Originally published at: "Smile! You're on Candid Camera" still creeps me out | Boing Boing
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To me this show is only second to Get Smart for my favorite shows growing up. I love the older ones the most!
-joe
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Smile you’re on ABSCAM Camera…
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The possibility of something like this happening reminds me that I need to learn how to spit accurately
“Prank” shows aren’t OK
There used to be a horrible Saturday evening “light entertainment” show on Garbage Island where they’d cut live to the home of an unsuspecting viewer. It was nightmare fuel.
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Weirdly, it started out on radio as Candid Microphone.
The pranks were all pretty tame on the TV show and weren’t too mean spirited - or so my rose colored nostalgia glasses would have me believe. But as I’ve gotten older, I don’t really find fooling people funny. And in many, maybe most cases, I find it cruel and manipulative.
I do remember one of the early pranks, which I think they did on radio and again, perhaps, on TV? Where a locksmith was hired to fix the chain securing a secretary to her desk. I think even at the time that seemed super cringey. The locksmith should have politely left and called the police, even though the actress/secretary was saying she was fine.
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Honestly, the idea of most of these seem pretty mild, other than the fact that someone has decided to start filming without [my] knowledge—either on their own or via someone I know. I’m put out a little time, or maybe a high score in a game I wanted to impress at tonight. Maybe I get a laugh at the end.
The car wash though, is customer service nightmare fuel. The faux manager never clicks into why damaged property is a huge problem. Visions of calls to my boss, to car wash corporate, of police reports, insurance claims, and the lawyers, omigod the lawyers.
Tactfully done I enjoy this stuff, but a prank planner has to be careful of the effect they’re having on the average unsuspecting schmo.
Radiolab did a good deep dive on this show and the format in general. They spoke to people who had been pranked (long after the forced pressure to laugh along with it had worn off) and I definitely came away with the feeling that it’s all a horrible enterprise that should not exist in any form. It’s basically televised bullying for profit.
The modern versions of this, like the “best day ever” stuff Improv Everywhere is doing, or that show Ashton Kutcher had are 10x worse. They’re downright mean and left people with actual trauma in a couple of documented cases.
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Honestly, this is on me, but I wasn’t expecting to see an African American person at :40 in the bowling episode. I was young when that show was on, but I don’t remember it being very diverse.
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My ex-wife’s grandfather was “on” Candid Camera in the 60s. He was a rough and tumble guy and when they hassled him he cursed. Never made it on the air.
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Allen Funt told the story of when he was on a flight being hijacked to Cuba. None of the passengers believed it, because they recognized him on the plane, and were assuming they were part of a bit. He could not convince them otherwise.
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Discussed by Snopes:
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So, seems like the perfect crime is to follow Allen Funt around and commit armed robberies in his presense, because people would think they would get their stuff back at the end of the skit?
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This brings to mind this particular send-up of the genre, which was on to the odd cruelty of these kind of shows:
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Candid Camera informs my moral philosophy; I try to act as if Allen Funt is describing my every move.
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These shows and the modern derivative internet prank videos make me unreasonably angry. Making people uncomfortable or embarrassed for entertainment strikes me as such a profoundly antisocial thing to do.
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I was just about to post about the CollegeHumour prank war as an example of how badly this can go when escalated all the way, but then googling for the link taught me that the whole thing was faked.
I don’t know how to feel about that. 
NPR and Wired did entire credulous stories on that “prank war”. Sigh.
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I loved Candid Camera. I challenge you to watch this clip and then come back and tell me how much you hate this show.
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