An activist used pranks and satire to challenge dictators: he staged a fake Saudi women's car race in front of the embassy before women could drive there, then posted videos urging them to drive anyway. He got thousands of death threats and millions of views.
You pranked dictators, millions and millions of views. You are the king of committing to the bit, the GOAT of virality when it comes to insane pranks. Can you share some of these pranks?
The ones you're allowed to share? This is basically smashing together the two things that I love most, satire and humor, and fighting dictators. When I was a student at UCLA, I started a group called Students Against Dictators, and we'd throw up pictures of dictators in the middle of campus and people would get mad. And then when I was in New York, I realized You can just do stuff like the kids say today. And it bothered me that the human rights industry was just doing the same old shit, you know, putting out a press release that no one paid attention to. And I was like, we can do better. Well, I started the first annual Saudi Women's Grand Prix, a car race just for Saudi women. And it was just an idea. But then major media outlets started covering it. And I went to the Saudi embassy and some folks dressed in burqas did a car race in front of the Saudi embassy with Barbies before women were allowed to drive. And then I, you know, made videos in Arabic calling for women to drive in that issue, and I got thousands of death threats. And I just realized that, you know, this line between satire and serious could be very powerful. There's nothing as powerful as a joke.
