SoFloAntonio

About

SoFloAntonio (real name Antonio Lievano) is an Internet comedian and video blogger best known for producing a series of prank videos that have gone viral on YouTube, which range from publicly staged hidden camera stunts to flirtatious social experiments that border on pick up artistry and harassment.

Online History

Lievano created his first YouTube channel during the summer of 2011, although he didn't rise to prominence until November 2011 when he launched his YouTube prank channel MW3Stream. From the beginning, Lievano sought to build his base audience by selectively re-posting videos that other original content creators had produced with their permission, which proved to be a successful strategy when his following jumped from 10,000 to 150,000 subscribers over a one-year period between 2012 and 2013. At the peak of his popularity, Lievano gained an average of nearly 600 subscribers per day. As of February 2016, his channel MW3Stream commands roughly 900,000 subscribers.

"Magic Card Trick" Kissing Pranks

On November 11th, 2013, Lievano launched his second YouTube channel, SoFloAntonio, with a kissing prank reaction video titled "Kissing Prank – Magic Card Tricks" in which the vlogger approaches various groups of young, attractive-looking women on college campuses and asks them to participate in a magic card trick (shown below). The video went on to garner more than half a million views over the course of the next two years.^[3][4][5] From there, Lievano continued to produce and release a series of prank and social experiment videos, many of which are centered around his interactions with strangers in public.

Online Presence

As of November 2015, Antonio currently has over 3 million likes on his Facebook^[5] page which was created in March 2014. His Twitter page, @SoFloAntoino,^[6] currently has over 55,000 followers and his Instagram account^[7] has over 155,000 followers.

YouTube Channel

As of November 2015, Lievano's main YouTube channel, SoFloAntonio,^[1] has more than 550,000 subscribers and 56 videos with over 78 million views. He also maintains three other YouTube channels which are SoFloComedy,^[2] SoFloPranks,^[3] and SoFloAntonioVlogs.^[4] His SoFloComedy channel currently has 1.8 million subscribers and SoFloPranks has over 850,000 subscribers, making both more successful than his original channel. On average, Lievano publishes three to four videos per day on his MW3Stream YouTube channel and roughly one video per week on his SoFloAntonio channel. As of February 2016, his channel MW3Stream stands at roughly 900,000 subscribers.

Channel Suspension

On January 9th, 2016, his main Youtube channel SoFloAntonio and his secondary channel SoFloComedy were suspended on the grounds of multiple terms-of-service violations.^[8] However, all but one of his channels, SoFloPranks^[9], were promptly reinstated on the next day.

Reputation

Many of his pranks appear to involve unsuspecting bystanders, which have resulted in unwanted public attention to the victims of the pranks in question. A good amount of his content revolves around picking up girls and convincing them to do various intimate or romantic acts in public or "pranking" them. Despite the popularity of some of the original video content he has produced, Lievano's success in audience development has been often attributed to his notorious habit of freebooting, or the practice of downloading copyrighted original content and re-uploading it elsewhere without the creator’s explicit consent, and the vlogger himself has been frequently accused of repackaging or stealing original content produced by third parties to gain viewership on his channels. In response to these criticisms, Lievano has tried to defend his practice by presenting himself as a curator of third-party content submitted by his followers, though many of his videos lack proper citation of credit to the original authors.

Search Interest

External References