Fifteen days of total incapacity for work and the scare of his life. This is what a 22-year-old suffered, victim of a hidden camera by Maxime Alexandrov, known under the pseudonym “The Threat”. The video, posted in October 2022, features a hoax themed around Jeffrey Dahmer, the now notorious serial killer brought to light by Netflix.
post traumatic syndrome
In this hidden camera, The Menace sets up a date with a young man in a house worthy of a horror movie, with a body bathing in a pool of blood, positioned in the living room. One of the trapped people flees, without giving the trapper time to explain his “joke”.
Tried by the Bordeaux court on February 24, La Menace finally escaped conviction. But this step in front of justice reflects what constitutes almost from now on a norm to exist in the universe of the hidden camera on social networks: extreme garbage.
If the hidden camera concept is not from yesterday (on television the concept already appears in the 40s), it has never stopped evolving in the productions made. Rémi Gaillard, for example, was one of the pioneers of the genre at the end of the 2000s. The videographer then amused himself by parodying Mario Kart, capturing policemen or breaking into football stadiums.
Schoolboy pranks that still earned him several police custody. In 2014, however, the charges are more serious: Rémi Gaillard is accused of trivializing rape culture and promoting sexual violence behind a hidden camera where the comedian imitates sexual acts on several people, thanks to an optical effect.
Multiple convictions
Year after year, hidden cameras have pushed the limits of humor, causing more controversy than laughter, especially abroad. The Spanish youtuber ReSet, for example, was sentenced in 2019 for a video in which he amused himself by catching homeless people by offering them Oreo cookies filled with toothpaste.
Classified as moral damage and damage to physical integrity, the video led the youtuber to 15 months in suspended prison and a fine of 20,000 euros. The videographer was also ordered to shut down both of his YouTube channels for five years and banned from creating a new one.
Also in 2019, American YouTuber brothers Alan and Alex Stokes used their hidden camera to carry out a fake bank robbery. A scene that caused more than one scare in the establishment and led to 160 hours of community service, accompanied by a year of probation.
In the category of robberies, English youtubers are not left out. Because when it comes to hidden cameras, the Trollstation group has made spectacularity their trademark. To his credit: fake bomb threats, fake kidnapping but above all a fake robbery at the National Portrait Gallery, an art museum in London. The 2015 video led 4 of the members of the collective to several months in prison.
Even less censored versions
Hidden camera creators sometimes even go as far as physical threat. In late 2022, Noticuz, an American youtuber, posted a video featuring rapper Nas Ebk. The two men then pretend to steal the luggage of two passengers at an airport. But the situation escalates and Nas Ebk ends up pulling out a knife, threatening the couple.
Despite the sometimes violent content of these sequences, they remain accessible on all platforms. Thus, Internet users can always visualize these bank robberies or assassination attempts.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s video for La Menace, for example, has nearly 500,000 views on YouTube. The videographer has even created a streaming platform, “La Menace Uncensored”, where even more “trash” versions of his videos are posted online (versus €4.90 a month). Hidden cameras are now a far cry from the family entertainment of yesteryear.
Source: BFM TV
