Gaten Matarazzo, who best known for playing Dustin on Stranger Things, is set to host and executive produce a hidden-camera prank show for Netflix. The show’s announcement has been met with backlash.
The show is called Prank Encounters. The concept of the show is based around an elaborate prank that will first give people, looking for work, jobs. The pranking begins once they start their part-time jobs. Ultimately, the individuals are yet again rendered jobless once the prank ends.
“Each episode of this terrifying and hilarious prank show takes two complete strangers who each think they’re starting their first day at a new job,” the Netflix press release for the show reads. “It’s business as usual until their paths collide and these part-time jobs turn into full-time nightmares.”
Netflix is calling the show “epic.” Yet, many people are finding the concept insensitive.
The 16-year-old tweeted about the show’s announcement on Friday. Matarazzo’s tweet was met with fans calling the show “cruel,” “mean-spirited,” and begging him not to go through with it.
— Gaten Matarazzo (@GatenM123) June 14, 2019
great, something else for the unemployed to worry about. 🙄
— Ella Lamb (@factspusher) June 15, 2019
https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1139781088354586624
https://twitter.com/bethbethbeth01/status/1139820247584841728
Gaten, you seem like a cool kid, but please don’t. As someone who is currently unemployed, this just comes across as unnecessarily cruel.
— Autistic Barbie (@khaleesi_britt) June 15, 2019
What the actual fuck @netflix? Way to punch down on people already having a hard time. What’s next, pranks on the homeless? https://t.co/bmcGg7wD6v
— Chris Postle (@chrisjpostle) June 16, 2019
Hey @netflix great job. I struggled to find work for a year and it drove me to the brink.
— Alan White 🇺🇦 (@Lawthreeper) June 15, 2019
#PrankEncounters @netflix thinks this is a great idea for a TV show. Hire someone thinking they have found a job and then prank them with the fact they really don’t have a job. NO creativity at all and down right cruel.
— Siggy (@Siggy93757004) June 15, 2019
https://twitter.com/Capricornered/status/1139762254176325633
exciting news: the stranger things kids are getting old enough to be genuinely hateable https://t.co/FVU9il2wvT
— flglmn (@flglmn) June 14, 2019
The other individuals serving as the show’s executive producers are Ben Silverman, Howard T. Owens, Rob Hyde, and Kevin Healey for Propagate. The director will be Anthony Gonzalez, who is best known for his work on Dance Moms and Undercover Boss, another hidden-camera show.
Prank Encounters is set to have eight episodes in the first season, which is slated to roll out at the end of 2019.
Yet, I’m not sure how many viewers will be binging it. The consensus seems to be that it’s probably best sticking to pranking people who have job security or men who send unsolicited “dick pics.”
https://twitter.com/pauljholden/status/1139924638673395713
My Netflix prank show idea:
— Average Dick Energy (@JustJoeyJoeyJo) June 15, 2019
Women agreeing to meet up with the guys that send them unsolicited dick pics, but when the guy arrives, its actually their mother waiting for them.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Netflix.
READ MORE:
- YouTuber sentenced to prison for feeding homeless man toothpaste-filled Oreos
- Lauren Love banned from Walmart after pretending to fire employees in YouTube prank
- ‘Stranger Things’ fans crash museum website trying to buy Dustin’s dinosaur hoodie
- ‘Stranger Things’ season 3 trailer teases a wet, hot American summer
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H/T BuzzFeed News
