Invisible Family Member Prank

About

The Invisible Family Member Prank is a social game in which people stage a magic act to convince a friend or family that they have been turned invisible by pretending that they cannot see them.

Origin

On August 24th, 2018, Netflix released a video clip from the series Magic for Humans. In the clip, host Justin Willman tells a crowd of people to pretend that the participant in the trick is invisible after a blanket is placed upon him. The clip (shown below) received more than 4.1 million views in three weeks.

Spread

Four days later, On August 28th, Twitter ^[1] @smangie831 tweeted a recreation of the prank. They tweeted, "So we saw this challenge on twitter how this family told there brother he disappeared and we wanted to try it out on my little cousin,he got so scared 😂😂😂😂😂." Within two weeks, the video (shown below) received more than 81,000 retweets, 177,000 likes and 3.7 million views.

Several days later, on September 5th, Twitter^[2] user @yulissac48 tweeted a variation with the caption, "If youre having a bad day, you should definitely open this😂🤦🏼‍♀️." The tweet (shown below) received more than 358,000 retweets, 676,000 likes and 14 million views in five days.

The following day, Twitter^[3] user @DavidDobrik tweeted a video of the prank. The post (shown below) received more than 287,000 retweets, 640,000 likes and 15 million views in four days.

Several media outlets reported on the popularity of the prank, including The Daily Dot, ^[4] Hot Friday Talks^[5] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References