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What do you do when someone pranks you?

arthwollipot

Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
arthwollipot
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If you're this man in Virginia, you shoot them.

YouTuber prankster shot and wounded by target of practical joke

Tanner Cook, 21, was reportedly playing joke on man at Virginia mall when victim of prank shot him in abdomen


A popular US YouTube creator who prides himself on making videos in which he displays odd behavior to put people off intends to keep at it, even after one of his targets allegedly shot him nearly to death.

Tanner Cook – who regularly makes videos of himself pranking strangers for nearly 40,000 subscribers of the channel Classified Goons – was reportedly playing a practical joke on a man at a mall in the Washington suburb of Dulles, Virginia, at about midday on Sunday. A friend was recording him when things took an almost deadly turn, according to authorities as well as an interview Cook gave to the local TV station WUSA.

The man, identified as 31-year-old Alan Colie, pulled a gun out and shot Cook in the stomach, investigators allege. Cook, 21, survived the wound and had to undergo surgery after first responders brought him to a hospital in critical condition.

“I was playing a … simple … joke, and this guy didn’t take it very well,” Cook told WUSA from his hospital bed.

Cook said the man who shot him “didn’t say anything” before firing on him, which authorities said also caused a panic among mall-goers.
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Pulling pranks on people is juvenile and petty, but no-one deserves to be shot for it.

The shooter is in custody, with a court appearance in May.
 
I dunno. Pranksters by their very nature put themselves outside of societal norms and in my view hanging is too good for them.
 
Fortunately, I've never had to deal with a youtuber and I don't carry a firearm, so I haven't had to find out.

There seems to be a lot of detail missing from the story.
 
novaphile said:
Fortunately, I've never had to deal with a youtuber and I don't carry a firearm, so I haven't had to find out.

There seems to be a lot of detail missing from the story.
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Yeah, we don't know what kind of "prank" this guy was doing. For all we know it was something that warranted a shooting.
 
Looked on their page - hmmm.... one can see how they upset people - as they put it they are a "couple of boneheads" but the shooting is terrible and unless they have totally changed their output there would have been no sense of physical danger to anyone but themselves.

ETA: and the shooter...
A criminal complaint reviewed by the Loudoun Times-Mirror said Colie’s father accused his son of punching him twice in the head in 2012. In that case, Colie allegedly told police he had become angry for a few minutes and was unsure of what happened next. Officers booked him over assault and battery, but the case was dismissed in 2014.
 
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I haven’t checked YouTube, but what was the nature of the prank? Could it have been reasonably perceived as a threat to the shooter?

Pretending to be sick or injured is one thing. Pretending to mug someone is something else entirely.
 
Does the story describe the prank? Some of them involve property crime or border on sexual harassment. They're not trying to put people off. They're trying to provoke and violent reaction as a game of brinkmanship.

At some point the line gets crossed from prank to incitement.
 
Well, that just shows the importance of proper gun training, if you ask me. Any of us who've been in the army would know to aim at the centre of the chest and double tap. No more "plans to do it again" there :p
 
theprestige said:
Does the story describe the prank? Some of them involve property crime or border on sexual harassment. They're not trying to put people off. They're trying to provoke and violent reaction as a game of brinkmanship.

At some point the line gets crossed from prank to incitement.
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That's the thing, nothing seems to describe the prank. All we get is that the shooter was "pranked" and "didn't take it well".

Norman Alexander said:
Joking while Black?
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Well I was thinking of a "prank" where you commit a fake robbery, like this one where the fake "robber" gets his nose torn open by someone who was trying to stop the "robber":

 
Pranking strangers is something I never quite got. I mean, IME one out of three people are on the right end of the antisocial spectrum, and one out of a hundred are stark raving nuts. It takes a stone-dumb kind of innocence to think you can **** with a random on the street and be safe.
 
shemp said:
Blame the guy who started it:

Allen Funt
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Yeah, but that was a different age. Funt, or one of his helpers, would have been shot dead a decade ago. You'd have to be certified suicidal to attempt any of those stuns today.

I'm guilty of pulling harmless pranks on complete strangers, but it's been quite some time. When I lived in California in the mid 80's, one of my friends, Tim, father owned a video production company. They mostly did commercials and similar stuff for local businesses but also did subcontracting for the local news stations too, so they had first class professional equipment, which Tim knew how to use.
Once in a while, for fun on a Saturday afternoon or evening, we'd go out to places crowds were readily available and shoot some video. I'd dress up a little, generally a sport coat, tie, and a fake company name badge, and we'd interview strangers asking them stupid questions like, "Name something you'd never touch with a ten foot pole."
I'd introduce myself as, "Klit Cavanaugh from 'Up All Night TV'.", and yes, I pronounced it exactly as it's spelled. It's amazing what you can get away with with a professional looking camera crew in tow.
Shockingly, or maybe not so much, once we set up and got going, people would claim to have heard of him, or flat out lie and say, "Sure, we never miss it!", while lining up to be asked whatever ridiculous thing popped into my head.
We'd get back together at Tim's house Sunday afternoon to watch, and laugh at our handiwork from the day before.
 
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