SALT LAKE CITY — Mark Rober, the BYU grad and former NASA engineer who saw his glitter bomb YouTube video go viral, said Wednesday that some of the reactions in his video were faked without his knowledge.
Flashback: Earlier this week, a video that showed a glitter bomb thwarting porch package thieves went viral across the internet. I wrote about it for the Deseret News. The video shows YouTube star Rober building a device that sprays out glitter and “fart spray” and putting it into a box. When thieves tried to steal that box, the glitter exploded all over them.
Aftermath: In the immediate aftermath, internet users pointed out on Imgur that there were discrepancies in the reactions seen in the video that raised suspicion, CNBC reports.
What's going on: Rober said Wednesday that some of the thieves’ reactions were faked.
- Rober said a friend of a friend volunteered to put packages on their porch for him to test the device. He said he offered financial compensation for “any successful recoveries of the package.”
- He said two of the “thieves” were actually acquaintances to the person helping him. Rober’s acquaintance then reportedly asked his friends to steal the box and react, according to Business Insider.
Removed: Rober removed about 90 seconds of footage of those faked reactions from the original video, specifically from the 6:26 to the 7:59 mark.
- "I am really sorry about this. Ultimately, I am responsible for the content that goes on my channel and I should have done more here," Rober said in the statement.
- Rober said this was his first prank video but he encourages people to check out his channel.
- "I can vouch that the reactions were genuine when the package was taken from my house,” he said. “Having said that, I know my credibility is sort of shot, but I encourage you to look at the types of videos I've been making for the past seven years."
Reaction: Investor Chris Sacca said he still supports the video.
“It was and remains the video of the year,” he wrote. “The beauty is the obsessive engineering that led to a gorgeous and elegant solution. I can’t wait to see your future videos all while my kids and I catch up on your past work.”