TikTok certainly brings out the best and worst in people, and ostensibly harmless pranks sit somewhere towards the latter end of the spectrum. Leaping out from behind a door to scare a loved one, duping someone with a prank call, and otherwise humiliating people for views and likes are all par for the course.
Unsurprisingly, lines often get crossed, but there’s been one particularly strange outcome from an egg-related TikTok trend.
The prank is about as simple as they come: film yourself cooking something involving eggs with an unwitting glamorous assistant, then crack the shell on the victim’s head rather than the edge of the bowl.
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If you’re wondering what’s funny about that, you’re not alone. Nevertheless, this bottom-of-the-barrel prank has been replicated countless times by TikTokers, and for one mum it all ended in tears.
In a 2023 video, the unnamed Swedish mother carried out the prank by cracking an egg on her daughter’s head.
The 24-year-old from Helsingborg, Sweden, was later convicted of harassment by a Swedish court, with the video having been flagged to police by one of its viewers.
Apparently, the court found that she had done it for the amusement of viewers and had thus ‘humiliated’ her daughter.
The video, which unfortunately can’t be specifically shared as the mother was not named, showed the mum telling her daughter that they were going to bake a cake – a classic setup for this naff joke. The tot gets understandably excited, then the egg gets cracked on her head and she’s even more understandably upset about it.
While her mum can’t contain her laughter, the kid gets upset and tells her to stop.
A police investigation followed and it developed into a harassment case. Cecilia Andersson, the prosecutor, told Sydsvenskan: “When I saw the video, I thought: you simply don’t do that to a child. To record and humiliate the child and then broadcast it to thousands of viewers – I find that incredibly degrading, and that’s my personal opinion”.
She also told TV channel SVT: “It’s a little girl who thinks she’s going to bake an apple cake with her mom and is happy and excited about it, and then all of a sudden, she gets an egg cracked in her forehead. This is a reckless act.”
The court found the mum guilty of harassment by Helsingborg District Court, and was ordered to pay the child 20,000 SEK (£1,546).
It just goes to show: being a TikTok sheep isn’t big or clever.
Topics: Social Media, TikTok
Rachael Davis