They probably didn’t know. And if they did it would probably be incredibly hard to prove.
Just doesn’t seem like anyone involved in any way should walk away without at least some punishment.
IMO, the prank videos are at least as bad.
* There are many people, many of whom are children, that don't understand that most of those videos are staged.
* Every so often people being pranked - especially by copycats who prank strangers in public - react violently.
I just sort of feel like there should be some sort of incentive to help ensure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. If you have a contract that explicitly says what the person is supposed to do and they don’t, then it seems like you have a good defense to me.
On the other hand if you have a contract that says something along the lines of “do something that gets 1 million views and will pay you $200,000” then I feel like you should be liable.
I really dislike the current trend of people just doing extreme stuff to try to get views. A few people have been killed, it’s kind of amazing the number isn’t higher. And I’m wary of anything that might be seen as encouraging them.
But again, there’s probably no way to actually enforce that in any kind of law.
Publicity stunts and gimmicks are nothing new, even extreme ones, it's just now it reaches the entire world instead of just that area or country, especially if the "story" is pretty much as simple as a YouTube URL and a pithy summary from a journo.
This is just natural selection at work.
I guess you could guess he was doing it for potentially more lucrative sponsorships later. But I really don't think he was thinking that far ahead. Not if he thought he was going to get away with this foolishness.