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Youtuber Facing Prison After Prank Targeting Homeless Victim
Kanghua Ren, a prank/gaming Youtuber who goes by the name ReSet with 1.2 million subscribers, is looking at two years of prison after feeding cookies filled with toothpaste to a homeless victim.
The Barcelona-based Youtuber runs a channel that focuses on pranks and games like Fortnite and League of Legends, though he has deleted a number of old videos in the wake of the story. Kanghua is being accused of filling Oreos with toothpaste and feeding them to homeless people alongside a €20 bill.
"Maybe I’ve gone a bit far," Kanghua says while pointing the camera at himself, "but look at the positive side: this will help him clean his teeth. I think he hasn’t cleaned them since he became poor."
Spanish prosecutors want to charge Kanghua with crimes against moral integrity. The victim says they vomited five minutes after eating the cookies, authorities allege that Kanghua saw this and offered the victim €300 to stay quiet. A witness called the police, however, and the victim says he took the money out of fear for his life. Prosecutors also allege that Kanghua has similar prank videos on his channel offering sandwiches with cat excrement to children and the elderly.
Kanghua made €2000 from the homeless video's advertising payment. Prosecutors are seeking a fine of €30,000.
As of the time of writing, Kanghua's channel has 99 million views.
[Source: USGamer via The Independent]
Our Take
It's kind of frustrating that, despite this being a video publicly available on what appears to be a popular channel, it took someone just witnessing what happened and calling the authorities for this to go anywhere. Between this and Logan Paul, it feels like figuring out the morality and ethics of performative pranks shouldn't be nearly as difficult as people make it seem.
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