20 years after the release of ‘Jackass’: How has ‘prank culture’ changed?
“It’s just a prank, bro” became the unwanted catchphrase of hundreds of online pranksters in the late noughties and 2010s, when their often outrageous pranks were met with annoyance from their victims. Regularly fleeing the scene in fear whilst shouting the mantra, it was difficult to know at the time how contemporary culture had come to this sort of entertainment, with parents and cultural critics quick to blame MTV and their flagship show, Jackass.
This wasn’t exactly unjustified either, with the boisterous group of men gaining huge popularity at the turn of the new millennium for their increasingly foolish antics. First airing on MTV in October 2000, the admittedly innovative series quickly became a massive sensation, going viral long before the popularity of the internet took hold. Shared by word of mouth and on well-used VHS tapes, Jackass fostered a new breed of comedy, becoming one of the world’s first shows to turn the camera on the participant, making the stars the butt of every joke.
Centered around stunts and skits that tested the pain and endurance of the group of pranksters, which included fan-favourites Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn and Wee Man, Jackass utilised the relatively new technology of personal, handheld digital cameras to make themselves the star of the show, birthing the very first reality TV stars.
Just like Big Brother, Survivor, Pop Idol and other reality TV shows that broke new ground at the turn of the new millennium, Jackass helped change the identity of who was considered a ‘celebrity’. Suddenly, everyone who owned a camera became their own reality star, and, inspired by the gonzo-journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, Jackass took advantage of this new opportunity.
Only a year later, in July 2001, Jackass was cancelled after 25 episodes, a decision that would merely strengthen the team and encourage them to release Jackass: The Movie in 2002, popularising their pranks to a wider audience. Such created a perfect storm with the burgeoning rise of the video platform Youtube, a space that allowed groups of friends across the world to emulate their success with similar stunts and antics without the need to send audition tapes to studios.
Rising to popularity at the dawn of Youtube came the likes of Ed Bassmaster, Greg Benson and Rémi Gaillard, with each creator taking to the new platform with the same rebellious nature as their Jackass counterparts. Each hopping on the trend of prank videos, these pioneers popularised the genre on the video hosting site, leading to thousands of copycat channels throughout the remaining decade. Roman Atwood, Vitaly Zdorovetskiy and Logan Paul would follow, with each new channel gaining tens of millions of subscribers across a remarkably short space of time.
Indeed, the influence of Jackass would come full circle in 2016s Natural Born Pranksters, a feature-length prank movie which featured YouTube’s biggest names and even Jackass’ Dave England. Though, as YouTube steadily lost its grip to competitors like Vine, Snapchat and other such social media platforms, pranksters became increasingly more desperate to retain viewership, leading to stunts that weren’t so joyous.
In November 2015, the former Big Brother housemate Sam Pepper got into hot water when he kidnapped another YouTuber and forced him to watch someone kill his best friend. Two years later, the vlog channel DaddyOFive defended himself by saying it was “just a prank” after uploading countless videos of his children being harassed to tears, leading to him losing custody of two of his five children in the same year.
These two examples represent just two videos in an avalanche of similar pranks that occurred in the 2010s, with YouTube attempting to bookend the drama of such videos by banning “pranks with a perceived danger of serious injuries” and “pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger” in 2019. This would dramatically decrease the amount of ‘harmful’ pranks on their platform, with such videos no longer retaining the popularity they once had.
With obnoxious pranks a thing of the past, creators had to change their way of thinking, and many across YouTube, and the new video platform TikTok, became lazy, faking pranks to get better, more outrageous reactions. In a world of fake news and general social dishonesty, it’s no wonder that prank culture has taken a similar turn, with many viewers quick to shout ‘FAKE!’ with all-caps type when they sniff even a morsel of deception.
In this hazy modern world where it’s difficult to work out fact from fiction, jokes are becoming equally trickier to decipher, and the nature of a ‘prank’ is becoming muddied in and of itself. Indeed, when a practical joke has been completely fabricated, do we not become the victims of the prank, with the creator laughing at our foolishness as they count their dollars earned through monetisation?
