Buck Brief - The Viral Red Baron Prank That Completely Backfired

Buck Sexton (0:00)

So why did the Red Baron pizza employee go totally viral in this video out there? You see, this guy, it resonates with a lot of people, how he was feeling and what he's going through. Just to recap, he's at a grocery store where his job is to stock, restock frozen pizza. Now, this is not glamorous work, but it's work. It's honorable, it's honest. He's providing a service and getting paid for it. And with that money, he pays his bills. He pays his mortgage and supports his wife and four children. And so this guy represents tens of millions of American men who are in very similar circumstance. Now, this Instagram influencer guy, a prankster, asks for the time, holds his phone near walls and plays a fake Apple pay chime to claim that he just took $10. Now, he didn't actually take anything. That's the that's the gag, right? He didn't actually steal from this guy. That would be a crime. But he sounds he says he does essentially says, oh, I just stole $10 from you. And the whole gag is supposed to be, well, then the guy flips out and you see his angry reaction. And then, you know, you put that online and he looks like a fool and the whole thing. OK, this guy wasn't having it. This individual, Walt Walter, Zerod, he had decided, you know, man, I'm here an hour late. I want to be with my kids. I can't get home on time because I have to do this job. So this is something that I just don't want to deal with right now. And you're a punk and you're being disrespectful by doing this. And it's not something that I'm just going to let pass it. Look, the guy, you know, he gets really emotional about it. Now, I think that the reason this resonated so much with so many people is because there is a feeling out there, especially in the social media era that we're in, where first of all, people are reckless with other individuals in public on a regular basis. There is a decline in manners. There is a decline in respect and in courtesy for other people out there. And that's something that builds up over time and creates really volatile situations. So I really think that this should be addressed by, well, America, Americans more broadly. We need to not be in this just constantly rude mindset, or get what I need, go through all these different employees and all these places. Don't say hi, don't say thank you, don't hold the door for people, all this stuff.

So that's one part of it, is I just think there's a coarsening within the culture of how we interact with each other in public. And I think everyone's also very much in their own worlds. They're on their cell phones, they're on speaker, they're on FaceTime. And it's like nobody else exists. And this is a really gross habit. I mean, this is something that people should, first of all, they shouldn't do any of these things. I think speaking on your speaker phone in public, in a place, I'm not saying in a public park where no one's around you, but speaking in a restaurant, in a cafe, where people don't have to, or have no choice but to listen to you. They can't get away. I think that's really disrespectful. But I think the bigger thing here for the Red Baron pizza guy in this video, Walter Zerot, is that we as a country are constantly elevating the absolute financial, cultural, political elite. We are always seeing in the news, people who are very powerful and or very rich. We are in a culture that still worships celebrity, including like actors and stuff, but just celebrity in general, far too much. We elevate that far beyond where it should go.

And there's really not enough respect paid to just the working man and the working woman. But today we're really talking about the working man, because actually working women, there are people that are out there talking about how hard it is for them, right? There are feminist movements that will talk about women in the workplace, but the average working man in America, of any race, of any creed or color, who's doing the average man job, doesn't get a lot of respect in day to day life, which should change, and doesn't get a lot of respect, certainly in social media and in the broader culture.

And it would be a nice thing if somebody, I'm sure there are some people who do stuff like this, but show me videos of a guy who walks around and sees somebody doing a good job, whether it's doing landscaping or carpentry somewhere, or roofing, or whatever it may be.