Consequence of Stage Pranks

Who doesn't like a decent prank? Small ones that don't require much to do. A quick scare or one or two other things. YouTube in its 16 year run has that stuff. However, it's also home to more elaborate ones, staged ones. People wanting to emulate Jackass, Punk'd and several other shows. There's stunts, which I would lump into it. And unfortunately, it has dire consequences.

This happened a couple weeks ago and nothing new has been brought up since the incident on February 5th. In Nashville, Tennessee, Timothy Wilks and an unknown friend of his go to an Urban Air Trampoline Park. An indoor place for kids. They decide to go stage a robbery at night there. Carrying butcher knives according to an article by The Associated Press, they go after David Starnes Jr.. Starnes has a gun and shoots at them, hitting and killing Wilks. Police came to the scene and the claim of self defense was brought up. That's all I can find and several other sites copy and pasted what AP posted.

You'd think society couldn't get more dumber, here's your result. And this isn't the first. For robberies, there was twin brothers who staged a robbery at a bank back in 2019. Huge felonies and they were charged. I'm not sure if they have started their sentence if they were found guilty. I don't know. There was a stunt in 2017 from Pedro Ruiz who wanted to test the idea of a bullet stopping a book. Needless to say, he wound up dead with the shot coming from his wife/girlfriend, MonaLisa Perez. The idea fully coming from Ruiz was what Perez would say. Regardless, she was sent to jail according to a UK website, but only for six months. Some requirements had to be made for her when she came back to society. Hopefully, she has learned something about this.

People want to get famous. I want to as well, but not from shit like that. There's warnings from Jackass about not doing any of the stunts seen in the show and movies. But it keeps escalating to these levels that you can't believe the attempts made to do these dangerous activities. For Wilks, this was a kid that wanted to get instant fame. With that, it cost him his life. I don't think Starnes will go to jail and he shouldn't. Especially when it's night, you can't expect things to be normal all the time. Not to mention kids being in this indoor park. What if something bad happened to a child? This staged robbery would have landed Wilks in jail if he didn't die. Cops take this shit seriously. Towns take this seriously without knowing it's a prank. It's a waste of resources and money. I question if the unknown friend would be charged with murder. It can happen.

I hope this is a lesson learned for people still interested in prank videos. I doubt Google and YouTube will do anything to stop any of it. They're both gutless when it comes to responding to people who have legit issues. Something has to be done to prevent dangerous material from being shown.