See this half-Japanese student reveal his prank in this surprising finale to a video series in which he documents an elaborate social experiment.


Let’s be honest. We’ve all done stupid things in our younger days just for the lulz. Personally, it’s hard not to cringe a bit thinking back on all the things I’ve done out of sheer boredom as a teenager – like that time I ate the contents of a can of yams from the 1970s I found in the crawl space of the basement at my school cafeteria. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get Botulism!

The impulse to commit random acts of mischief remains an important part of adolescence. The only difference now is that kids have all kinds of ways to easily document these inspired moments of juvenile delinquency and share them with the masses.

Take this kid for example. Over the course of a year, this high school student conducted an impressive prank in which he tricked virtually everyone he knew into believing he was a Japanese transfer student named “Happy”, who could barely speak English.

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In a meandering series of YouTube videos called “Happy’s School Days,” 16-year-old high school junior, Kei Simmons, documents this experience, which started after he transferred to a Colorado High School from Japan. In his videos, Kei explains how using this alter-ego allowed him to cross normal boundaries and do things not normally accepted in American teenage life, like address teachers by their first names, naively ask what tampons are in front of an entire class, and casually interact with “the cool kids.”

Though the first video was created just two weeks after he adopted this persona, he apparently remained committed to the prank for an entire year, and the stunt culminates in this video in which he finally reveals to his friends and teachers that this persona was just a ruse all along.

▼Check out the “reveal” below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdEX0wjB5sQ

His friends and teachers react with varying degrees of shock when he states in perfect English that he can actually speak “normally” after all. The reactions mostly seem genuine, but it’s unclear whether or not everyone believes or even cares about this somewhat puzzling act of teenage mischief. One teacher in the video seems at best indifferent, and at worst quite miffed at having been deceived by his student.

▼ Kei announces to his classmates that “Happy” was a lie all along.

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While one might choose to read deeply into this year-long prank as a kind of manipulative experiment exploring the presumptions that some Americans hold about what foreigners are like, it doesn’t seem like Kei himself thought that deeply into it. Indeed, judging from the video, it seems that most people were simply treating the new student with patience and respect, and seem equally willing to accept the “real” Kei even after his prank.

When explaining his motivations in his initial video, the student explained with typical teenage ennui that he mostly did this out of boredom, and to have some fun after a depressing year in school. It should be interesting to see what this creative kid gets up to for his next project!

Sources: Nextshark, YouTube/Kei
Featured image: YouTube/Kei
Insert images: YouTube/Kei (1, 2)