It’s 2022 and one thing still remains constant – content is king. All superbly brilliant marketing strategies are based around the (constant) creation of content that not only resonates with your desired audience but also remains useful and actionable in your quest to achieve your online goals and reach the heights of virality.
With the internet, one has access to seemingly limitless entertainment, accessible at a time and place of one’s choosing – you could roll off your bed with laughter at 5am in the morning or choke on a sandwich while gawking at a Tiktok from 36,000 feet above sea level.
Over the years, content creators, from YouTube to Tiktok, have devised ingenious ways of getting ahead of the game (and making that coin) even if it means breaking a few rules, upsetting the masses, injuring themselves or landing at either the hospital or in jail.
In early 2018, high-flying YouTuber Logan Paul shocked the world when he filmed and uploaded a dead man in Japan’s infamous forest Aokigahara, a.k.a the “suicide forest”.After posting a video of the morbid shoot, the world roundly blasted him for that mawkish shoot and he not only lost hundreds of thousands of followers but also sponsorship and even fell out with YouTube.Even after he apologized for the scandalous move, he monetized his ‘apology video’ and caused even more uproar.Weeks later, Logan Paul rattled viewers yet again after posting yet another dark video of him tasering two dead rats, hauling them into a bin and then firing his stun gun into the bin.Animal rights and YouTube condemned the content creator again for his recklessness and, once again, he faced stringent actions from YouTube.
In 2017, Spanish YouTuber ReSet faced massive backlash after he uploaded a video of him handing a homeless man an Oreo stuffed with toothpaste instead of cream.ReSet made sure to monetize the video which, by the time of its removal, had earned him over $2300 (Ksh. 272,500).After much controversy, ReSet was eventually sued for the stunt, found guilty by a Barcelona Court, sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined $22,300 for the crime of “violating the moral integrity of his prank victim”.The court also ruled that his YouTube and other social media accounts be shut down for five years. Yikes.
In June 2017, married YouTubers Monalisa Perez and Pedro Ruiz decided to find the (im)perfect stunt to rake in more subscribers – stage a fatal prank.Pedro asked Monalisa to shoot him while he was holding a thick book, hoping the book would deter the bullets from reaching him. Wrong idea.Unexpectedly, the stunt went horribly wrong and Monalisa ended up shooting Pedro dead.The couple already had one child and Monalisa was pregnant with their second child by the time she murdered her partner.Interestingly, right before embarking on making the video, Monalisa had tweeted some ominously chilling words: “Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE”.In December 2017, Monalisa pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter.
Everyone obviously remembers the early 2018 Tide Pod saga and how it got the entire world in panic and even roped in officials from the Trump Administration in a bid to deter hysterical American adolescents from consuming the candy-like detergents.
Mid 2021, the world erupted in a new form of sickening Tiktok craze that saw people stack piles of milk crates in a pyramid-style escalation and then attempt to climb up the crates without falling or undoing the arrangement.Tens of people were seriously wounded after falling off the crates, hitting the concrete below and a woman from Dallas, USA was even hospitalized after cracking her skull from a fall.Two people were also shot dead while attempting the challenge in Louisiana.
French Tiktoker Deborah Yowa has gained notoriety – and an insanely huge following – after creating videos of herself eating all sorts of unthinkably random things (cooked or uncooked) and fashioning it in the oddly-satisfying ASMR format.Deborah now commands a spellbinding 15 million followers on Tiktok.
Closer home, we’ve seen Tiktokers go out of their way to create shocking content that has left a bad taste (no pun intended) in the mouth and downright terrified viewers.Lunatic Wazimu, or Nduruman as he goes on Tiktok, is another such character who has made a habit of invading secured locations (or any crowded public place) and letting out annoyingly loud screams for absolutely no reason.Nduruman seems to have a fetish for rattling police officers who have, somewhat interestingly, never roughed him up or arrested him even after his proclivity for public disturbance.
And over the last few days, Kenyans have been ‘praying’ for a popular Tiktoker who sees nothing wrong in chowing down a bat, skinning and frying a rat, digging into a spider or barbecuing a lizard.Aq9nine shocked Kenyans after posting a video of himself after suffering an allergic reaction as a result of eating a spider.His face looked like something straight from a Jordan Peele movie set. “Guys make your last prayers kabla niende. Mniombe tu bana mi naenda…Naskia ni kama sina uso, nimefura kila mahali. Nimedishi spider bana and this is happening to my whole face,” he said in the video, adding, “If this is my last video, it has been fun entertaining you and risking my life as well..I love risks coz we live a risk..We all gon die so f–k it..Much love comrades.”
The idea of content creators pushing the boundaries and risking it all for subscribers and clout is increasingly going out of control and these young creatives seem to be worrying less and less as long as they can become a trending topic over the next few days and add a few more followers on their count.
In a crowded world of insanely talented individuals with eye-catching content and with a seemingly bottomless endowment of skills, content creators have upped the ante and will now even rob a bank on camera or shoot up a maternity ward if that will help pay their rent and afford them that coveted vacation in Zanzibar.We’re living in a sick world, make sure you’ve taken your internet vaccines.
