It’s April 2nd, 2025, and you are in a local CVS Pharmacy. As you are picking up a few items to check out, you suddenly hear a scream from one of the customers in the store, “Help.” Little do you know, you are going to be a victim of a prank.
As a CVS employee tries to pinpoint the person screaming, another customer walks up to the employee and blames you. The employee starts to yell at you and tells you to either stop screaming or leave the store.
The whole situation continues to escalate, and eventually, the employees call the cops to the scene. While the real perpetrators are long gone, you take the blame.
This was the unfortunate reality for a young man shopping at CVS Pharmacy, who had fallen victim to a ‘prank’ masterminded by a few content creators.
Ever since the advent of social media, content creators have always been innovating new ways to entertain an audience. One of these innovations, public pranks, started as relatively harmless jokes and were generally loved by social media users.
One example of an early harmless public prank pulled on people was pretending to urinate on people’s cars, done by spraying water on the victims’ cars. Many of those on the receiving end of the prank laughed it off after being shown the water bottle.
As viewers slowly got accustomed to tamer pranks, content creators decided to take risks and pull crazier pranks to gain more views and likes.
One particular content creator, Heston James, better known as “Teraclout”, revolutionized the public pranking niche with his screaming-in-public prank.
Screaming-in-Public Prank
James first started the screaming prank on January 15, 2025. He would go into various stores and start screaming as loudly as he could. Generally, James’s screaming would start a storewide manhunt to find the person screaming.
When the employees catch James, he tries to blame the screaming on another customer shopping in the store. Surprisingly enough, the employees usually believe James, which makes an innocent bystander end up taking the fall for the screaming.
Because innocent people get tangled up in James’s prank, the viewers’ opinions are mixed. One Instagram user writes, “This is the most unfunny thing I’ve ever seen.” While another Instagram user says, “No cap, these gotta be the funniest videos on social media rn.”
Since the original prank in January, James has done multiple variations of the prank on his Instagram page. The most recent rendition of his prank involves bringing multiple people, who are in on the prank, into the store. Once in the store, each person would scream at random intervals. The random screaming makes it extremely difficult for employees to pinpoint who exactly is screaming.
The viewers’ reactions to James’s more recent posts are more positive, with comments such as, “I can’t get enough of these.” However, amidst the positive comments, there is still a vocal minority who dislike James’s pranks because James makes workers’ lives difficult.
“Felt bad for the last dude,” one Instagram user writes. “He was chill and apologized even though it was completely your fault.”
Because of James’s success, averaging well over one million views per video, other content creators decided to copy his idea. Numerous other accounts showcase people screaming in stores and blaming others.
Chicken Jockey Trend
These public prank videos inspire impressionable children on social media to commit similar acts. Intending to gain notoriety on social media, kids create various other pranks. One particular trend resulting from this is the chicken jockey trend.
The chicken jockey trend revolves around a scene from the Minecraft movie, where a zombie is sitting on a chicken. Whenever the character Steve says “chicken jockey,” a few people in the audience throw popcorn all over the movie hall.
Unlike James’s recent posts, where there was a slight majority of individuals who enjoyed the content, the comments on chicken jockey trend videos are overwhelmingly negative.
“I feel like this isn’t even funny,” writes one Instagram user. “It’s just outright disrespectful to the people who work minimum wage to clean this.”
In some theaters, rowdy audiences made employees stop the movie and escort people out of the theater. In typical prank fashion, the popcorn throwing escalated into people throwing slushies and other drinks.
The overall trend got so bad to the point that Jack Black, the actor who plays Steve in the movie, made a public appearance in a theater, telling fans not to throw popcorn and enjoy the movie. Black’s humorous presentation aided in the younger audience’s reception of his message.
While negative pranks normally get more views than positive ones, there is a fair share of positive public pranks that garner substantial traction. One account that falls into this category is the Cart Narcs.
The Cart Narcs
According to their website, the Cart Narcs are “an independent, non-governmental agency of highly-trained agents who have only one desire: that everyone return their shopping cart.”
When watching the Cart Narcs’ videos, it may seem like the agents are bugging customers for no apparent reason; however, this could not be further from the truth. Not returning a shopping cart to the proper designated area could result in vehicle damage. In addition to this, carts could potentially cause unforeseen injuries in certain situations.
“I have a friend who is blind. He said random shopping carts are a huge hazard for the visually impaired,” one Instagram user notes. “If you can, return your cart.”
Furthermore, leaving carts in random spots makes the employees’ lives harder, practically making them go through a scavenger hunt to find all the carts.
Many Instagram comments under Cart Narc posts include ex-employees thanking the Cart Narcs for confronting people. One Instagram user writes, “As someone [who] pushed carts as a job, I love these two.”
Only targeting those who deserve it, the Cart Narcs are a refreshing breath of air from the abundance of over-the-top negative pranks circulating on social media.
From people screaming in stores to people throwing food at moviegoers, the majority of these negative pranks seem to involve innocent workers and employees, which particularly irks a lot of viewers. One can only hope future pranks follow the path paved by the Cart Narcs, leaving innocent people out of the prankers’ antics.
