This Red Dead TikTok Might Not Be What It Seems
A TikTok user by the name of Yuhboi has racked up almost 4 million likes making videos of them killing racist players in "Red Dead Online," but the videos might be staged. As reported by Kotaku, Yuhboi has multiple videos where they encounter a group of what appears to be other players, dressed in all white with pointed white hats, an outfit meant to give the appearance of a KKK member. Yuhboi then kills all of these players in some cinematic way, winning tons of likes — because it's hard not to enjoy the idea of toxic players getting clowned on.
But Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku thinks that these videos are staged, based on his own knowledge of "Red Dead Online." While there have been documented cases of trolls using KKK imagery in the online mode and cases of players harassing Black characters, Yuhboi is "finding" these groups with an alarming frequency. As Zwiezen points out, even dedicated players with hundreds of hours in the game may only find these groups of KKK-styled players once or twice. Yuhboi finds these groups often enough to make a dedicated TikTok series out of it, which has led to other "Red Dead Online" experts weighing in on the validity of the videos.
Staged videos?
It seems likely that the apparent players Yuhboi hunts are modded NPCs, based on the frequency with which they find them and their behavior. For example, in part 16 of the series, Yuhboi finds a group of these white-clad figures at the top of a hill, with one leading what appears to be a meeting. The group is positioned perfectly for Yuhboi's explosive, sending them flying off the cliff to their deaths. None of the supposed players react to Yuhboi in any way, making it look like these are either staged NPCs or people Yuhboi recruited to participate in these videos.
"I don't want to say it's staged, but something doesn't feel totally right about it all," a representative from Red Dead Online News told Kotaku. The representative was one of the players that participated in the infamous "Red Dead Online" clown protest, so they know a thing or two about manipulating the game to send a message. "Maybe I'm being cynical, but it just seems like a bit of a coincidence [that] someone with a history of posting ['Red Dead Online'] videos just happens to bump into a racist posse so often," the representative said.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if these videos are staged. They are well edited and fun to watch, meaning most people who come across them on Tiktok probably don't care if they are real. Who knows, maybe Yuhboi is even improving their own wellbeing, since playing "Red Dead Redemption 2" has its own real-life benefits.