Vancouver artist's viral hot dog tattoo prank sparks controversy (VIDEO)
A series of viral videos garnered international media attention and caused a storm of vitriol aimed at one Vancouver artist.
Daily Hive spoke with Rad Carney, a tattoo artist at Vancouver’s busiest tattoo shop in Vancouver. His recent viral videos have sparked a controversy about the hypocrisy that everyone deserves bodily autonomy to do what they want. Still, also, they shouldn’t get a hot dog face tattoo.
He posted a video to social media on November 24, showing him pretending to give a hot dog cross forehead tattoo to a “client.”
“My clients are dedicated to hot dogs,” read the post. The tattoo shown in the video is fake ā but he fooled a lot of people. And they sounded off in Rad’s comment section.
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After posting that video, it garnered a huge response. He then posted a second video of the same “client” getting a corn dog forehead tattoo intended to prove that it was all a prank, but most people didn’t get it. Mostly, people were outraged.
Comments on Rad Carney’s videos/Instagram
“You should be arrested for this,” wrote one commenter. “The artist should be ashamed,” wrote another. But Carney says he’d do it again.
“I was intentionally letting it build up to maximum outrage before I revealed the truth because I saw a society acting so poorly,” said Carney.Ā “Once they found out, they were angry over nothing…it was rough for about 10 days, and then I felt like I was getting cancelled basically,” said Carney.
Then, he released a written statement confirming that the tattoo was fake.
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“I think the big lesson was not to believe everything you see on the internet,” said Carney.
“Also, it’s hypocritical that there are dominant narratives these days, which I agree with, that people have complete autonomy over their own bodies and should be able to do what they want.”
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“And then yet somehow this tattoo would send…those same people flipping the opposite direction, saying ‘no, you shouldn’t allow someone to get that tattoo… you have a responsibility to help people make better decisions… and so it pointed out that hypocrisy.
What do you think? Should people get to live their lives, hot dog forehead tattoos and all?