Satirical TikToker uses common true crime video tactics to trick viewers into thinking he got arrested for poisoning his girlfriend: 'That feels illegal'
All Dan Hentschel had to do was change his profile picture and name on TikTok to “True Crime Gazette” and he knew he’d be able to fool at least a few people into believing he’d been arrested.
He’d been documenting “the murder” of “his girlfriend” in a series of videos on his page — starting with a video pretending to put bacon grease in her beauty products and finishing with him putting salt in their shared Britta filter. In the salt video, he explained, “The more dehydrated they get, the more dependent they are on me and the less energy they have to leave me or cheat on me.”
“Nah bro that feels illegal,” one top comment reads.
“how do they not taste the salt?” another asked.
The girlfriend doesn’t taste the salt because Hentschel is not actually poisoning anyone. To take the prank to the next level, he then posted about his own “arrest.”
Using screenshots of a fake New York Post article, along with fake security footage, Hentschel was able to trick viewers into really believing he’d been arrested. Despite the fact that his TikTok handle — the TikTok handle for “True Crime Gazette” — was literally his name.
Hentschel cleverly came up with a New York Post-style headline, complete with an eye-catching quote, and included common tropes in true crime TikToks like “the screenshot” of his tweets from “the same day” his girlfriend was in the ICU.
“GOSH I THOUGHT THIS WAS TRUE FOR A SECOND I’M DYING,” one top comment reads.
That seems to be the general sentiment of people who watched the TikTok or came across Hentschel’s fake screenshots on Twitter. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice Hentschel may look familiar — even in costume — because he went very viral in May for pretending to be a therapist who hated his job.
Hentschel not only understands what makes people watch a TikTok video and react but also understands techniques to make viewers, and even outlets, trust him — even though they shouldn’t. Other videos of his have been written up by the New York Post and the Daily Mail; Vice and i-D even credit him for starting “quiet quitting in relationships” and Mashable uses him as an example of how Gen Z is learning social etiquette on TikTok. (The latter three acknowledge his videos are satirical.)
Media literacy, the process of critically analyzing information found on the internet, is being pushed by officials to be taught in schools. Although Hentschel’s videos are harmless in the grand scheme of what’s being shared on the internet, misinformation is becoming harder to spot.
And creators are using the general public’s lack of media literacy to their advantage. The terms “goblin mode” and “skeleton brunch” went viral as “trends” in 2022 and were seriously covered by outlets, despite being made up for the sake of going viral.
More recently, the “fake podcast” viral growth tactic of wearing big headphones, speaking into a microphone and adding subtitles has been exposed as an easy way for creators to go viral on TikTok and be trusted.
“Americans are lacking key life skills they need to navigate an increasingly complex media environment,” Erin McNeill, the founder and president of Media Literacy Now, said. “People need to understand media systems and have an opportunity to develop skills to analyze messages and think critically about the source and who benefits from messages shared so they can make decisions for themselves and their families, without undue influence and manipulation.”
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The post No, an influencer did not get arrested for ‘poisoning’ his partner to stop her from cheating appeared first on In The Know.
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