The YouTube “pranking” community (or “social experiment” community, if you’d like to provide them with false advertising) has been caught yet again faking pranks for views — except this time, the videos had deeply political motivations.
Joey Salads, a YouTuber who enjoys sparking controversy and staging “social experiments,” recently posted a video in which a car with pro-Trump apparel was left in a parking lot in a supposedly mostly African-American community. The car was then destroyed by African-Americans, “proving” his point that black people are violent towards Trump supporters.
Joey Salads has posted many videos showing African-Americans being “racist” towards white people and the likes. One example was his video on how people react to Black Lives Matter versus All Lives Matter, attempting to show that black people were irritated by the All Lives Matter signs and criticizing their community. Many of these videos have been speculated to be false.
However, this time there was proof.
A twitter user by the handle @txorres captured video of Joey Salads planning the entire “social experiment” with the “thugs” that destroyed the car beforehand — h3h3productions discusses this in-depth in their video “How Pranksters Are Ruining Society…”
h3h3productions also speculated that his All Lives Matter video was fake. Later, in an interview with Joey Salads, he confirmed that it indeed was fake after all.
The first thing we can confirm is that this is straight up racist. Joey Salads quite literally faked pranks to show black people in a negative light. He issued an apology and took down the videos but was met with huge lashback — many accused him of just saying, “I could have made more money on these, but I won’t, and that makes me a better person."
In reality, he’s racist, and he’s sorry that he got caught. It’s as simple as that.
These people say they want to “start a conversation.” They want to stir something up and get people talking. However, the damage is done, whether they like to see it that way or not. The All Lives Matter video has already been circulated around all the major social media sites, tearing down the legitimacy of Black Lives Matter, and many of those people will never see his apology or his exposure. He is simply harming the world and making it a worse place for all of us.
So why all the lies?
It seems pretty simple, honestly: it makes money. Clickbait titles such as these rake in views, pouring in money. It gives racists a place to go to finally “prove” their suspicions about how terrible black people are. It makes “PC liberals” angry. All these things lead to more views and more money.
That doesn’t mean it’s not awful. But morals and money don’t always go hand in hand.
Marco Omta is a sophomore studying music production. How do you feel about Joey Salads? Email Marco at mo183714@ohio.edu.
