Pranks & Challenges

Search our for YouTube Pranks and Challenge channels alphabetically.

Table of Contents

Jelly

Conversations: Content Houses, Luxury Lifestyles

Jelly, real name Jelle van Vucht, is a Dutch YouTuber who combines vlogs and gaming videos. He marks his videos and channel very clearly family-friendly, and his gaming videos mostly following through on that statement, but his vlogs aren’t always good for kids.
Jelly was part of a rotating trio called Robust with varying stories on why his collaborators left. He’s been criticized for playing games that aren’t very popular anymore and his audiences quickly age out of the content, something that Jelly confirms in his reaction to SunnyV2’s “The Brutal 92% Decline of Jelly.”
His vlogs are not always family-friendly and he often boasts about his luxury lifestyle (which he has since explained were not always truthful).

Conversations: Fatphobia, Broad Comedy, Plagiarism

LankyBox (Justin “Justie” Kroma & James McArthur) are an extremely popular YouTube channel who essentially do very broad sketch comedy with the tone of an annoying kids’ show. They also have an incredible amount of merchandise available, which, much like their videos, are flashy but empty– quite literally, in the case of their mystery box. (Yes, this comes from personal experience.)
They often make jokes about how much Justin eats, and he calls himself “thicc” often, which is where the fatphobia comes into play.

Conversations: Money, Swearing, Challenges

MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) and friends do challenges like Red light, Green Light inside a game and challenge their subscribers to contests like building something in Minecraft. If they vote it the best build in its category, then MrBeast buys the actual item for the fan.
He’s also known for editing the challenges to change who wins. Use this to show children how everything they see online could be edited.
There’s shit talk and some swearing, “your mom” jokes, etc.
Read more about MrBeast and his many channels here.

Conversations: Storytelling on YouTube

Ryan Trahan shot to fame in 2022 during his month-long Penny Challenge, where he traveled from Los Angeles, California, to North Carolina so MrBeast could have a penny.
His storytelling skills through his vlogging are compelling, well done, and entertaining.

Conversations: Pranks, Clickbait

His main channel, which was renamed Shark from his original “09sharkboy,” mostly does show interesting ways to play Minecraft. When he’s by himself, he brings us through pretty entertaining hacks and teaches coding inside the game.
The problem is that every second or third video is pranking or trolling his friends, so watch those closely or make a playlist they can watch.
If I was better at Minecraft, I could see myself learning about the game from him, and I know my kids have picked up their controllers to try things out while watching Shark’s channel. He often gets into how to add coding and where to find codes to enhance your game, which I always appreciate.
His screengrabs move very quickly, and that can get annoying, but it matches his style: breakneck nerdery inside of the game.

Maybe you steer clear of LifeOfShark’s purely dumb clickbait, or allow it once in a while.
Plus, once Shark’s friends join him, his content becomes a mess. It’s probably a fun way to hang out with your friends in real life, but his friend Kevin doesn’t seem to add much value to the game except for loud exclamations and annoying facial expressions.
Take the opportunity to talk through some emotional language and get as specific about how they would label Shark and his friends’ behaviors as you can.
They sometimes caption their videos, but words are misspelled more than once in the videos I watched.

Conversations: Online Safety

PWR’s Fortnite Roster includes: Lachlan Power, Kathleen “Loserfruit” Belsten, Vindooly (Victor Ton), Mitchell Power (Chanzes), & Lucas Grzesiak (Overstrand).
Their playthroughs and challenges are much more relaxed than other popular gamers. PWR retains silly sound effects and other elements of gaming videos, but they rarely overact or overemphasize their personalities. It feels as organic as is possible when you’re streaming for an audience.
Belsten and others sometimes played with a 9-year-old, who is the friend of a PWR member’s niece. At first, it gave me pause, but looking back at their history, it seems that the minor does have adult supervision and permission. They also treat him very respectfully and act as mentors in the game.
PWR also does huge-scale hide-and-seek games that take their time and are really quite fun to watch.

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