I had never heard of the “trickster” Rick Lax. But an awful lot of people have. A video on one of his Facebook pages, entitled “How to get your girlfriend to put her phone down,” has an astounding 246m views. Apparently the video was made by a prankster pal of his named Ryan Hamilton, whose YouTube channel is at Hammy TV.
In six scenarios, Hammy’s girlfriend is on her phone – and he sneaks up to blast her with an air horn. Hilarity ensues.
Last year, my teenage daughter was blasted with an air horn to get her to put her phone down. She is now in pain every second of every day.
Here’s how Cindy tells the story: dinner was an hour away. Cindy was at her friend’s house, sitting alone at the kitchen table, chatting on her phone.
Her friend’s ex-stepfather entered the kitchen for a beer.
Her friend and her friend’s sister entered the room; the stepfather told them to leave. They did, giggling. Cindy wasn’t paying attention, because she didn’t know her life was about to be ruined.
The stepfather told her, twice, to hang up. As she did, he blasted the air horn at her head.
The next day, Cindy didn’t feel well, so she texted me from her English class. I took her home. She was never able to return to school. She was in eighth grade.
We made the rounds of doctors, none of whom had heard of ear pain caused by acoustic trauma. We saw eight types of specialists who were either stumped or thought a little Tylenol would do.
By the time Cindy received a formal diagnosis, we had learned about hyperacusis on the internet, and the news wasn’t good.
In truth, at the time, blasting an air horn at a child just seemed rude and dumb. We didn’t have any idea it could cause catastrophic injuries.
In most cases, too much noise causes hearing loss. In rare cases like Cindy’s, it causes the opposite – hyperacusis, or noise-induced pain. Noise is too loud for her, not too soft.
Cindy has burning pain in her ears all the time. With all noise louder than ordinary conversation, she feels like she is being stabbed in the ear. Her ears ring.
She looks perfectly healthy and normal, and yet everyday noises are injurious to her, as if she were allergic to light or air. Her condition is something modern medical science knows little about.
I read the comments on the air horn video to find so many people lol-ing and lmao-ing at this clever prank that they find so funny. I googled my daughter’s name, and now I am getting online ads for air horns. I feel helpless. It’s hard to see Cindy like this.
Social media channels have a responsibility not to allow content that encourages violence against others. A friend flagged the air horn video on Facebook, but the autoreply said: “It doesn’t go against one of our specific Community Standards.” Flagging some air horn videos on YouTube didn’t even rate an autoreply.
Last year, a YouTube prankster, an F-list celebrity named Jake Paul, was sued for wrecking someone’s ears with an air horn. He is the brother of Logan Paul, whom YouTube is now reluctantly censuring for repugnant content.
YouTube and Facebook recently removed Tide Pod challenge videos so as not to encourage dangerous stunts. The Tide Pod challenge injures yourself, whereas an air horn prank injures someone else. I hope that the likes of YouTube and Facebook respond to the danger these videos pose.
Up until then, let’s not laugh at pranksters who blast each other with air horns for fun and profit. Maybe they themselves will end up with hearing loss, or tinnitus, or intractable ear pain where noise feels like a knife to the eardrum. Or, even worse, they may cause yet another person to have their hearing destroyed forever. Maybe then it will be time to stop laughing.
- Laurie Redmond and her daughter, Cindy, live in Wilmington, Delaware
