Opinion: Are YouTube pranks going too far?

Pranks have become extremely popular on YouTube. Prank videos are one of the most watched types of videos on the Internet.

Today, anything is considered a prank. Now, according to some YouTubers, harassment is considered a prank.

“Prankers are trying to out do each other to the point where they are not even pranks anymore; they are just straight up crimes,” said famous YouTuber Ryan Higa, known as nigahiga.

You cannot talk about YouTube pranks going too far without mentioning Sam Pepper. Pepper posted a video of himself pranking his friend. In the video, he pretended to murder someone in front of one of his friends. He eventually deleted the video because so many viewers asked for this video to be taken down. Sam also had another video where he “pranked” people by sexually harassing them and blaming someone else.

Pepper approached the topic in a video.

“I faked the pranks, and I realized that if I had to fake the pranks, then that means they are way too bad to be doing,” said Pepper. Although in the video he supposedly knew the girls he sexually harassed, they still seemed very confused about what happened. “It was about how the viewers felt, not how the people in the video felt,” he said.

Pranking can be also very dangerous. There have been many cases where the pranksters or the prankees have died during the process. In Jordan Morlan’s case, he was trying to prank his sister on Halloween. Morlan had been pranking his family all day, so they did not expect this. Morlan decided to pretend to hang himself to trick his sister. There was an accident in the process, and Morlan actually ended up hanging himself. Later, when his sister found him, Morlan was rushed to the hospital and passed away 24 hours later, due to organ failure.

Pranks have changed over time. When we were younger, we used to do harmless pranks like prank calls. Now, pranks are injuring people left and right. If we were going to prank anybody, it was someone we knew. Now people prank random strangers.

“I love pranking. Do not get me wrong, but what happened to the old-fashioned pranks?” stated nigahiga in one of his recent videos “Pranks Gone Too Far.”

But now, even prank calls are going too far. There have been recent reports that different fast food businesses have been getting prank calls saying that there is a gas leak in the building, and to clear the air, they have to open the windows. In one instance, the workers were so afraid of the building exploding that they broke the windows.

Pranks can be really fun if they are done the right way. Pranksters need to take the pranking down a notch. The old fashion pranks need to be brought back. The YouTube channel BFvsGf post pranks that you can actually consider pranks and are family friendly. In their video “Pranking Cops,” they pretend to be tagging on walls with spray paint bottles, but the “spray paint” is actually just water. A good prank is when nobody gets injured or arrested.

–Elisha Priddy