In a video posted on September 20th, called Fake Hand Ass Pinching Prank, Pepper, 25, stuffs one arm of a sweatshirt, and tucks the other behind his back under the sweatshirt, and tricks girls into giving him directions while pinching their ass when they point the opposite way. This received, naturally, an incredibly high amount of backlash. Widely popular YouTubers such as Tyler Oakley, Hank and John Green, The Fine Bros, Laci Green, Louise of Sprinkle of Glitter, Grace Helbig, Troye Sivan, and many others, posted their own tweets about the ordeal, some saying the video was "disappointing," and to "be responsible with your responsibility." They also signed a petition started by Laci and Tyler for Sam to take the video down and apologize. The video was removed earlier today by YouTube on the grounds of containing "sexually offensive content." After not issuing an official statement for an entire 24 hours, Sam tweeted the next day "just wait for it..", which we now know was alluding to a later video that was posted today, the 23rd.
The newest video, labeled "Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank (Part 2 of 3)", shows a different perspective. Rather than the original where it's Sam pinching girls' butts, this video shows his friend Alanah Cole, a female YouTuber with over 2,000 subscribers, pinching unsuspecting males' butts. With the timely posting of this video, along with the silence that's accompanied his social media accounts, one can only assume that this has now developed into a "social experiment" designed to illustrate the disfunction between genders…or something…
I'm not really sure why that needs to be highlighted any more than it already is. This society doesn't need to be shown double standards that exist on each side of the spectrum, nor does it need to be scolded and reprimanded for them. What we needed was to let this be a triumph against sexual harassment, and not let Sam's team think up a quick way to regain control of the situation after it snowballing into absolute chaos.
As a lover and avid student of sociology, I find it highly unlikely that this was planned from the start as a social experiment, and if it was, it's incredibly poorly planned. The experiment doesn't highlight anything but the fact that Sam clearly doesn't understand how to conduct an experiment or choose an actual hypothesis. Maybe he had good intentions, but they got lost somewhere in the mix of backlash and waiting too long to post the next part in the series. I don't think I'll enjoy watching his last video, which will most likely be 5 minutes or so long, the first half him explaining to all of us why we are the stupid ones, always jumping to conclusions, so quick to judge, and the second half consisting of numerous excuses and justifications for his actions. It will set back all the progress we made thinking cognitively about the gender equality and social norms that this society perpetuates, chock it all up to a fake trial and make it okay, and that's the saddest part of it all.
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