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YouTube prank could be cause of Dulles Town Center shooting

A prank being recorded for YouTube could be the cause of the shooting over the weekend at Dulles Town Center. The victim’s father says his son is a YouTube influencer known for recording comical escapades at malls. FOX 5’s Tisha Lewis has new details regarding the shooting at the mall.

STERLING, Va. – A prank being recorded for YouTube could be the cause of a shooting over the weekend inside a Virginia mall food court.

The victim’s father says his son, 21-year-old Tanner Cook, is a YouTube influencer known for recording comical escapades at malls. 

His father says he was recording a prank Sunday for YouTube, involving Google’s translate feature, when 31-year-old Alan Colie became offended and reportedly shot him in the abdomen. Cook remained hospitalized Tuesday. 

“He has a YouTube channel, and he goes to malls, and he tries to have fun and do goofy stuff and try to get people to laugh to watch his videos,” Jeremy Cook said. “This guy wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t having a fun time, and decided to shoot my son because he was offended. It’s too bad people today seem to take getting offended too far.”

Tanner Cook apparently moved to Virginia a couple of months ago to pursue his dream of being a YouTube influencer. He’s filmed several pranks on the account Classified Goons, which currently has over 39,000 subscribers. 

Colie made his first court appearance Monday and was denied bond. He’s facing several felony charges, including aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and discharging a firearm within a building. 

Alan Colie, 31, of Leesburg, VA (Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office)

Investigators say they have Tanner Cook’s cellphone – it’s possible the shooting was recorded. 

Colie is due back in court early next month. He was a Door Dash delivery driver before the shooting. 

The company says they are absolutely outraged by Colie’s actions, and he’s been permanently banned from the platform.

Many funny moments that occur in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves may seem like regular, run-of-the-mill jokes, however, they typically have a deeper meaning associated with Dungeons & Dragons, including the intellect devourer joke. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a 2023 film based on the iconic tabletop roleplay game Dungeons & Dragons. The film follows a fantastical quest in which a man attempts to rescue his daughter with the help of his ragtag group of friends.

In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Xenk Yandar leads the group, Edgin, Holga, Simon, and Doric into the Underdark. Early into their exploration, they come across creatures called intellect devourers which are essentially walking brains that attack those with high intelligence. Xenk warns the group to be still and that the creatures will come for whoever is smartest. In a hilarious gag, the intellect devourers completely ignore the group, leaving them all wondering how dumb they really are. This joke is funny but also points audiences toward an important piece of D&D lore.

The Real Reason Honor Among Thieves’ Intellect Devourers Didn’t Attack The Group

The truth behind why the intellect devourers avoided the group in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is because each character is part of a class that has low intelligence. In Dungeons & Dragons each player creates a character and that character must choose a class. Classes include druid, cleric, wizard, rogue, and more. These classes determine your character’s strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. In this case, each member of the group is a class that generally has low intelligence which they make up for with other strong powers in Honor Among Thieves.

Though it isn’t made directly clear in the film, Edgin is a bard, Holga is a barbarian, Simon is a sorcerer, Doric is a druid, and Xenk is a paladin. For the most part, their strengths lie in charisma, strength, and wisdom rather than intelligence. Therefore, it makes sense that the intellect devourer would not attack the group because they naturally do not have high intelligence among them. So, while being a funny gag for all viewers, those familiar with D&D can see the nuance and sense within the joke that connects it firmly to the game.

Edgin’s Low Intelligence Might Explain Why He Doesn’t Use Magic

It is likely that Edgin’s low intelligence is an indicator of why he doesn’t use magic throughout Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. In the first two editions of Dungeons & Dragons, a bard’s intelligence determined whether they could cast spells or not. It could be that the film pulled from this idea, giving Edgin particularly low intelligence, so he is unable to cast spells throughout the film. Perhaps giving the group more magic seemed like it could give them a better chance of winning, therefore they removed Edgin’s magic entirely.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has many stand-out moments and performances, but scenes that can be appreciated by general audiences and D&D fans alike are some of the most special. The intellect devourer scene is a particularly hilarious part of the film, and though it seems small, it actually speaks to a big part of Dungeons & Dragons. Overall, this makes Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves a thoroughly enjoyable and knowledgeable film.

When Alex Jones picked up a call from Tucker Carlson’s number on Wednesday night, the conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder had what he would later call “one of the most bizarre” events of his life. “I was thinking we could do a show together where we’re topless and we suck each others’ nipples and sort of play with them a bit,” Carlson’s voice said. “It would be a comment on gender roles, sort of a funny parody thing.” While the conservative host has said some pretty wild things on his show before he was unceremoniously ousted from Fox, it wasn’t Carlson on the other end of the line. It was an AI spoof call. Comedian Chris James, the brain behind the prank call, tells Rolling Stone he came up with the idea while sitting on the toilet. 

“My channel is basically a reaction to the online world becoming just so overwhelmingly bad,” James says. “So I’m seeing all of this stuff that is constantly happening, and how it’s making everybody mad and feeling hopeless. And I just thought it would be nice to try to bring some humor in this situation where people can at least look at it and have a bit of a laugh.” 

James, who goes by Prank Stallone on Twitter, released the recording of the call on Monday on his channel Not Even a Show. But this isn’t the first time he’s made himself the target of conservative rage. Since 2018, the Canadian comic has clowned some of the biggest names in right-wing media with prank calls, including Ben Shapiro, Rush Limbaugh, and Laura Ingrahm. But now, his most recent trick — using an AI program to convince Jones that Carlson called and suggested a show involving their nipples — has the Infowars host calling for James’ arrest. 

James announced he had pulled the prank on May 3 on his Twitter account. “Okay so let’s say someone has Tucker Carlson’s cell number, and also Alex Jones’ cell phone number, and also an AI Tucker Carlson voice,” he wrote in a tweet that’s been liked over 55,000 times. “They could IN THEORY call Alex Jones and pretend to be Tucker, and have a full conversation with him. Anyways I just did that.” But James tells Rolling Stone that while he thought the prank call would be funny, he had no idea it would work so well. 

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“I’ve called Alex Jones before and he tends to answer his phone,” James said. “I put Tucker Carlson’s number in, but in my head, I thought it was just going to show up as a bunch of numbers. I was so ill-prepared for it because I assumed he would just hang up. But Jones engaged with it in the beginning as if it was a real conversation, even though it was very weird stuff the Tucker AI was saying.”

During a clip of the call, Jones can be heard talking back to Carlson’s voice saying, “Well, you gotta do it at InfoWars.com” before adding “What’s going on man? Well, it does sound like you but the AI is so good now, you don’t usually talk like that.” Jones has been public about his years-long relationship with Carlson, even after Carlson was ousted from his position as host at Fox News. And during his Thursday and Friday shows, Jones not only mentioned the prank call several times but devoted a 30-minute segment to it — including inviting James on the show several times. 

“He thinks it’s funny to call up Alex Jones and say ‘suck my titties,” Jones said during his Thursday broadcast. “He stole Tucker Carlson’s identity. He faked his number. He faked his voice. He called me and made sexual threats, basically. And he just thinks that’s funny. Because in his sociopathic world, I don’t exist. Alex Jones is fair game for any attacks. So is Tucker Carlson. We’re gonna find out who you’re working with, buddy.”

After James refused to go on Infowars, Jones doubled down on the rhetoric both on screen and off, calling for the comedian to be arrested and saying he would be filing a criminal complaint. “Tucker Carlson’s lawyers are involved, and what you did, we believe is a crime, so even though you think you are safe up in Canada, you are going to get arrested for what you did yesterday,” Jones said. “So keep laughing, you little arrogant person.”

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“I think it made him angry that I wasn’t willing to come on his show,” James said. “At that point, that’s when he started in with, ‘This guy needs to be arrested’ and putting up my photo and my Twitter account and really coming after me. But at the end of the day, he’s just a fucking showman who’s trying to make this into a big thing.” Neither Jones nor representatives immediately responded to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

While James mostly does his comedy for a laugh, he does pick his targets for a reason. Mainly, because of the harmful rhetoric they peddle. The Canadian comedian says that you don’t have to be American to understand the real-world harm conservative talking points have on marginalized groups. 

“I think you would be wrong not to be a little bit freaked out by the level of discourse and how it’s sort of boiling over,” James says. “I have a lot of people who are trans who watch my channel and the overwhelming feeling you get from them is this is a really scary time to be a trans person. “

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Even though hearing Jones say the words “suck my titties” live on Infowars has been amusing, the reach of the prank hasn’t been all laughs. James says that since Jones spoke about his prank, his Twitter DMs have been flooded with hateful and threatening messages. The encounter, and subsequent media attention, didn’t scare James enough to keep the video of the call to himself, but it does make him think about what life would be like without making himself such an open target. 

“It’s not super fun to have people making threats, saying they’re gonna come find you and kill you and eat your flesh. It’s definitely, definitely not fun. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” James says. “I need to let the dust settle and see how I feel after that. It’s all very acute right now. There’s definitely a part of me that says like, hey, you know, it’d be fun to like work at a library. You know what I mean? But I’m not gonna make any rash decisions right now.”