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Japanese McDonald’s phone prank raises hackles online

Jamie Koide Dec 29, 2015
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Net users take to YouTube video’s comments section to express their anger and disappointment over prankster’s crank call video to McDonald’s restaurant in Japan.

For over five years, one anonymous English voice actor/comedian has been regularly posting prank call videos to YouTube via their channel, Ownage Pranks.

Ownage Pranks uses a handful of “characters” to place calls to various restaurants, stores, and everyday people, and the content of the conversations is either captioned or animated. Overall, the format is similar to the no-longer-running television show Crank Yankers.

To date the channel has over 3,500,000 subscribers, but recently a video posted from 2014—wherein one of the characters calls two different Japanese McDonald’s restaurants to complain about the food—has prompted a huge reaction from both Japanese and non-Japanese viewers alike.

Some commenters found the video to be quite humorous, others, however, were hugely disappointed in the video, citing that in Japan pranking (or disrupting) businesses is technically illegal, and that the video’s makers unfairly took advantage of the Japanese employees’ poor English skills.

We’ve translated some of the general reactions below:

‘So this is what a popular foreign YouTube is like?’

‘What is “poo poo”? Does it mean “unko” (Japanese word for poop)? Lol’

‘Foreigners really like discriminating against people, don’t they?’

‘I understand why people are pissed off, because Japanese people have some kind of complex when it comes to foreigners’

‘But I don’t think the guy had evil intentions or anything so what’s the big deal?’

‘This is so dumb lololol’

‘This video is funny lolol’

‘Foreigners have a good sense of humor’

‘I just noticed, but this video is over a year old!!!!’

‘That this video making fun of Japanese people has so many likes just goes to show how shitty foreigners are. When you’re in Japan use Japanese you shitheads.’

‘English people have no room to be making fun of Japanese chain stores considering how much their food sucks ^^’

Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard Japanese people slam English food, which doesn’t seem to have that great of reputation compared to cuisine from other European countries such as France and Italy. That said, it’s surprising to see a Japanese person defending McDonald’s quality after some of the company’s scandals that made headlines.

At the end of the day, considering there don’t seem to be a whole lot of foreigners wasting their time crank-calling fast food chains in Japan, it’s nice that more than a few netizens recognized that this kind of behavior can go both ways:

“There are people who get their jollies doing rude stuff like this abroad and in Japan… You should think about how embarrassing you look saying that all Japanese are like this and all foreigners are like that.”

What are your thoughts on the issue? Leave us a comment below!

Source: YouTube/Ownage Pranks
Top/feature image: YouTube/Ownage Pranks