After inflicting emotional anguish on the prank’s subject, it was common for the creator to reveal the “joke” at the end of the video with a flippant: “It’s just a prank, bro.” Many on the platform posted relatively harmless videos of creators pranking each other, their families and the public.īut several wildly successful creators received millions of views on videos involving nastier pranks - at the cost of their loved ones’ pain. Until a few years ago, prank channels populated YouTube’s trending videos. “Lots of theorists point at that moment when our hearts empathy engages being the moment when we can’t laugh.” The era of 'It's just a prank, bro' is over “My students, like most people, drew the line at people in physical pain,” she told NBC News in an email. Sean Cliver / Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment StudiosĬynthia Gendrich, a theater professor at Wake Forest College who teaches a seminar on laughter and sociology, said that it’s “interesting that those extreme pranks are abating.” Chris Pontius, Eric André, Rachel Wolfson, and Eric Manaka in 'Jackass Forever'. Why? Academics theorize that there’s a limit to what we find funny. But one thing's become clear: Needlessly cruel videos, which falls into the “bad” prank category, are nowhere near as abundant as they once were. The line between 'bad' pranks and 'good' pranks has blurred in recent years. Others, like Logan Paul, built a following on shocking prank videos before pursuing other genres of content.Īlthough the pranks featured in the “Jackass” show and movies are less harmful than the ones in many viral prank videos, the style of content is increasingly shunned as social awareness evolves online.Īctivist and notorious prankster Abbie Hoffman described “bad' pranks ” as “gratuitously vindictive” like fraternity hazing rituals, and “neutral ones” as “surreal and soft on the victim.” A “good prank” was satirical, like in 1967 when Hoffman and other activists allegedly halted trading at the New York Stock Exchange by tossing cash at the stock traders, who began scrambling for the bills. Some creators, like the Natural Born Pranksters (YouTubers Dennis Roady, Roman Atwood and Vitaly Zdorovetskiy) were so successful that their pranking content was developed into a movie, backed by Lionsgate and Studio71. The “Jackass” franchise laid the foundation for the prank culture that long dominated YouTube and Vine. While the reviews for the latest film are overwhelmingly positive, fatigue around content in the pranking genre online is growing. As a review in the Hollywood Reporter says, “You either find humiliation, degradation and physical abuse hilarious or you don’t.”Īnd these days, plenty of people don’t.

Like the previous films, the nonsensical antics in 'Jackass Forever' are meant to make the viewer laugh at the cast's apparent suffering.

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