Kurnia Sari Aziza, Jakarta – A video posted by YouTuber Ferdian Paleka has gone viral on social media after his prank against waria or transwomen was not appreciated by netizens.
In a video uploaded on his YouTube account, Paleka along with two of his friends are seen playing a prank on transwoman in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung.
The prank involved handing out sembako (basic commodities) to transwomen. But instead of sembako, Paleka and his friends had actually put garbage and bricks into cardboard boxes of instant noodles.
They even took the bricks and garbage from a rubbish dump to put into the boxes.
"So we want to survey the waria, see whether they're still around during the fasting month", said Paleka as quoted from the video on Sunday May 3.
"We'll distribute sembako and even food which contains bricks and garbage. If there are any b****** [bencong, derogatory word for transwomen], we'll give out the boxes, if there aren't any, it means the city is safe from waria", said Paleka.
Paleka and his friends then found several transwomen on a main street. Chuckling, they alighted from a car and gave out the boxes containing the rubbish and bricks.
Meanwhile, two transwomen who thought that they were really getting food aid were visibly happy to receive the boxes, while Paleka and his two friends were still chuckling back in the car.
Paleka has asked that their dishonorable prank not be condemned. "They also weren't obeying the government, the PSBB [large-scale social restrictions], so don't you condemn us, we were only helping the government", said Paleka to the approval of his friends.
Their actions however attracted criticism because the content demeaned the trainwomen's human dignity with many netizens reporting Paleka to YouTube.
"Today, we're facing these two different type of stupidity. Remember the name Ferdian Paleka & Hayatun Jumaini... This tweet kinda reminder for us to be good, spreading love, and positivity. Please be kind to every kind and dont be an a****** #please", tweeted the owner of the account @_ikhsanrizky.
"Remember the name, Ferdian Paleka, Never forget this name. May he burn in hell", tweeted the owner of the account @strawberrychaos.
"Ferdian Paleka shud be banned from entire universe" tweeted the owner of the account @xochubs.
By Monday May 4 the content on his YouTube account had disappeared.
Quite a few other YouTube accounts however reuploaded Paleka's video prank. Through his Instagram account @ferdianpalekaa, Paleka also uploaded the story of the prank before his account disappeared.
"I personally apologies for my conduct and it... but that's a lie yeah", said Peleka.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original tweets in response to the prank were in English and not edited. The original title of the article was "Aksi YouTuber Ferdian Paleka Prank Kasih Sembako Sampah ke Waria Tuai Kecaman".]