Former NASA engineer and glitter bomb creator, Mark Rober, has admitted in an apology that some of the reactions in his viral package prank video were staged.
Rober came up with the revenge idea after his package deliveries were constantly being stolen off his porch. Over six months of development, the ex-engineer created five fake Amazon packages that would explode with a pound of glitter or fart spray once the package was opened. The invention also had phones that would record thieves’ reactions as well as pinpoint their location.
Rober has now admitted in a tweet that parts of his video were “misleading.”
I posted this as a comment response to my recent viral tweet/video but I’m posting it as a new tweet as well: pic.twitter.com/g2VHsQWh1z
— Mark Rober (@MarkRober) December 20, 2018
Rober had asked friends, even “friends of friends” if they would volunteer to open the packages and have pure reactions. He even would financially compensate them. He now knows that two of the five packages were pretend robbers sent by an acquaintance.
Rober has removed about 90 seconds of the YouTube video capturing the package thief reactions and hopes that his fans will stick by him and his content despite the mistake.
“I’m especially gutted because so much thought, time, money and effort went into building the device and I hope this doesn’t just taint the entire effort as ‘fake,'” he wrote on Twitter. “I know my credibility is sort of shot but I encourage you to look at the types of videos I’ve been making for the past 7 years.”