In 2017, a Spanish YouTuber shocked a homeless man with trapped cookies. He was sentenced by the courts to a fine accompanied by a suspended prison sentence and a ban on posting videos on his favorite platform.
It is an astonishing, but deserved punishment. In Spain, a YouTuber was sentenced by the Supreme Court to a 15-month suspended prison sentence and €20,000 in compensation to the victim for non-pecuniary damage. In addition, he was banned from posting new videos on his YouTube account or creating a new channel for the next five years. The judicial body across the Pyrenees thus confirms a sanction pronounced by a Barcelona judge in 2019.
ReSet, a 19-year-old videographer with up to 1.2 million subscribers, responded to a challenge from his community in 2017 to trick Oreo-branded cookies by removing their filling and replacing it with toothpaste, then to offer it to a homeless person while filming the scene. Already odious, the episode was embellished with an insulting comment: “He doesn’t have to brush his teeth much.” At the end of this very low neural voltage prank, the homeless man, a 52-year-old Romanian, suffered from stomach pains and vomiting after candidly swallowing the trapped cakes.
Prohibition to return to the scene of the offense
Five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that it was “a vexatious, intentionally humiliating act” which also caused a “physical suffering”. To condemn the YouTuber to no longer publish on social networks, the judges would have based themselves on the doctrine of “the prohibition to return to the scene of the crime”thus applying it to YouTube where the video had created a stir – and incidentally allowed the young convict to cash in 2000 € thanks to the clicks before deleting his video.
Alas, it was not the first feat of arms of ReSet, already author of similar videos with other victims. He had notably filmed himself, giving sandwiches containing animal excrement to the elderly and children. Not particularly remorseful, ReSet accused the judges and media of having ended his “career” as a YouTuber, for which he had dropped out of school. And to announce later on Instagram that his next videos will now be published on TikTok. More nuanced on Twitter, he indicated “to be willing to pay one’s debt to society” and “having changed and matured”.