YouTube kissing prank videos

The lecture on Thursday reminded me of some kissing pranks I saw before on YouTube. One of the most famous kissing prank channels is called Prankinvasion, where Chris the YouTuber plays different games with girls. If he wins, the girls have to kiss him. Although he always asks for “a really quick kiss,” most of the times his moves go way beyond that, and the girls seem to be fine with accepting what they did not sign up for. All the kissing videos in his original channel has been taken down now because of some problems he got into with YouTube, but most of them are still available in other people’s channels. I watched some of the videos and found that his moves are really sexual. He usually goes straight to grab the girl’ butt, touch her, and kiss her really hard. This seems really weird for two strangers in a public area.  What’s even weirder is that, most of the girls seem to enjoy the touching and kissing, and even make more moves voluntarily (of course he probably only put those who said yes in the video). In this following video, one of the girls even comes on to Chris before he can react. The other girls seem to enjoy the kiss as well, except for one girl who moves another guy’s hand from her butt to her back, but she does not stop kissing either.

I did some research and found out it was revealed that one of the girls in Chris’ kissing videos turned out to be an actress. Some people say that he has been paying these girls and that is why YouTube had all his videos taken down. Chris himself only said in one of his vlogs that he needed to sort things out with YouTube, without further explanation. So there is no way we can know. He stopped making kissing videos for a while but earlier today, he posted another new kissing video. It is in the video that he has created a new channel only for kissing videos, and there will be one new video coming out every week. Apparently kissing “random” girls and making YouTube videos is his life right now. The new video is linked down below:

From this video we can see after being intervened by YouTube, Chris appears to be way less sexually active than before. He makes sure that his hands are above those girls’ waistline and seems to be very careful with touching them. On contrary, the girls appear to be way more active than him. If the reactions of girls in the past videos were due to his actions, in the new video, it seems that these girls want to be kissed by a stranger so bad that they make extra moves on him. The videos – no matter the old ones or the new one – are definitely offensive. They have represented girls like they are so sexually desiring that any random man could just go to them and ask for a make out. If the girls say yes, then they hardly do anything to stop what makes them feel uncomfortable (or they just feel comfortable with whatever the guy does to them). Even if they do show their uncomfortableness, like the blonde girl with sunglasses in the first video, they do not say no. In some of the videos, certain girls give Chris something way more sexual a kiss, although he only asks for “a quick kiss.” Of course in real life Chris must have been turned down by millions of girls making Prankinvasion videos, but the fact that he does not show the rejections makes these sexually available girls the norm, whether they are hired by him or not. Considering the gender double standard (If a guy is sexually available he is charming, but if a girl is sexually available she is a whore), I also looked for girl asking guys for kisses videos on YouTube, but did not find many. Even the ones I found were only showing “quick kisses,” not a full sexual make out.

One of the features of YouTube is that it allows everyone to post and spread self-produced contents. Prankinvasion videos were getting extremely famous and influential before YouTube started to intervene, and these videos were not even age restricted. There are already countless people who see Chris as their hero and adore his confidence and ability to get girls. Hypothetically, these videos could cause many people to think that they can feel free to kiss and touch girls without getting into any trouble. They might think as long as girls say yes in the first place, they can just ignore their reactions after – and girls might just enjoy whatever they do to them. I do not want to say these videos will cause less respect to women because I do not think girls have to be sexually passive in order to earn respect, but somehow these videos have made me think of date rape. Imagine a teenager boy who is affected by Prankinvasion videos and thinks girls never say no. So he would assume that girls are on board with everything once they agree to go out with him (remember in all of his videos he always say: “If…then I get a really really quick kiss”). Thoughts like that might now be as severe as date rape, but they will definitely cause trouble.

Question: Although all of the original Prankinvasion videos were deleted, most of them are reposted by other channels and thus still available. Chris is not forbidden to post kissing videos either. Did YouTube stopped his original channel because he was posting something unreal (by hiring actresses), or because of the gender-offensive content? How exactly does YouTube control/regulate the content of their videos?