-cup trick. SoFloAntonio's attempt at kissing girls without talking to them has been viewed 1.5 million times, and the discomfort from all the victims of his pickup attempts is palpable.
The creepiest entry in this genre belongs to Garrett Garcia AKA Overboard Humor, who enlists the help of his friend Ashley to kiss women by feeding her lines to say to strangers through an earpiece. Lines like, "Can you slap my ass?" and "my retard senses are tingling." It's been viewed 1.3 million times. The short bio included in the video description states, "My name is Garrett Garcia I love comedy and art. I also love a nice chest on a female individual, and people with good personality and character, style never hurts either." Charming.
"Tricks" to photograph women's breasts are popular too. Repeat offender SoFloAntonio develops another rigged magic trick which has close to 2 million views. Limitless EXP approaches strangers and asks to take selfies with them. The pics he takes descend lower and lower so as to record random women's cleavage. The Viral Brothers' "How To Get A Girl To Show You Boobs Prank" involves using a ringtone meant to mimic the sound of a bee and placing it near a woman on the beach tanning her back with her bikini strap undone. When the woman in the video realizes what's happening she's visibly angry and distressed, rightly calling them "assholes." It has well over 4 million views.
UPDATE: Limitless EXP got in touch via Twitter. He alleges that his phone was off during the aforementioned video.
Some of these videos simply involve saying rude things, or trying to "expose" women as greedy and shallow. In the former category is OckTV's "Can I Touch Your Melons" video. Their channel name may be familiar, as they're best known for their series of racist "hood pranks." Also included is Define AWKWARD's "Palm Reader" video, where the host looks at women's hands and then postulates such illuminating theories as, "You like jizz on your foot" and "You have minor daddy issues." The latter categories are a veritable cornucopia of awfulness too dense to properly dissect. Any search including the majority of the terms "prank," "golddigger," "pick up," "lambo," "bugatti," "social experiment," and "loyal" will return something similar to this Deeply Important Piece Of Social Commentary.
You may have noticed that Lamborghini prank is a crossover between OckTV, Model Pranksters and DennisCeeTV. This is far from unusual: Just as other YouTube communities tend to cross-pollinate, pranksters appear in one another's videos, take ideas from each other and show up in their confederates' recommended channels so as to more effectively try to be the worst human beings on Earth. There are also "network" channels, like SoFloComedy, TheHalfwayMainstream, PrankhubTV, JinkiesTV and Pranks which re-upload and promote prank videos. As a result, many channels which are unpopular or do not upload regularly can still reach a wide audience. Most networks explicitly state that they keep all ad revenue from submissions.
It might be easy to think that the YouTubers mentioned so far are less heinous than Sam Pepper because none of these "pranks" specifically involve groping people. But Pepper isn't the only Internet creep to attempt the "fake hand" ass grabbing prank, as illustrated here by YesFunnyYes. SimpleSexyStupid also sets some kind of record for awfulness by slapping 100 women's butts in this video.
Not only is Sam Pepper's video not the only one of its kind, but it's not even the worst "prank" on YouTube. Adrian Van Oyen, JoshPalerLin and FreddyFairhair have all attempted to pick up women while stripping completely naked. Obviously laws vary from place to place, but in addition to upsetting a lot of people, they are most likely filming themselves committing a crime.
Calling out Sam Pepper was a good start. But he's just the most subscribed-to member of a massive and highly-visible YouTube community too deeply in love with their own penises to understand how reprehensible their behavior is. If Pepper's real life turned out to be as lewd as his videos, does that mean that hosts of these other channels also engage in similar behavior offline? It's high time YouTube started taking their Community Guidelines about harassment seriously, if nothing more than to send a message to these channels — and the people that view predatory 'social experiments' as normal interactions between a man and a woman — that glorification of these hurtful antics is unacceptable.
In the meantime, feel free to report any of the above videos. Here are a list of the channels mentioned. Do your best to avoid clicking on them:
-SoFloAntonio
-PrankInvasion
-Whatever
-Smooth Pranks
-JoshPalerLin
-OckTV
-Overboard Humor
-TwinzTV
-RiskyRobTV
-Limitless EXP
-YesFunnyYes
-Definite Awkward
-FreddyFairhair
-AdrianVanOyen
-ViralBrothers
-SimpleSexyStupid
-BookOfKen
-Simple Pickup
-Model Pranksters
–SoFloComedy
-TheHalfwayMainstream
-PrankhubTV
-JinkiesTV
-Pranks
–VitalyzdTv
If you're aware of others, please tweet the channel name and a relevant link to me.
