The Internet (i.e. Some People on TikTok) Lost Their Damn Minds Over a Turkey Trot Prank That Was Completely Harmless
I might be a few days late to this very important Thanksgiving news story. Thanksgiving was last Thursday after all. But for some reason this came across my desk this morning. Pretty harmless prank, I thought. Kinda corny, but overall decent. For a moment there, her fiance's brother had her convinced she was marrying into a crazy 10k turkey trot family. That for the rest of her life, she would be subjected to waking up bright an early on Thanksgiving morning for a cold for 6.214 mile run. They really sold it too. Made t-shirts and everything. Just a classic middle of the road, not too great, not too terrible prank. And the backlash was so extreme that there's an article in People about it.
Seems pretty stupid to get mad about this, right? But what if I told you this wasn't just any Turkey Trot. It was an intense Turkey Trot. A Turkey Trot she was expected to take seriously. What if I told you this girl had been up at nights staring at the ceiling, dreading the day she would be forced at gun point to run a morning 10k against her will? To the point that she went out and bought brand new expensive running shoes. She trained vigorously for months. Only for this family to pull the rug out from underneath her the morning of. She was humiliated. She barely knows this family, and they all worked to conspire against her. They were straight up lying to her face for months.
Thankfully, the entire internet (all of it, every single person with internet access) bravely came to her defense.
Still think it's harmless now? You do? Well so does the girl who got pranked. That whole after story regarding how hard she trained, the new running shoes, and how humiliated she felt as a result of the prank was completely made up. The girl from the video (Libby) kindly asks if people would stop harassing her future husband's family.
Advertisement
Note: The trend of people on TikTok (and every other social media platform) who recap a story or a video and put their big floating head over the screen… I can't stand that. What is your face adding to the story? People are watching your video for the information. Not for your face. Why don't you regurgitate talking points in blog form like a god damn adult.
People are nuts man. The irony of making this family feel like they're horrible people, and doing way worse to them than they ever did to their son's fiancee… all in the name of NOT bullying… it's crazy. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I thought we were past this. This is such a 2017 ass story. Back when we overcorrected on any and all bad/insensitive things we might have been doing. When everything became about mental health. If anything, I thought we had overcorrected back the other way by now. Whatever. And just to show how off the rails people went with this, this was the video that introduced me to the story. I do not expect you to watch all of it. That would be insane.
Over 200k likes on that thing. Imagine telling that family that this video would be the result of their silly little prank. The seriousness of it all is just… bizarre. I was expecting to find the original video and see some girl puking or laid up in the hospital after injuring herself in some Iron Man style Turkey Trot. But nope. It all stems from a Turkey Trot prank for a Turkey Trot that didn't even happen. A prank at which the prankee was perfectly ok with.
But look… it would be downright irresponsible for us not to consider that this Libby girl might be lying to cover for them. That her future in-laws were upset about about the backlash they were receiving online, and in order to smooth things over (because she is now deeply scared of these people), Libby took to the comments to clear their name. She could still be a person in distress.
Advertisement
Or maybe we should give the family some credit that they know her better than us. That they might understand where the line is with her better than we do based on a sub-minute long TikTok.
Sorry, sorry that's ridiculous of me to suggest. Because even if she's not lying. Even if she's perfectly ok with the prank. Just because Libby was fine with it doesn't mean there aren't other family's out there doing these things. Your anger was perfectly justified. Because hypothetically, there might be other Libby's out there going through the very thing you completely fabricated in your own head.
Final thing – If we're looking to get mad about pranks, there is no shortage of online pranking content that deserves all the hate and vitriol in the world. Go down the rabbit hole of nuisance streamers. The people who do these types of "pranks" are the one's who need to be stopped. Not a nice happy family doing a Turkey Trot prank amongst themselves.
Advertisement