LAST WEEKEND, A video purporting to show a woman pretending to be drunk and asking for help appeared on YouTube.
Billed as a social experiment akin to the infamous catcall video, it appeared to show men generally acting like creeps and offering to take her back to their place.
Five days since its release, it has racked up nearly 7 million views.
Now LA Weekly is reporting that it’s all a fake.
One of the men who appears in the video, Mike Koshak, has stated that he was led to believe that the video was a student comedy short and that the whole thing was a set-up.
Furthermore, Koshak’s employer LA Epic Club Crawls has released this statement.
LA Epic Club Crawls does not condone or support the actions depicted in the posted video that has gone viral. The independent contractor who participated in the video did so without the authorization of LA Epic. This individual informed us that the video was directed and filmed under the guise of a plotted comedy short-film. Although LA Epic supports the awareness of alcohol abuse and social responsibility, we have no ties with the actions of the individuals who were filmed or the creators of the video.
The video was posted by 20-year-old Stephen Zhang, who lists himself as CEO of Hygo Inc, a company that specialises in virality.
Zhang has yet to respond to claims that the video was staged, but it looks increasingly likely that it was just piggybacking off the success of the aforementioned catcalling video.
Ah, clickbait.
