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The endless runner games have come to real life. Last month, a TikToker going by the handle Swhileyy ran through the Scientology building in Los Angeles, California, to see how far he could get before a member of the church could stop him. That has created a trend of people replicating the run, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, Swhileyy would really like them to stop.<\/p>\n
Swhileyy\u2019s original run, which he filmed on a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, was posted on TikTok on March 31st, and managed to amass more than 90 million views. It resulted in another creator, isdurpyy, to replicate it, per THR. And since then, the copycats have been cropping up all over. A group of teens reportedly made their own run through the Scientology building with masks on and air horns in hand. Another run at the Scientology church in Palm Springs, Florida resulted in an arrest because one of the runners shot out one of the building\u2019s windows with a BB gun.<\/p>\n
Swhileyy apparently doesn\u2019t think those guys are doing it right\u2014and shouldn\u2019t be doing it at all. He told The Hollywood Reporter, \u201cI never once in any video or any comment section or anywhere promoted the idea of running through there or beating my record.\u201d Which is\u2026 technically true, but when you post a video labeled as the \u201cDeepest recorded Scientology run,\u201d it does make it sound like it\u2019s a thing.<\/p>\n
It seems pretty clear that this thing just broke containment in a way that Swhileyy, who is 18 years old, wasn\u2019t prepared for. Now he\u2019s doing a lot of work to differentiate himself from his copycats. He said of the copycats, \u201cThey should not have done that shit,\u201d and called his own video a \u201cone-off\u201d that was not designed to target Scientology\u2014though he also said in the same conversation that after he made a different video about the church, \u201cFrom there on out, I pretty much knew that Scientology was like a free gateway to a lot of views.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swhileyy has reportedly not been contacted either by Scientology nor by the police, though the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an investigation into the trend, according to KTLA. But from the way the burgeoning influencer talked about the stunt throughout the interview, you\u2019d be forgiven for wondering if he got a call from Tom Cruise telling him to call off the copycats. Really, this whole situation seems like it can just be chalked up to some kid doing something dumb, and it got out of hand. It\u2019s hard to suggest that Swhileyy should be held responsible for the trend hoppers on his coattails.<\/p>\n
That said, his other content is not exactly commendable. He mostly does prank videos where he makes other people\u2019s lives kinda miserable while filming them on smart glasses. He spends a lot of time exploiting people on Skid Row, whom he typically refers to as \u201ctweakers,\u201d for views. With the Scientology gag, he at least picked a target for which most people won\u2019t express much sympathy. And he\u2019s a kid, so he\u2019s got plenty of time to grow out of this.<\/p>\n
But man, we\u2019ve really created some perverse incentives for the youth. Just look at how he responded to THR asking if he was interested in acting: \u201cIt\u2019s just not very realistic for me. There\u2019s other things I could spend my time on to get a better ROI.\u201d What did we do to make 18-year-olds worry about return on investment? We\u2019ve managed to create a permission structure for acting like a shithead because you can monetize it. It\u2019s hard to blame the Swhileyys of the world for capitalizing, but it\u2019s clearly not great that violating the social contract can be so lucrative.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n