Update: DaddyOFive’s Mike and Heather Martin have now claimed that the videos were faked, insisting that they are not “child abusers.” Find out more here.
Original Story: The poor grasp on morality exhibited by YouTube prank and social experiment videos is something we’ve covered a few times on Crave, though this latest channel takes the cake in terms of overstepping moral boundaries in the pursuit of ad revenue.
YouTube channel DaddyOFive, which has over 750,000 subscribers on the video-sharing site and is a verified account, regularly uploads videos of a mother and father “pranking” their children by way of cruelly destroying their possessions, framing them for bad behavior before shouting at them, and in one particularly abhorrent video they convince their five children that they are under attack in a Purge-esque scenario, arming them with baseball bats and other weaponry in order to defend their home.
Recently the parents uploaded a video titled ‘INVISIBLE INK PRANK! (EPIC FREAKOUT).’ The video sees the channel’s owners Mike and Heather Martin spraying the floor of their son Cody’s bedroom with invisible ink, with them both screaming expletives at him and his brother, causing them to cry in the process. The video makes for a disturbing watch, with Cody repeatedly screaming “I didn’t do that! I swear!” while the mother bellows “you’re f***ing lying again!”
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DaddyOFive has now prevented the video from being embedded outside of YouTube, though popular YouTuber Phillip DeFranco included clips taken from it in a video condemning the parents for their treatment of their children. As noted by DeFranco, Cody is a frequent target of their “pranks” despite him being visibly upset by them, with one video seeing Martin pushing him into a book shelf and seemingly bloodying his nose. Martin later claimed that this was red ink.
Take a look at DeFranco’s video below:
After being widely criticized online last week, Mike and Heather uploaded a video titled ‘BLOCKING THE HATERS’ in which they failed to acknowledge that what they were doing was upsetting their children, instead putting the onus of blame upon their critics. During one particularly telling part of this video, one of their children says “at least you’re not beating us like most parents.”
Watch the video below:
With so many YouTube prank videos being faked, it’s difficult to tell whether or not the children featured in the DaddyOFive videos are in on the joke, but if not then they are incredibly convincing actors. Either way, it still makes for troubling viewing and many have been calling for YouTube to pull the plug on the channel’s advertising, accusing the parents of exploiting their children for money.
We have reached out to YouTube for comment and will update this story if they respond.
