Have you ever scrolled past a video so outrageous that you had to stop and wonder what on earth possesses someone to hit “post”?
I had that exact moment last week. A clip popped up showing a young guy with a phone on a selfie stick cheerfully handing an 18-inch machete and a bottle of hard liquor to a clearly unstable man on the sidewalk. The caption? Something about “keeping the homeless in the streets.” It wasn’t satire. It wasn’t a skit gone wrong. It was real, and the creator was proud of it.
Welcome to 2025, where the hunger for virality has officially jumped the shark, swam across an ocean of bad taste, and set up camp on the other side with a sign that reads “No Limits.”
The Stunt That Broke the Internet (Again)
The videos started surfacing right around Thanksgiving. Same format every time: the creator walks up to someone who is visibly experiencing homelessness or mental distress, offers a friendly “Hey man, got something for you,” and then produces either a full bottle of vodka or a brand-new machete still in its orange plastic sheath. The recipients usually look confused at first, then grateful, sometimes even laughing along with the joke they don’t fully understand.
Within hours the clips racked up millions of views. Comments flooded in, everything from laughing emojis to genuine horror. Some viewers called it the funniest thing they’d seen all year. Others pointed out, rather obviously, that distributing weapons and alcohol to vulnerable people might not be the best idea.
“Keeping the homeless in the streets.”
– Caption on-screen text from one of the viral videos
Where Did This Actually Happen?
While the creator never names the cities on camera (smart, from a legal standpoint), sharp-eyed viewers quickly matched backgrounds to known locations. The distinctive colorful houses and palm trees? That’s definitely New Orleans. The bats under Congress Avenue Bridge in one nighttime shot? Hello, Austin. Word on social media is the creator is already planning his next stop: New York City.
Great. Because nothing says “holiday spirit” like arming desperate people in three of America’s most tourist-heavy cities.
Why Would Anyone Think This Is Okay?
Let’s be honest: shock content isn’t new. People have been eating Tide pods, snorting condoms, and setting themselves on fire for likes since the dawn of social video. But there’s always been an invisible line, hasn’t there? A point where even the most jaded algorithm-chasers hesitate.
Apparently that line has been erased.
In my view, three big factors are colliding here:
- The attention economy has gone nuclear. If you’re not trending every 48 hours, you basically don’t exist.
- Platforms still reward outrage and shock above almost everything else. The worse the reaction, the more the algorithm pushes it.
- A generation of creators grew up watching Jackass and never learned where the stunt ends and real harm begins.
Mix those together and you get someone who looks at a mentally ill person having a psychotic episode and thinks, “Perfect content opportunity.”
The Very Real Danger Nobody’s Talking About (Yet)
Let’s play this out for a second. You hand a large blade and a bottle of vodka to someone who is already struggling to tell reality from delusion. What’s the best-case scenario? They sell the machete for food money and drink themselves to sleep?
Worst case – and far more likely – someone gets hurt. Badly. Maybe the person holding the new weapon. Maybe someone else who crosses their path at the wrong moment. Police departments in cities with large homeless populations already report regular incidents involving edged weapons. Adding dozens of brand-new, razor-sharp machetes to that environment is like pouring gasoline on a campfire and calling it “performance art.”
And when that inevitable tragedy happens? The creator will delete the videos, claim it was “just a prank,” and hope the news cycle moves on. Meanwhile families will be left picking up the pieces.
Could This Actually Be Illegal?
Here’s the part that keeps legal experts up at night. In many states, knowingly providing a deadly weapon to someone you have reason to believe is mentally incompetent can absolutely lead to charges. Reckless endangerment is the obvious one. Some prosecutors are already floating the idea of incitement or even accessory liability if one of these blades is used in a crime.
Alcohol is trickier – giving booze to adults is generally legal – but when you combine it with weapons and target vulnerable populations, the picture gets murky fast. Add in the fact that some of these interactions appear to cross state lines, and you’ve got a federal headache waiting to happen.
Bottom line: this isn’t just “edgy” content anymore. It’s dancing on the edge of criminal liability.
The Bigger Conversation We Keep Avoiding
Look, I’m not here to clutch pearls about “kids these days.” But this stunt forces us to confront something uncomfortable: our society has turned human suffering into raw material for entertainment. We watch videos of people in crisis, laugh at their expense, tip the creator, and scroll on. The homeless man holding a machete becomes a punchline. The mentally ill woman screaming at shadows becomes “crazy lady compilation #47.”
At some point we have to ask: when did empathy become optional?
I’ve spent enough time in cities to know that homelessness and mental illness are complicated, heartbreaking issues that no single policy fixes overnight. But I also know that treating vulnerable people as props in your viral video is the opposite of compassion. It’s exploitation wearing a jester hat.
Will Platforms Finally Step In?
History says probably not until someone dies. We’ve seen this script before: dangerous trend emerges → millions of views → public outrage → quiet policy update → next dangerous trend. The cycle never really breaks because outrage is profitable.
But maybe, just maybe, handing out actual weapons crosses a line that even the most hands-off platform can’t ignore. Community guidelines supposedly prohibit “content that encourages or depicts dangerous acts.” Hard to argue this doesn’t qualify.
Whether anything actually happens remains to be seen. My money’s on a temporary suspension, a tearful apology video, and a new account in three months.
What Happens Next?
If the creator really is heading to New York, we’re about to find out how far this can go. Winter is hitting hard up north. Shelters are over capacity. People are dying on the streets. Showing up with a box of machetes and vodka would be catastrophic on every level.
Perhaps the most disturbing part? There will be an audience for it. Millions of them. Some will watch in horror. Others will watch because it’s horrifying. And the algorithm won’t know the difference.
In the end, this isn’t really about one reckless creator. It’s about all of us, what we reward, what we ignore, and where we finally decide to draw the line.
Because if handing weapons to desperate people becomes just another Tuesday on the timeline, we’ve already lost something fundamental.
And honestly? I’m not sure we’re ready to admit that yet.
