The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Is it really funny to abduct a pensioner’s dog?
Social-media hits are encouraging ever more outrageous pranks – but it’s no laughing matter,
For those tasked with making sure events aren’t derailed by uninvited guests, it has not been a vintage week. On Tuesday, DJ Greg James found himself in an awkward spot when a mysterious caller rang up his Radio 1 show and played a tape of a woman making sex noises down the phone.
Then there was the Baftas, which saw its own bit of unplanned drama when YouTube prankster Lizwani snuck up on stage alongside
Oppenheimer producer Emma
Thomas, director Christopher Nolan and star Cillian Murphy when their movie won Best Film.
The Bafta invasion was far more audacious than the radio one, although most people missed it. Lizwani didn’t do or say anything, and quietly left the stage with the others once Thomas had finished her acceptance speech – at which point security hauled him off. Nor did he bother any of the A-list audience, which included the Prince of Wales.
But it’s the latest in a long line of gate-crashing stunts by YouTube and TikTok prankster Lizwani, who has previously snuck into the Brit Awards and the Fifa Ballon d’Or awards.
Of course, pranks come in all shapes and sizes, from classics like whoopee cushions and the bucket of water suspended over a door to drunken students wedging traffic cones on statues, or the annual tradition of April Fools’ jokes.
But have public pranks become increasingly disruptive – even dangerous?
Inserting yourself into an awards ceremony, and potentially ruining the high point of someone’s career, certainly speaks to this narcissistic social-media age: so what if it ruins a well-earned moment for someone else if it gets you more hits?
That feels very different to the comparatively benign pranks of the 1980s, as embodied by presenter Jeremy Beadle. His popular ITV programme was beloved for the tricks he played on unsuspecting members of the public, like convincing them their car had been crushed, or that aliens had landed in their garden. The stunts usually ended in mutual hilarity – and no real harm done. (Only once did an irate man give Beadle a thumping.)
Fast-forward to 2000 and the American TV show Jackass, and that alien ruse looks downright cuddly.
Cast members like Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera and Steve-O regularly put themselves – and the viewers who rushed to copy them, despite “don’t try this at home” warnings – in serious peril. Margera let an actual live alligator loose in his parents’ house, and, perhaps deservedly, he was trapped in a pit with his worst fear: snakes. Knoxville was tricked into rubbing horse semen into his face for months (he thought it was sun cream).
Opinion is now divided on this frat-boy style of pranking. Many condemn it – and yet, thanks to an increasingly fractured viewership, plus social-media platforms egging people on, today’s pranksters are going to ever-more extreme lengths to get attention.
Last year, TikTok star Mizzy was jailed for 18 weeks after breaching a court order when he shared videos of strangers without their consent. He had previously invaded someone’s home, abducted a pensioner’s dog, knocked people off their bikes and ripped up library books.
There’s no doubt that this trend has got out of hand. But with the likes of TikTok offering the lure of fame and fortune, pranks are more popular than ever.
Jarvo69, as the name suggests, is obsessed with sex, and he’s managed to get his juvenile sex noises into some high-profile events and broadcasts. Last month, he pranked the Bowls Championship, while previous victims have included the Euro 2024 draw and an episode of Match of the Day. The latter to be fair got a good chuckle from Gary Lineker.
Similarly, Trollstation is a hub for British pranksters who think big – and sometimes political. Their disruptive escapades have ranged from invading the pitch for a UEFA Europa League game to pretending to pull an art heist at the National Portrait Gallery. The latter caused a panicked stampede, leading to injuries and three arrests of the pranksters involved. Most recently, Trollstation projected the Palestinian flag on to Big Ben.
Pranking might have an antiestablishment vibe, but Archie Manners is, unusually, a proud public-school prankster – he’s even a mate of Prince Harry’s. Manners runs a YouTube channel with Josh Pieters, and they’ve duped well-known figures such as Katie Hopkins and Piers Corbyn. The pair have also waded into activism (or more accurately antiactivism) by infiltrating and disrupting Just Stop Oil events – essentially giving the controversial protest group a taste of their own medicine. Last year, they disturbed the group’s Beyond F---ed Banquet by setting off 150-decibel rape alarms hidden in helium balloons.
As modern pranksters keep trying to one-up each other with increasingly vile and dangerous pranks, inevitably some are getting into trouble – even risking their lives. Tanner Cook, who runs the Classified Goons YouTube account, got a nasty surprise when he tried to prank/ harass a stranger in a US food mall. As Cook got into Alan Colie’s face, holding up his phone which repeatedly played the message “Hey dips–t, quit thinking about my twinkle,” Colie responded by pulling out a gun and shooting him in the chest.
Cook survived, and Colie was found not guilty of aggravated malicious wounding, arguing that he was acting in self-defence. Cook has continued to make videos – which include following strangers through department stores and pretending to vomit in Uber vehicles – and no wonder when they net him some £2,000 a month.
Another controversial prankster is Sam Pepper. The former Big Brother contestant first caused controversy in 2014 with his “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank”, in which he approached women to ask for directions, then pinch their bottoms. Several accused him of sexual harassment.
Worse was to come. In 2015 he kidnapped a fellow YouTuber and made him watch as someone apparently murdered his best friend, a prank compared to an ISIS-style execution. More than 100,000 people signed a petition demanding that Pepper be removed from YouTube.
Pepper later rebranded, switching from pranks to vlogs and stunts, and from YouTube to TikTok, where he now has 4.6 million followers. But he hasn’t entirely lost that meanspiritedness. Recent videos include one where he creepily tries to pick up a girl in a supermarket, and another where he scares strangers by concealing a fake spider in his hand.
It’s easy enough to condemn this as the moronic behaviour of a little boy who never grew up (and yes, the majority of these pranksters are male). But, unlike with the Jackass franchise, it’s not something that others can choose to avoid. Those innocent visitors caught up in the National Portrait Gallery stampede didn’t ask to be in a prankster horror movie.
However, as long as enough people watch these videos (dismayingly, Pepper’s spider hand is up to 26 million views) – and as long as social-media platforms prioritise and monetise such engagement – pranks will just keep getting more public and more outrageous, no matter the consequences for the rest of us. And there’s nothing funny about that.