The amount of silly things that “influencers” and “content makers” do for content these days is getting increasingly ridiculous and sad. From grinding gym equipment to picking fights with Korean locals to flirting on Subways, the behaviour these content creators have to stoop to for clout is truly bottom of the barrel entertainment. A duo of YouTubers who were harassing an old man in a bid to create content for their channel soon received a taste of their own medicine, and the incident was shared to Reddit recently.
The snippet of video footage takes place in a grocery store in the USA, and kicks off with a pair of YouTubers pushing an old man’s trolley out of the way. Straight off the bat, the man who is the target of the so-called “prank” is not very pleased with their antagonistic behavior. The elderly gentleman proclaims, “Hey y’all, get your own stuff out the way. Give me my stuff.” To this, one of the YouTubers pushes his trolley even further away from him as a “joke”.
One of the content creators then calls the old man a “jackass,” and the old man responds, “F*** off you fat ass.” The pair of YouTubers continue to harass the elderly gentleman, taking items out of his shopping trolley, while occasionally looking at the camera and smiling. The target of the “prank” then grabs one of the YouTubers by the hood of his hoodie and snatches the bottle of juice that was taken from his trolley. “You’re choking him, buddy.” says one of the influencers, though it appears that he’s not genuinely hurt, but hamming it up for the camera as they can be seen laughing.
Next, the old man then turns to them, saying: “Leave my stuff alone.” The awkward back and forth continues, as the content creators proceed to take a crate of soda from the man’s trolley. This culminates in the old man losing his patience, and throwing a punch at one of the YouTubers. “He punched me, bro.” the content creator says in shock.
With the clip circulating across social media at the moment, the internet was quick to analyse the footage and weigh in with their opinions on the embarrassing incident. As you can imagine, the majority of users were sympathetic towards the target of the “prank.”
Where is the prank? All I see is harassment. The โvictimโ of the prank tolerated it longer than a reasonable person should be expected.
bucobill
Elsewhere, another Redditor wanted to emphasise that there were actually three people doing the harassing, with one user emphasising: “Three douchebags, donโt forget to count the camera operator“.
Many users, meanwhile, were disappointed by the lack of a comeuppance, even though one of them was struck in the face by an ego-bruising punch from the old man. “Bring back public flogging” wrote one netizen, earning over a 100 upvotes.
While violence is never the answer, it’s clear that the target of the “prank” was not the aggressor in this incident. Instead, the two YouTubers persistently harassed the old man, and it’s fair to say that he was the victim. Hopefully, the duo of content creators will re-think their content strategy going forward, because embarrassing situations like these are far from top-tier entertainment.
