Basically, there's this guy with a decent following on YouTube, Facebook, etc who calls himself DaddyOFive. He is both a family vlogger and a "prank video" guy who, along with his wife, targets their two young sons for filmed pranks. This couple is obviously Southern and they look exactly like what you'd expect them to look like (that's the dad on the right in Phil's thumbnail), but I digress. Some of the videos are harmless, if a little mean. Others... not so much. DaddyOFive has documented himself inflicting no small amount of physical and emotional abuse, particularly directed toward his son Cody, who's exhibited progressively more disturbing behavior in response.
The footage -- at least what Phil included, because there's no way in hell I'm touching any of this fuckhead's social media -- includes such entertaining "pranks" as the parents covering their kids' floor with invisible ink and then yelling at them for several minutes as if one of them did it, dressing one of them up in a costume in the middle of the night and then having the father storm down with a gun screaming at him as if he was a robber, breaking their toys and filming their reactions, and just out-and-out shoving Cody's face down on a shelf when he's not expecting it -- resulting in a serious nosebleed and tears that DaddyOFive claims were both not what they looked like. Also filmed and monetized are Cody's many breakdowns in response to the various pranks, including tearfully telling his father that he doesn't want to be filmed anymore, which the mature adult responds to by screaming and swearing at him.
The fans of these "pranks" eat this up and have told DaddyOFive that Cody obviously just has anger issues or a mental disorder. DaddyOFive has also put out a 20-minute video in response to the recent upswelling of criticism and media attention, which consists of no apologies, obviously guided lines from the children, and repeated utterances of "fuck all the haters."
Is it all fake? Could be. It's a prank channel, after all, and those are almost universally jackasses faking shit for the lowest common denominator to lap up. But the kids' reactions, the behavior of the parents toward the kids and each other, and how graphic and violent some of the content gets leads me to believe otherwise. And so I had to post about it here, because... I'm just at a loss.