The video concept is simple enough.
A young person (presumably a student) encourages his or her parent to sit beside them so they can be filmed appealing for a scholarship.
“We should make this convincing,” the parent is told.
Then the camera rolls, the appeal starts, as the would-be scholar tell sordid tales of his/her parent’s struggle to make ends meet. A few tears are shed, all that’s missing is violin music.
Then the punchline.
Would-be scholar reveals something embarrassing, even sometimes outright criminal behavior that parent has to resort to just to keep things going.
Mayhem ensues.
Scholarship pranks is the new trend in social media right now.
As mentioned earlier, its high concept seems pretty low-brow: would-be scholar creates video to convince powers-that-be that s/he needs scholarship. And what better way to get one than resort to emotional appeal, with said emotional appeal going on an entirely unpredictable if not dark twist.
“My lola had to resort to selling drugs; that’s how hard things have become,” one potential “scholar” claims.
“My mother is forced to pimp women just to earn,” says another.
“My father is now a drug dealer, and he is wanted by the police,” still another says.
We are supposed to laugh at this point as the (presumably) oblivious parent/guardian expresses outrage at the apparent slander.
Other videos have a different trajectory.
One video has a scholar telling the audience that her mother has a cleft palate (ngongo) and has difficulty speaking.
Then she exhorts her mother to say something, so the mother has to mimic the way people with cleft palates speak.
We are supposed to laugh at this point, you know because people with cleft palates are funny (or so the video implies).
These videos have gone the way of the couple eating prank (remember those flash in the pans?).
One vid has reached over two million views, which means that there’s an audience for this type of content.
Most vids have a dark twisted humor bordering on the politically incorrect (are we supposed to laugh at persons with disability or when poor people resort to prostitution or selling drugs?).
We can only guess what the fickle audience wants.
But as of the moment, it’s scholarship pranks.