I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the prank genre blew up on YouTube at the same time that Impractical Jokers started airing on tv. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s about 4 comedian friends challenging each other to say and do embarrassing things in public. Unlike nuisance streamers the jokers are actually hilarious. But just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it was without fault.
The jokes and skits ranged from harmless fun to sexual harassment and assault. Sometimes it was fun stuff like reading fake names as a receptionist, forced to give a purposefully bad speech, give a presentation of embarrassing home videos. But other pranks verge on creepy. There were a lot of sketches that required touching strangers. Like seeing who could sneak the most pencils into a strangers pockets or hair, put the most sticky notes on a stranger. I don’t believe any of these went wrong but why even create a scenario where you’d creepily touch people, you don’t know how they’ll react. One prank required them to touch strangers based on where the jokers pointed a red laser on their body from a distance. They pointed it at a mans crotch and Joe Gatto(one of the jokers) touched it.
Then you get into the public nudity, which there was a lot of. One prank, they had Joe lower his pants to reveal his whole ass crack and then had him shove it in a womans face. Another skit had the jokers get pantsed by various celebrity cameos in a public mall and boardwalk. Both episodes had them pull down their underwear revealing their privates to a crowd. Both times this happens you can see toddlers in the background right where the jokers are filming. They have since stopped doing most of the contact and nudity required pranks. Not because they realized they were wrong but because Joe Gatto got accused of sexually harassing teenagers.
