Overview

Sebastian Bails' Military Videos refers to a series of videos published by popular TikToker Sebastian Bails on both YouTube and TikTok in July 2020 in which he pretends to join the United States Army. The videos caused a backlash on YouTube, TikTok and Twitter for trivializing joining the military.

Background

On July 19th, 2020, Sebastian Bails uploaded the YouTube video "Joining the Army PRANK on Girlfriend! We Both Cried" which garnered over 340,600 views, 17,000 dislikes and 9,500 likes in three days (shown below). In the video, he dresses in an army uniform costume and tells his girlfriend that he is joining the military.

That same day, Sebastian Bails uploaded a TikTok video promoting his YouTube video and added the caption, "finally revealing a secret I’ve been hiding… I’m joining the military and leaving this whole life behind" (shown below). The video gained over 585,300 likes in three days.

That day, he also uploaded a TikTok video which has since been deleted featuring him in the uniform costume pretending to leave as sad music plays. Twitter user @LadyRedCos reuploaded the video to Twitter (shown below).

Developments

On July 20th, 2020, Twitter user @LadyRedCos^[1] spoke out against Bails by tweeting, "Report @SebastianBails for Solen Valor. Get this guy fucking deleted off of social media" (shown below, left). The tweet received over 80 likes in two days. That same day, The Instagram^[2] account tiktokroom shared a screenshot of a message they received from Bails and captioned it, "#sebastianbails steps into tiktokroom to say he meant no disrespect with his tiktok towards people in the military. He adds that the video shouldn’t be taken negatively and says that if its so bad to wear this costume why do stores sell it and why do actors get paid to be in the army for movies" (shown below, right). The post acquired over 71,200 likes in two days.

Over the next day, TikTokers began dueting Bail's military videos and speaking out against him. For example, TikToker daniel_snyder posted a duet and added the hashtags #pieceofgarbage and #cancelsebastianbails (shown below).

That same day, Sully Gauthier started a Change.org^[3] petition called, "Draft Sebastian Bails to the US Army" which has gained over 6,400 signatures in a day (shown below). The petition description reads, "Because Sebastian Bails thinks it’s ok to fake about going into the army and publicly announce that he is going into the army but he is not I think we as a movement should get him drafted into the army." Dexerto^[4] published an article on the controversy.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References