YouTube pranksters are all the rage these days, but we've also seen over and over again how abusive some of these "funny" videos can be. Over the summer, a dad fed his children laxatives for online likes. Last year, a dad was thrown off of the video platform for videos that depicted him playing cruel jokes on his kids. And now, there's an uproar once again over a disturbing video by "prankster" Brad Holmes that shows his girlfriend doubled over in pain after he secretly rubbed a chili pepper on one of her tampons.
In the video, Holmes stealthily pops a tampon out of the plastic applicator, rubs it down with a red chili pepper, and then replaces the wrapper.
He leaves the bathroom and goes to watch TV, and a few minutes later, his girlfriend comes into the room talking about how her vagina is "on fire." The video then follows her to the bathroom and shows her with her pants around her ankles, butt exposed, trying to rinse off her vulva with water.
It's humiliating and degrading, and it's got a lot of people on the Internet wondering what the h*ll they just watched.
The video was originally posted in 2016, but it's going viral again after KidSpot shared an article calling out the prank as abusive.
The majority of its followers on Facebook totally agreed.
Plenty of people pointed out that the prank was emotionally and physically harmful to Holmes's girlfriend.
Others wondered why so many people like these videos -- Holmes has well over two million followers on Facebook.
But a few people defended Holmes, saying it's not a big deal because he and his girlfriend are known for faking their videos.
But nowhere on Holmes's YouTube channel or Facebook page does it say his videos are faked or scripted. And, even if they are fake pranks, he presents them as real. So who's to say someone won't see one of his pranks and try to recreate it with his own girlfriend or wife? Or feel inspired to start a campaign of torture and humiliation of a partner because viral YouTube stars do it and they're "soooo hilarious."
The theme of the videos, over and over again, is that Holmes's girlfriend is stupid, easily fooled, doesn't know any better.
And people may defend it as "obviously fake" or "just jokes" but make no mistake, these videos are promoting the physical and emotional abuse of women. KidSpot dubbed this kind of abuse "cloutlighting" — a combination of “gaslighting," where an abuser manipulates the truth so the victim doubts themselves, and “clout,” a type of social media fame. Whatever you want to call it, there's nothing funny about degrading a woman for Internet likes.
