Police Warn YouTube Pranksters Trollstation about Potentially Dangerous Videos
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Trollstation are a group who plan and record pranks and social experiments which they post on YouTube. The group is English and their videos are usually filmed in London. The group were recently featured on Inside Out, where they were followed for two weeks as they filmed different pranks. They filmed their own reaction to the documentary and even seemed pretty happy with it as they didn't think it was twisted to portray them badly even if some of them admitted in the video that they weren't proud of getting in trouble with the law for some of their pranks.
DISCLAIMER: Some of the videos in this article contain some strong language.
In the end what they're doing is innocent. No one uninvolved is getting hurt and they do run risk assessments but with some of their pranks there is still a risk. One of the videos shown was filmed last year when one of the members went around London with a Nerf gun asking if he could shoot police officers with it. Some of the police didn't care and others were annoyed. They knew it was a toy gun and no one was hurt but he did wind up waving the gun at some civilians who were standing near an officer and they would have had the right to complain. Running through the city and tube stations with even a toy weapon puts plenty of people at risk at being hurt, no matter how careful they are. Not to mention the fact that the officer in the documentary even stated that if things had gone wrong, the guy being filmed could have still potentially been seen as a threat and been shot.
And it's not just potentially dangerous pranks they film. Recently they did a social experiment to see how the public would react if there were men groping women on the tube. Of course they only had one of their own members groped but if someone really had gotten the wrong end of the stick they could have gotten in trouble for what they were trying to stop. It's all well and good to get people to realise that something bad is happening regularly but awareness needs to be carefully planned out and pranksters might not be good for that.
Trollstation do know what they're doing and they do try their best to be safe. The problem here though isn't really Trollstation themselves, but the idea of pranks being filmed in general. When you have videos of people pretending to commit crimes, or jumping out at you somewhere in public with a mask then it's risky as you don't know who is going to be around. If you're lucky you might just get hit or a laugh but if you scared someone with a heart condition or someone likely to sue then you could get in great trouble. YouTube and even services like Vine are great for filming pranks but you do have to be careful what they are.
One of the members of Trollstation has actually had to drop any affiliation with the channel due to the fact he's going to court over a bomb hoax he filmed a few years ago. To some people that might have been a funny prank but a scene like that is serious and they wasted police time by recording it. They claim to warn the police in advance but couldn't that still be considered as wasting their time? Pranks should be fun and silly and social experiments should be planned by professionals. It doesn’t matter if most of your pranks seem as pointless as Trollstation’s, you still need to think whether getting in trouble with the law is worth the social media views.
Rosina Brooker
Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF
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Police Warn YouTube Pranksters Trollstation about Potentially Dangerous Videos
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Friday, February 05, 2016
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Reviewed by Unknown
on
Friday, February 05, 2016
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Unknown
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