English YouTube prankster Sam Pepper posted a video called “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank” for his 2 million YouTube subscribers. In the video, Pepper, wearing a hoodie, places one real hand in a pocket and a prosthetic hand in the other, leaving his second real hand free to grab the asses of women (and one man). Many viewers were offended and called the “prank” an act of sexual harassment. Pepper explained in a follow-up video that the videos were “staged” and “scripted” so the “prank” – which is defined as a practical joke or mischievous act – was in fact a fake. In the Pepper video, we’re led to believe that the people he gropes are strangers and that they’re caught unawares. But after the outrage over the video, Pepper explained: “Everyone who helped in this video was informed about what I was doing and what I was trying to achieve before I made it.” So what was he trying to achieve? Pepper said the videos were “social experiments.”
Pepper points out that there was plenty of public outrage regarding the female victims, but not as much for the male victim. “We’re raised to believe that only men are the culprits of domestic abuse – that’s not true,” Sam Pepper said on-camera. While Pepper intended to “change your opinions on something and draw your attention to something not normally seen,” YouTube removed the video for its “sexually provocative content.”
