26 September 2014

Highlighting Sexual Harassment by committing Sexual Harassment

No, that's not an elephant seal, it's Sam Pepper.
Who, you ask? Well, until he posted a video of himself sexually harassing women, I had no idea either.

This 25 year old fussock is apparently well known on Youtube, Vine, and from his days on Big Brother. He posts, among other things, videos of him: kissing random girls on the street, drugging his friend and tying him to a pipe (Saw-esque), asking people their sexual fetishes, and picking up attempting to pick up 'cougars'.

Nice guy, right?

A few days ago he uploaded a video on his Youtube account, titled 'Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank', which showed him engaging in conversation with young women and pinching their bottoms as soon as they looked away for a second. What added to his creative genius, or so he must have thought, is that he hid his real hand and slipped it back under his over-sized hoodie after committing the act - leaving the victims perplexed. Feigning perplexity himself.

This guy has around 2.5 million subscribers who, for one reason or another, depend upon him for their daily dose of comedy. If he had a shred of integrity or intelligence, I would mention the obligation he has, not only as powerful online personality, but also as a human being, to not exploit defenceless individuals for comedic purposes. But that really goes without saying. I've no doubt a small portion of his mindless followers will go out and pull their own versions of this 'prank' because they will be of the same mind*.

This video typifies the mentality which many people seeking attention and fame and publicity possess. So long as I do something outrageous, I'm bound to get x amount of views and y number of subscribers/followers. Now, this is assuming that people who make videos like this know what they're doing is incredibly stupid and incredibly immoral, but in Sam Pepper's case, I don't think he considered the backlash he was about the be on the end of.



The video was taken down a day after it was posted, but that didn't stop plenty of people voicing their opinions on Twitter.





Some more salient than others


Twitter, Facebook, and just about every other social media outlet imploded with disparagement. The video was finally removed after the Youtube CEO glanced over at her screen to see that a quarter of the Earth's population had reported some guy called Sam Pepper for sexual harassment. That - she must have thought - met the quota required for violating one of the 'terms of service'. One click, and the video was removed. Now she could continue thinking about whether she had enough money to buy Mitt Romney's affection.

That last part is untrue.

I digress.

So then after all of this, he uploads some other video of the same thing being done to a man, as if that would make it OK. That video was also taken down, and so Sam took to Facebook to deliver a wonderful, totally unprompted, completely genuine apology. Actually, he didn't do that.

Unbelievable.

Instead, he made some ridiculous 'concessions'. He mentions that the whole thing was staged, and that the purpose of the videos was to "highlight the difference between abuse towards men and women".

Yeah.

He then realised he was The Riddler, and began tweeting indecipherable messages:
I've no idea what that means.

Anyway, the point I'm getting at is this behaviour is not funny. It's actually rather unfunny, verging on disgusting. It's immoral, and I hope this incident, although possibly besmirching his image beyond repair, has at least made him reflect on himself. Right now, though, whenever anyone sees, reads, or hears about him, they will only think of this latest attention-seeking stunt - at least until he issues an honest apology for his actions.

What good has come from this ordeal can be found by the public's reaction to it. Of course, there are people out there who see nothing wrong with this 'prank', but that's today's society displaying its unbridled honesty. To read the vast majority of people take issue with this video is a show of that innate human solidarity I wrote of a couple of blog posts back. No one, regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexuality, should have to feel victimised, let alone as they're walking down the street in the middle of the day, and certainly not for the purposes of some moron trying to make people laugh on the internet. We're worth more than that.

*The mind of one who holds a cavalier and childish opinion with respect to a serious issue.


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