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Jail Sentence For Popular YouTube Pranksters (bbc.com)
Turns out crossing a line, even for a prank by a YouTube star, can go bonkers. An anonymous reader cites a BBC report: Four members of the controversial Trollstation YouTube channel have been jailed in connection with fake robberies and kidnappings. The group were involved in a fake robbery at London's National Portrait Gallery and a fake kidnapping at Tate Britain in July 2015. The channel, with 718,000 subscribers, has built a reputation for filming staged pranks around the city. A fifth member was imprisoned in March following a bomb hoax.The Crown Prosecution Service's Robert Short said: "The hoaxes may have seemed harmless to them, but they caused genuine distress to a number of members of the public, who should be able to go about their daily business without being put in fear in this way. We hope these convictions send a strong message that unlawful activities such as these will not be tolerated in London."
Because if so, how is it any different than actors playing a role of some criminals on a tv show? They don't go around arresting the bad guys of fictional dramas, why should they do so here?
If they did not make this clear, however, I can see it being a problem.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If a prank starts making people feel uncomfortable, you've completely missed the mark.
This^^^
I remember the original Candid Camera. The best prank I every saw them pull was getting a large box delivered to an office and that box just fitting through the door. While the delivery people were distracted the camera crew added an insert to the door jam and said that the box was delivered to the wrong office. Now when the delivery guys tried to move the box the couldn't get it out of the office and couldn't understand why. Hilarious.
On the other hand I saw another show which had people sitting in an office. Someone would drop a dummy past the window and before the mark could respond and actor would replace the dummy on the ground. Cue a mark who was concerned/worried about seeing potential death/suicide. Even I felt uncomfortable watching it.
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I have seen them in Texas, including in the flesh. Worst was a friend that wanted to do the stare at police then run away prank. That is always a winner. He never expected the cop would body slam a bored affluent white kid. His parents had to pick him up at the station. Southern justice!
Just like the people who created Borat should have been jailed.
Harassment and abuse are never ok.
There are a lot of other videos like these also. I saw one where a woman went in public deliberately with her ass showing, then filmed guys reacting to it and she confronted them to embarrass them and accuse them of being perverts.
There are a lot of sick creeps out there. I think the movie Borat unleashed a lot of this.
We had a World History teacher in 11th grade who I think had psychological problems. I don't know what her problem is other than saying she was wound about 5 turns too tight and one of those people who pretty much has "victim" tattooed on their forehead -- even I saw it, and I was an obey-the-rules type.
Anyway, her personality basically invited the bad kids to torment her, and they did, mercilessly. The fucking assistant principal, who looked like Rosie Grier and was really intimidating, was in our classroom about twice a week, which sucked, because he was an asshole to everyone, including people like me who never got in trouble.
Finally somebody disobeyed her and she got mad and this kid walked out of the classroom. Put their shirt on a dummy and threw it out of the classroom window one floor up. Lots of yelling out the window and then the dummy thrown out the window.
Of course she and everyone in class saw it fall past the window. She looked out and then left the classroom. Permanently. The story was she had a nervous breakdown and got some kind of indefinite medical leave.