YouTube star Coby Persin got an unwelcome surprise during a recent photo shoot.
In a video clip that went viral on Twitter, Persin, a YouTube personality with more than 2.7 million subscribers, and a cohort pose in front of a gold-plated BMW i8 parked and block a very busy New York City street. Within seconds, a vpissed off New Yorker trapped behind the exotic beemer exits his vehicle with a bat in hand and proceeds to smash Persin’s windshield.
https://twitter.com/coby_persin/status/803034363306704896
That the video has been retweeted more than 12,000 times isn’t surprising. After all, it’s been a particularly tough year, and watching a guy who makes a lot of money objectifyingand shaming women get his comeuppance is exactly the tiny victory we all need right now.
Unfortunately, it’s almost certainly staged.
Persin’s previous tweet polled his followers on whether his next video should be a prank or a social experiment:
🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/KFHIJr6sLD
— Reed (@reed_grubbs) November 28, 2016
There’s also the fact that Persin has repeatedly pulled stunts like this. This year alone, at least three of his videos/stunts have been covered by publications of questionable repute. (It’s almost as if he knows that doing outrageous things will result in mass exposure regardless of being a blatant falsehood.)
But perhaps the most damning piece of evidence is the video itself. At the 16-second mark, Persin, unprompted by any particular stimuli, looks behind his shoulder as if he’s expecting to see something or someone, like, say, the dude he probably paid to be in this clip. It’s also odd that the dude chose to go past the suicide door, a much more approximate and convenient target to jack up, to awkwardly swing at the windshield. And finally, if someone’s going to be swing a bat at your car, you better believe they’re going to do it more than one time.
It’s worth noting Persin does have a long and well-documented history of posing obnoxiously in front of exotic vehicles:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BK4ZXVMhXsa/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEUNML-R0AR/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BA1BUIwx0CX/
Who knows? Maybe it did happen for real. Either way, it’s a shame that BMW had to get wrecked.