YouTubers Cole and Sav pranked their daughter by pretending to disown their puppy

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YouTubers Cole and Sav pranked their daughter by pretending to disown their puppy

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YouTubers Cole and Sav LaBrant are in post-April Fools' Day hot water after playing a particularly harsh prank on Savannah's daughter Everleigh.

In a video uploaded on Monday, the parents inform Everleigh that they're getting rid of their pet Pomeranian, Carl. Everleigh, who loves Carl — obviously, because she's six and also look at him — is devastated.

"Basically, we're giving Carl away to someone else because we feel like we can't take good enough care of him at our house," Sav tells the camera.  "We feel like we're always gone, we're always filming, we're out and about or at dance competitions all day, and we're always just busy doing stuff."

Everleigh spends much of the monologue nestled into the couch cushions, crying.

They also tell Everleigh that she gets to choose who adopts Carl, which is a weird amount of pressure to put on a six-year-old. "Who would you want to give Carl away to, Ev?" Cole says. Everleigh, who still staring blankly into the middle distance, shrugs.

At the end of her monologue, Sav tells Everleigh that it's all an April Fools' joke. Everleigh does not laugh. 

"She's so mad," Cole says.

In the last portion of the video, Everleigh gets a bit of a revenge plot — she puts some mustard on some ice cream and her dad eats it. Still, a lot of viewers found the Carl prank overly cruel. 

people who do this stuff need to get on twitter to work out their casual cruelty impulses instead of inflicting on their kids https://t.co/idzUMyRW8d

— elizabeth bruenig (@ebruenig) April 2, 2019

Turning your life into a performance for online absolutely melts brains

— Marriage Material (@InternetHippo) April 2, 2019

Cole and Sav played a prank on Everleigh and made her think they were getting rid of Carl and they kept it going for so long and she was crying the whole time ?

— leighton (@brinkleykersey) April 2, 2019

The prank is certainly... a lot. Cole asks Everleigh "what's wrong" several times, prompting her to explain her sadness to the camera. And citing Everleigh's dance competitions as one of the reasons she can't have her dog anymore is, by virtue of common sense, not the kind of thing you should tell a child.

This isn't the first time the couple has uploaded a questionable video. In August, they were widely criticized for implying they had to evacuate during the California wildfires, even though their area was never technically evacuated.

And their popularity on YouTube raises questions about videos featuring children. In February, YouTube disabled comments on videos featuring minors (with a few exceptions). In theory, this should protect Everleigh somewhat. But it's worth thinking about the ethics of broadcasting a six-year-old's life — including her moments of emotional injury — to a channel with almost 9 million followers. When Everleigh is an adult, what will she think of all this?

At the time of writing, the video had about 1.6 million views. We've reached out to Cole and Sav and will update if we hear back.

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April 2, 2019 at 12:51PM