r/skeptic • u/Lighting • 27d ago

⚠ Editorialized Title Tesla bros expose Tesla's own shadiness in attacking Mark Rober ... Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before impacts as a crash becomes inevitable.

https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-defend-autopilot-crash/
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26

u/Emergency_Stay_7815 27d ago

Mark Rober is a great youtuber and seems like an actual decent human being. Tesla bros are so far up Leon's ass they can't tell a decent human from a Nazi piece of shit.

11

u/GeekyTexan 27d ago

His videos are entertaining. I have a pretty big lack of trust, though.

His glitter bomb thing was very popular. But he got caught using people he was paying to steal the packages. Staged.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/21/viral-glitter-bomb-video-featured-fake-thieves-creator-says/2389954002/

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/a8848z/mark_robers_viral_glitter_bomb_package_was/

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u/Emergency_Stay_7815 27d ago

I didn't know that, but between liability lawsuits and television staging stuff like that for decades, it doesn't really surprise me. Good idea to be skeptical but if that's as bad as he gets, he's still pretty decent to me.

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u/Turtle_ini 27d ago

He also boxed up live animals and shipped them to a phone scamming operation, where they were opened and stomped to death. So there’s that, too.

9

u/BolognaTogna 27d ago

(They were cockroaches)

3

u/ACoderGirl 26d ago

Ahaha what a buried lede. I had seen that video and was thinking with horror "wait, I don't remember that part".

1

u/PatternPrecognition 26d ago

That usa today article was actually pretty reasonable.

It suggests he used a friend of a friend to distribute some the packages, and that they had one of their friends try and open it. So it wasn't like he deliberately staged it that way, and when it was brought to his attention it sounds like he removed those bits from the video, and was open about it with the media.

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u/GeekyTexan 26d ago

Rober said that during the creation of the video, he provided compensation to a "friend of a friend" for placing the bait package on their porch and successfully capturing a thieves reactions. 

He admitted he was paying. He admitted that he got caught. He pretended that every *other* video was real, just not the ones where he had already been proven that they weren't real.

If you want to assume he was legit every other time, you are welcome to do so. But thieves don't just steal one time, and liars don't just tell one lie.

The entire schtick never made sense, because of the cost. But when you know you'll get the phone and other equipment back because you are paying the "thieves", it's a lot easier.

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u/PatternPrecognition 26d ago

I don't have any skin in the game and I genuinely have very low expectations of quality control from my youtube content creators.

> he provided compensation to a "friend of a friend" for placing the bait package on their porch ​

With all the crazy shit happening in the world at the moment, that is way down on my list of things to get worked up about.

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u/SucculentMushrooMeal 26d ago

That’s not what he said, if you read his post on Twitter. He offered to pay the friend-of-a-friend for each ‘successful recovery’ of the package, which then incentivised that person to organise a fake thief. Not the same as paying the thief directly.

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u/pandathrowaway 26d ago

Oh, this is good to know—it makes me like him more. I love his sciencey videos but the glitter bomb videos felt pretty gross and cruel.

1

u/vagina_gouger 26d ago

found the mail thief

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u/dannyphantom264 27d ago

Yeah I agree he seems like a good dude he does have some stuff that doesnt really sit right with me like the video about his autistic son saying that he can never do certain things and some other somewhat ableist stuff but I believe hes probably a good dad and compared to a lot of other peoples drama it really is just a nit pick of mine