YouTuber Fakes Social Experiment!

YouTube creator and “social experiment/prankster” Adrian Gee was exposed on Australian show Today Tonight for faking his viral video “The Real Blind Man Honesty Test (Social Experiment).”

The premise of the video, which now has over 2 million views, was a blind man would ask for change for five dollars and hold out a fifty instead of a five. The video appeared to be real at first glance, but it was discovered the creator had hired actors for the “social experiment.”

The Today Tonight interviewer even pointed out some of the problematic videos on Gee’s channel which portray sexual harassment akin to Sam Pepper.

Gee later apologized in the comments of the video, writing:

“… Seeing as everyone is making such a big deal about this video I thought I’d address the issue and come completely clean.

YES, this video is in fact staged and the majority of the people you see are in fact actors.

First of all I’d like to just apologise to my loyal subscribers whom I call my #mates that were effected and I hope you understand why and what motivated me to do this as you read along…”

Gee continued in his “apology” claiming the actors were fully aware of what the footage was being used for, and that he’s currently facing lawsuits as a result. He also makes a point to say the actors were not paid for the shoot, which has nothing to do with the fact the video was staged.

He went onto Periscope, saying “It wasn’t fake it just had actors in it.” He also said that he was going to state the video was staged, but “it happened overnight and I just decided to roll with it.”

During the Periscope broadcast, Gee also claimed he was trolling news stations and treated the deception with laughter. Gee closed his apology with this:

“… Another thing I’d like to add is my content is clearly not for everyone. If you enjoy my content, good. If you don’t enjoy it, nobody is forcing you to watch it. Also the media tends to twist things a lot but if you knew the behind the scenes of some of the interviews you’d understand why I reacted to how I reacted.

Anyway I just wanted to apologise to my #mates once more and let you guys know that I love you and thank you for all the support you’ve given me. I have some really cool original ideas coming up and I can’t wait for you guys to see them!!”

On Periscope, the most poignant thing he and his camera man had to say was “… They’re making such a massive deal out of this, they’re making such a massive deal as though like no one’s ever faked a video on the internet before. Like this it YouTube like,” the camera man interjects, “Like get over it basically.”

Good to know they’re doing such a solid job of representing the community.

Our host Anna Lore has more about the reaction to Gee’s video and his other stunts…