The NELK Boys from Canada haven't posted anything for months and they made all their videos private out on YouTube. People speculated that they probably got two strikes against them and were scared to get a third strike which would get their channel deleted.
Who Are The NELK Boys?
NELK has changed a lot over the years because at one point they were a four man crew then things got switched up and they were a three man crew and now they were down to Kyle and Jesse. They were always pushing the limit and getting arrested for their pranks.
One of their most epic pranks was going down to Mexico and pretending to have "coke" in the back of the car. The cops thought they meant cocaine but they actually had Soady Pop!!!
There have been about 10 of their pranks where I was like ....... Whoa.... that was not just ballzy, that was CraZy! The last one that got uploaded to their YouTube channel back in February was where they pretended to work at Google. It was super epic and they got 1.3 Million views in 24 hours but then they were in deep shit. YouTube deleted the video and gave them another strike.
It's so funny to me because these guys never went to college but travel around the United States and Canada dropping out of University lectures. They are also famous for pretending to be employees at fast food restaurants and stores like Wal-Mart.
The craziest thing about their pranks is they are actually real. They risk their freedom for our entertainment! LOL
What's Next?
Pranksters are having a tough time on YouTube. They hay day was 2012-2014 and caused the rise of the fake pranksters. RomanAtwood, VitalyzdTV, and FouseyTube were staging their pranks but got close to 10 Million Subscribers doing that and made millions.
The ad revenue primarily dried up for most pranksters because it was considered not advertiser friendly. Some of them were able to make it with merchandise. That was mainly how NELK was making it.
My friend @gilstraptv now has over 100,000 subs on his prank channel and he was doing some sponsorships from Edubirdie but YouTube has now deleted those videos. That is a big reason why I registered @pranks . The issue again becomes stake weight here. Without enough power you really can't support a community here. So that is a little bit on hold right now but the pranksters are going to have to take their communities to other places.
NELK is taking everyone to their new website https://www.fullsend.com/
Conclusion
In the end I believe that a tokenized economy coupled with non intrusive ads will win out. Also something that has content that is trending from a combination of factors including stake weight, views, amount of upvotes from accounts that have at least achieved a certain reputation and have a little bit of power to prohibit gaming the system with a large low power bot trails.
I wish the NELK Boys luck with their website but honestly I think they could have success posting some stuff on a platform like this. I haven't been able to get a hold of them. @gilstraptv talked to them at VidCon and basically they will only partner / collaborate with YouTubers with bigger followings than them. It makes sense....... until now when the YouTubers aren't getting paid.
What do you guys think? Will YouTube be able to straighten things out? And no, my crypto channel on there https://www.youtube.com/brianphobos hasn't been monetized yet when I have been waiting for around 6 months at this point.
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I'm not fan of pranks to be honest. Pranks were funny when they are harmless to others but then it got out of control. People staging them like you mentioned but also people kept on pushing the limits to the point where it became toxic. It isn't funny anymore.
I'm happy to see pranks die out on YouTube. If you want an example of a good prank, there is one:
You aren't harassing people and it's funny!
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@kenanqhd I think you bring up a good point about pranks. While a lot of stuff falls under the "pranks" category, to me personally there's pranks and social experiments and then there's just trolling and harrassing people, and I agree many people take it too far.
The other thing that turned me off to pranks was how everyone was busted out as using actors. To me the pranks and social experiments are funny to see legitimate reactions sorta like a candid camera type thing but when the reactions are fake and the people are fake its now a skit and not a prank. Maybe some people find it funny still but its not the same thing.
I completely agree however that the concept of pranks has really just turned into fucking with people until you get a reaction
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Well it makes you realize as well that probably every show is pretty much fake as well. Like a lot of Candid Camera stuff, Jackass stuff, or even stuff like Tom Green back in the day. It is just so much easier to pay an actor a little bit of money to give an off the wall reaction.
I don't know if you guys remember Scare Tactics. Looking back on that show I feel like the whole thing was staged. It is too much of a liability for someone to go ape shit in a situation and do something to protect themselves.....etc.
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Do you remember Chainsy from YOutube pranks? He wasn't around that long and maybe had about a dozen videos or so only but some of his stuff was pretty funny, mean but funny
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Yeah I remember those guys. Those little rat bastards. lol. They got big basically from one main video where they smashed milk cartons on the floor of stores and pretended to be hurt. It is pretty funny in some respects and they claim they paid for the milk but who knows.
Off and on again they will upload but the weird thing is even with their huge following they don't seem to really focus on YouTube.
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While I have to admit I do find these types of pranks kinda funny, I don't like when people go trash stores and stuff. Some poor minimum wage employee is gonna have to go clean all that shit up, it wastes the stores time and money, etc, etc, etc.
This is a little different but years ago there was a big movement where people would go to drivethroughs, order a bunch of drinks and throw them through the window at drive thru employees.
I was working at Steak and Shake at the time and we had this happen to a couple employees. It sucked because not only are you splashed with soda, you have to either continue working your shift soaked or go home and lose out on money.
Well one day a car full of kids came through, ordered all drinks nothing else and I noticed 2 or 3 of the kids had their phones out. I knew the car and that these kids had done this before. Now Steak and Shake drinks are pretty large size so I took a 4 drink holder of sodas and just threw the whole thing into the car soaking the two kids in the front seat and getting all over everything. The driver immediately started crying, I'm sure that was his moms car and he was gonna be in trouble. I wasn't about to have these little fuckers hit me with 4 large drinks though lol
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Yeah, that is a pretty good prank. I do agree with you that the pranks need to be harmless. You can’t punch a grandma in the face and call it a prank.
Some of the pranks certainly can get borderline but I feel like even if it disrupts a class room for 2 minutes it doesn’t actually hurt anyone. Or when NELK pretends to be an employee and says some off the wall thing I don’t feel like it is a big deal but of course Wal-Mart doesnt want people in there pranking customers or building forts in the paper towel sections and staying over night.
The fake pranks where guys were pissing people off in the hood were certainly toxic. Lol
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Youtube is working hard. I read recent news about some guy from Singapore (Amos Yee; he sort of escape out) got his channel deleted.
https://mothership.sg/2018/05/amos-yee-youtube-channel-terminated/
Going with back load of Coke is classic. Perhaps, Warren Buffet will appreciate their business :-0
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The first thing I read is "a man-child with too much free time, is left without a YouTube channel." Lol
It looks like his videos were really unpopular for obvious reasons. I dont' know exactly what he said in them but that sucks that he got his account deleted. There was a couple fitness YouTubers who lost their channels as well.
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He seems to be one mess up guy anyway.
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yeah, People probably aren't worried that he got kicked off YouTube. But it is happening to a ton of people who seem to be a little more normal.
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Yes, I don't think many people will miss him
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I used to really enjoy prank channels but after learning most pranksters are hiring actors and not doign real pranks it lost a lot of the appeal and I deleted most of those channels from my feed.
I noticed a few pranksters I followed kind of changed the tune of their channel, I imagine due to challenges with monetization. One guy that comes to mind, I can't remember his name but he was the cousin of BrownNerd, dropped his video below.
Another challenge prnaksters faced was others uploading their content, that was the most abused category on youtube in terms of people just stealing your content outright or making top 10 videos and stealing all your views.
Hoping you get the @pranks steemit account posting some new content, your first video on that campus about min wage was pretty funny.
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Hahah, I know who you are talking about who said he was cousins with Brown Nerd. His name was Juan Marquez or something like that and he used to do the DUUUUDDEEEEE prank where he would baseball slide in sweat pants in the walmart isles and then say DUUUUDEEEEEE to people. lol I don't know if they were actually cousins or not because they would say that Son's of Arkham was Brown Nerds dad. lol
It is kind of sad what happened to That Brown Nerd. He built the channel up that much and then couldn't make money on it anymore so he hasn't posted in a year. It sucks. Ends up kind of being a waste in a way.
Supposedly Sons of Arkham and Brown Nerd were going to go around the country and do a Bad Grandpa type show but it hasn't happened yet.
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Yeah as soon as you said the name that struck a chord, I remember the sweatpants slides and the dude stuff. I know at the end he made a video basically saying I'm going in a different direction any of you who choose to continue to follow I appreciate it, I know you didn't signup for a fitness and sports medicine channel so understand if you don't.
If I remember correctly I think one of their dads or uncle ran kind of a novelty gift and prank store or something, I believe that's how they got started with the sharting cup. I could see that being a good way to monetize a prank channel, if you had an ecommerce store or even Amazon products that are prank items like fake shit or whatever else you could implement them into your videos.
Do you ever watch phone losers of America, a little bit different but he does prank phone calls. His stuff is hit or miss, some of his calls are dumb as hell but sometimes he can really have me rolling. My favorite gig of his is he has his audience leave notes on people saying sorry I dinged your car please call and put his phone number and then he fields the calls with crazy stories about how he damaged someone's car. Some of the older stuff is pretty funny
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Hahah, Dude, I laughed my ass off at that first call where he was describing how he fixed the car.
Then there as the one where he said he drifted into a guys car in the parking lot in a stolen car when he was high. LOL
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I used to think it would be really fun to do a Youtube channel like this, however I live in a two party consent state so it's a felony to record someone on the phone without their knowledge. Not all states are like that, I think your state for example Arizona is a one party consent state meaning only one party needs to be aware so your allowed to record videos like this.
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One of my personal favorite types of pranks that get me rolling everytime is the whole fist bump handshake confusion prank. There used to be a number of them online I think BigDaws used to have a video like that and a couple other guys. When I went to search Youtube I couldn't really find any. This isn't the funniest one I've ever seen but just an example of what I'm referring to...
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It is interesting the route that LAHWF went with his vids.
Tons of people got out of pranks but the ones that sort of were able to stick are the ones that did non intrusive ones like this or the ones that Big Daws does.
The interesting thing about BigDaws is that he never really wanted to do pranks. He wanted to be behind the camera but all his friends were too scared to do stuff so he had to just do it. He has a new channel now where he has other people doing the pranks.
The thing is those types of pranks can continually be done because there is always a new generation coming up who will see the stuff for the first time.
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Yeah I dig big daws I watch his pranks every now and again. He seems like a nice genuine guy and his pranks seem to be in good fun and not mean or just trolling
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Yeah Big Daws seems like a good guy overall and he sort of played it just right to where his pranks were real, weren't going to get him arrested for the most part, and weren't going to get him kicked off YouTube .....etc.
It is interesting because he would only do more ballzy crazy shit on other people's channels. He was always smart about not risking his channel by doing something stupid.
Here is an example of him doing something stupid and crazy on someone else's channel. lol
I don't know if you know but my friend @gilstraptv did a collaboration with Big Daws here at U of Arizona.
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