Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

So since probably the spawn of YouTube, public recording of events has exploded exponentially. If something even remotely interesting is happening, someone is bound to have a phone so that they can film it in it's entirety. What once was reserved for performances and special events such as weddings and births, has evolved to recordings of everyday encounters such as fireworks shows, concerts, disputes between individuals, and amusing pet quirks.

Now probably a good percentage of these videos stay on the device they were recorded on, only be seen once or twice again for personal pleasure, but every minute there are 100 hours of video posted to YouTube. This means that every year there is 6,000 years worth of video posted to YouTube alone. But that's just based off the current numbers. Of course the previous years uploads amount to less, but in the future this number will only grow.

I don't know the breakdown of how much of this content is Music Videos vs Cat Videos vs Russian Dash Cam Videos vs TV rips vs etc, but there is a surprising amount of public reaction videos just floating around on there. These can range from "Let's Troll X" to "X Prank" (Such as The N Word Prank). Now I fully get that these are just posted for a good laugh, but a rising number of these have become straight up harassment. Of course someone is going to be pissed when you make like you are flashing kids on a playground.

I can take a good gag, but the amount of harassment is just about at a tipping point I think. I was highly disappointing when Cheezburger reposted a video of an individual switching an escalator from up to down. Sounds innocent, right? Well the funny part was that the person was overweight. Yes. You really can't get any other humor out of this video unless you point out that a) the person is overweight and b) they did what they did because of their "laziness." (If you read the comments you find out that it's actually their job to switch the escalator from up to down so that they can accommodate foot traffic.)

I don't know. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I enjoyed People of Walmart ……for about 2 months. Then I realized it was borderline voyeurism and really distasteful. Hell, even just looking up PoW, I'm even more put off that they've expanded and now have Neighbor Shame because apparently it's shameful to mow your lawn in the rain or to do the ALS challenge on your front lawn.

Anyways, what do you guys think about this topic? Is enough enough? Have we gone too far? Do we need to stop? Or am I just out of touch?

I dont think they are really that bad, they are not hurting anyone or there is any hard humillation, however I've seen pranks way worse than this that really deserve a kick in the balls to the dudes that made that prank.

For example in one some japanese dude assault a women and handcuff their panties to a rail the victim has to either strip or cut their panties to get free. another one some dudes place super glue in a section of the sidewalk so when victims cross they trip get sticked to it, a lot of the victims hits the ground really hard, some of them were carring documents…

Public Reaction videos/Pranking have a certain horribleness to it.

Think about it for a second. If you offend someone, and they are angered enough to start a fight, and you try to get out of it by saying it was a prank, do you think they would? No. You're practically offending people and getting away with it. Harassing someone and saying 'it was a prank' doesn't mean you get out of it.

For instance:

Now who in the right mind thinks they can get away with that? It's just too much.

Otherwise I would think that harmless public recordings isn't a big deal, however pranking videos are just far too much what comes to mind when public recordings is an issue.