YouTube sensation Sam Pepper’s recent video elicited an outcry from many who do not like his brand of joking. Courtesy of Flickr
By Diana Figueroa
In the age of the Internet, many have found a nuanced form of celebrity, one that exists within the realm of social media and other interactive platforms. Today, YouTube gives people with an idea and the aptitude to work a camera a reputation and solid fan-base among the online community. These “Youtube celebrities” are celebrities in the sense that their actions are examples to others.
Last month, Sam Pepper, a former U.K. “ Big Brother ” contestant and one of YouTube’s “celebrities” (whose channel has garnered 2.4 million subscribers since its launch) sparked outrage because of a prank video he released that involved using a fake hand, concealed within his sweatshirt, to grope women on the streets of California. Pepper’s channel (YouTube.com/Sam) is not new to the pranks and jokes angle. In fact, a majority of his videos are humorous. So, why has this one, labeled as another prank video, received so much backlash?
For starters, groping women on the street is not a prank. It is sexual harassment. Why Pepper chose to upload a video of this nature and disguise it as a prank is beyond any person’s understanding. Since when did sexual harassment become a prank? For those who consider YouTube to be their profession, as Pepper does, is harassment OK because it will increase notoriety and views on the web? The answer is no.
The five women Pepper touched in his video voiced their non-consent, with one outright saying, “I don’t like that,” which they repeated several times. However, many appeared too shocked to react in a much more overt way.
Nevertheless, there was outrage about the video, not only among most of Pepper’s fans and subscribers, but from fellow YouTubers as well, including YouTube personality and LGBT advocate Tyler Oakley, comedian and author Grace Helbig and “vlog” brothers Hank and John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars).
Although the majority of viewers are aware that sexual harassment is an infringement on and a violation of a person’s basic human rights, it is unfortunate that not everyone understands why the prank was wrong. After all, a majority of Pepper’s viewers are teenage girls, aged 13 through 17, according to his YouTube statistics.
However, since uploading the first video, which has subsequently been removed from YouTube for violating the website’s “sex and nudity” policy, Pepper released two other videos that were supposedly a part of a three-part series.
In the final video, entitled “The Reveal,” Pepper sits in front of his camera to tell viewers that the three videos (the second being of a woman who, also used a concealed fake hand, groping men on the street) were all a part of a “social experiment” to raise awareness not only on the issue of female sexual harassment, but to “shine further light on an otherwise-dark corner” of male sexual harassment. He also claimed that all the people in the videos were actors who gave him “prior consent to acting in the experiment,” according to Pepper’s Twitter.
He claims that his prank was all done in an attempt to enable his viewers to stand up for something they believed in and be an example of how one should react to such a serious issue.
Regardless of how genuine or ingenuine his campaign was, how does it make sense to raise awareness for sexual harassment by sexually harassing? How does normalizing sexual harassment as a prank raise awareness to the issue in the first place? And, how does sexually harassing women shed any sort of light on male sexual harassment?
The simple answer: does not.
Effy Donovan, FCLC ’15, witnessed the videos and Pepper’s attempt to cover up the first video’s content in real time. When he revealed the final video, she concluded it was an elaborate attempt at covering up the nature of the first.
“I thought his ‘big reveal’ was absolutely bogus,” Donovan said. “How sexually harassing women on the street in order to raise awareness about male sexual assault makes any sort of sense to anyone is beyond me. But, I’m so so happy that so many YouTubers have spoken out against the video and his horrid treatment of women across the board,” she said.
Many comments remain on Pepper’s videos (and on other YouTube channels who have posted videos and spoken out against his actions) that continue to question why what he did was wrong. The fact that viewers, both men and women, continue to think that what he did was “all in good fun” or “not that big of a deal” proves why conversations and awareness of this serious issue need to take place.
There are women out there who have been told that it is OK for men to behave in this way. That it is OK for women not to speak out or want to fight for their rights as human beings. That it is OK to laugh about or shrug off whatever harassment comes into their lives because how else can they defend themselves or react to being in such a situation without coming across, God forbid, a “feminist?”
The fact that some fans continued supporting and defending Pepper even after the final video’s backlash further proves my point. People need to start having these conversations and stop putting issues of sexual harassment on the back-burner.
It is important for both men and women to understand that sexual harassment is an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed and dealt with in a serious way. And Sam Pepper’s videos—ones that send out the message that harassment is a normal way to interact with one another—is not the way to go about doing so, no matter how many fans he has.
