Jimmy Kimmel took a well-earned victory lap the night after revealing the viral YouTube Video “Worst Twerk Fail EVER – Girl Catches Fire” was a hoax video he’d made with a stuntwoman named Daphne. YouTube’s video of Kimmel’s reveal was up to nearly 7 million views in less than 24 hours — catching up to the 10.8 million views the hoax video had clocked, but it’s been up for about a week. “It was kind of a fun day today. There was a lot of excitement around our office today,” Kimmel said at the top of his ABC late-night show last night. “Those of you who saw the show last night know we pulled a prank on a lot of people. We made a video of a girl twerking and what appeared to be accidentally setting herself on fire. And we posted that video to a private account on YouTube and, on its own, it took off…it ran on hundreds of news stations – it was the Milli Vanilli of YouTube videos. But the funny thing is, after all the news channels embarrassed themselves by running a bogus video — today, they ran it again to announce that it wasn’t real.”
Cut to video of some of those “news channels”:
– It’s all BS – Jimmy Kimmel did it! — Whoopi Goldberg, ABC’s The View
– Jimmy Kimmel was behind it. — Lara Spencer, ABC’s Good Morning America
– James Kimmel! — Billy Bush, syndicated Access Hollywood
– We were all duped by Jimmy Kimmel! — some HLN talking head
– It was so realistic and unbelievable! – Hota Kotb, NBC’s Today
– Damn you Kimmel! – Chris Cuomo, CNN’s New Day
– Well played, Jimmy Kimmel! – ABC’s The Chew cast
“Some people were actually upset it wasn’t real. I’m sorry the girl in yoga pants didn’t suffer third-degree burns,” Kimmel cheap-shotted. “Some people say they now won’t believe anything anymore. But let me say this — just because we faked this particular video doesn’t mean everything on the Internet is fake. Porn is still real.”
