Student Stages Kidnapping Prank to Get out of Zoom Class and the Teacher Remains Totally Calm

Zoom classes are their own beast. I don't know about you, but I have trouble concentrating in fun Zoom calls with my friends and family members. I couldn't imagine having to sit in a Zoom class all day listening to teachers lecture.

One student couldn't imagine that either, so he took drastic measures and arranged to be "kidnapped" in the middle of class. No joke. As the teacher was talking, two hooded figures ran onto screen, grabbed the kid from his computer, and dragged him out of the room as the teacher was talking. And now, the video has gone viral on Reddit.

In the second screen from the top, you can see Tyler turning around to greet his "kidnappers." As this is happening, his teacher is talking about "moving paragraphs around." Maybe it's an English class or something.

But he can't help but stop the lesson once he and everyone else sees Tyler get dragged off by masked people. At this point, the teacher stops his lesson and then very calmly asks, "Did you guys just see Tyler get kidnapped?"

At this point, the class loses it. One girl covers her mouth to laugh. Whoever's filming also can't help but snicker. It certainly was a creative way to try to get out of class. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.

And although it was pretty clearly a prank, the teacher did consider the possibility that it might be, well, actually serious. After pausing a moment longer, he asks, "Do we need to call the police?"

Unfortunately, that's where the clip ends. Although it was pretty clearly a prank (you can see Tyler almost laugh when the "kidnappers" enter the room), we have no idea if he returned to class moments later or tried to keep up the ruse. And we have no clue if this teacher, who's clearly kind of annoyed, actually called the police. 

Although many Reddit commenters found the prank to be pretty funny, one offered a story that happened to their friend, a cautionary tale for anyone else who's considering staging a fake kidnapping. 

"My mate pulled up at a petrol station once in his van," the person wrote. "Another friend was at the cash point (ATM) so for a laugh, the two of them jumped out the van and grabbed the one at the cash point and chucked him in the back. He found it funny too.

"The next day my mate whose can it was got called into the office, sat down with the police and his boss and had to rewatch the CCTV of it all and explain what happened. It got reported and they traced back the van registration to his company. It was quite awkward apparently."

I suppose the lesson here is if you are going to stage your own kidnapping, make sure you do it away from all security cameras. And if you're going to do it during a Zoom class, be prepared for your classmates and teacher to, well, not think much of it. 

And please, consider being a little nicer to your teachers. Their job is hard enough as it is; they don't need to question whether or not they need to call the police because of their students got dragged off screen. I hope Tyler buys his teacher a nice gift for having to put up with his nonsense during a pandemic.