Gaten Matarazzo is only 16, but it’s time for him to grow up

I don’t watch Stranger Things, which Gaten Matarazzo stars in, so I only know him as the astonishingly annoying smartest-kid-in-the-neighborhood trying to shame everyone into getting Verizon FIOS.

But he’s apparently taking further advantage of his moment, and building his brand, with a new gig as the host of a Netflix prank series with the hilarious premise of pranking folks who are looking for work.

I grew up watching Candid Camera, a show that caught people reacting to something mildly silly – say, a talking mailbox – or something mildly frustrating – say, a kid trying to pull a t-shirt with a too-small head hole over his head. The show was mildly amusing, and not especially mean. (Okay, it was mildly mean to give those kids the tiny-head hole t-shirts.)

But the ante has been upped over the decades, and prank shows have become edgier.

I never watched the Ashton Kutcher prank show when that was a thing, but I believe the schemes were fairly elaborate. What turned into Kutcher’s show Punk’d, in which his friends were pranked, started out targeting civilians.

Originally, Ashton Kutcher and MTV were developing a program called Harassment, a hidden camera show which would feature pranks on regular people. However, a January 2002 prank involving a fake dead body at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas backfired and the couple who were targets of the prank sued Kutcher, MTV, and the hotel for $10 million. (Source: Wikipedia)

Hope they won big! Because nothing says HI-larious like a dead body.

Then there was an Irish radio prank show I can’t recall the name of.

People set their friends and family members up to get pranked, with laugh-a-minute schemes like calling a bride two days before her wedding to tell her that the reception venue was closed, or calling someone with an expensive new car to tell him that it had been totaled.

Hardee-har-har.

In all these pranked shows, the target of the prank has the choice of going along with the laugh and playing the good sport, or doing what they really want to do, which is to start raging about assholes. Some choice.

There are some prank shows that meet with my seal of approval, however. I like the ones that target politicians, and put in a call in which someone pretending to be another famous politician – say, Vladimir Putin -  makes an offer to, say, dig up some dirt on an opponent.

Evil-exposing, gotcha pranks? I’m all for them.

But mostly I think the world is a mean enough place without deliberately contributing to making it meaner.

And Prank Encounters, which Matarazzo is both host and executive produce for, sounds really mean.

Each episode of this terrifying and hilarious prank show takes two complete strangers who each think they’re starting their first day at a new job. It’s business as usual until their paths collide and these part-time jobs turn into full-time nightmares. (Source: Deadline)

Terrifying? Yes. Hilarious? Doubtful. Mean? Absolutely!

Matarazzo is just a kid. He’s only 16. And props to him for the career success he’s built for himself. I may find him annoying, but he’s clearly got his audience. And I understand that he does a lot to raise awareness about and money for a genetic disorder – cleiodocranial dysplasia – that he himself suffers from. Good for him.

But a show targeting the unemployed? Time to grow up a bit.

Maybe Gaten Matarazzo doesn’t know anyone who’s just graduated from college with $100K in debt and is staring down the face of the gig economy. Maybe he doesn’t know anyone who’s been out of the workforce for a while – struggling with addiction or mental illness, trying to get beyond a prison record. Maybe he thinks tricking someone into thinking they’ve gotten work, when there’s really no job, is just great sport. He’s only sixteen.

But are there no adults in his life – parents, agents, whatever – who might had stepped in and said “nah”?

I’m sure the schnooks on the show will be compensated for their humiliation. (At least I hope so.) Nonetheless, this is a pretty awful premise for a show.

Sorry, that’s not entertainment.

And what’s next?

Telling someone who’s been experiencing homelessness that they’ve got an apartment, only to usher them into a 10 square foot place with noisemaking all night? Telling a patient with an incurable disease that you’ve found the cure, only – ha-ha – NOT?

Years ago, I read an interview with Chuck Barris, creator of such culturally enhancing shows as The Gong Show, The Dating Game, and The Newlywed Game. In the interview, Barris speculated that, in the future, there might be ‘how low can you go’ games in which the object would be to see how little it would take for someone to do something dreadful, like rip the cane out of the hands of an old lady.

Well, Mr. Barris, I’m here to tell you – or would be here to tell you if you were still alive – that  you weren’t far off.

Not that adults aren’t perfectly capable of being mean. And it’s likely adults who are behind the plot of Prank Encounters. But if the grownups aren’t capable of being the adults in the room, I’m afraid it’s time for Gaten Matarazzzo to grow up and put an end to this bad idea.