A viral TikTok video showing Texas attorney Mike Allbee pretending that his leafblower is propelling … [+]
Have you seen that viral video of a man on a skateboard who seems to be moving thanks to a leaf blower pointed at an umbrella? The video has racked up over 2.3 million views in less than a day. But it’s completely fake.
The video, which most recently was published with the caption, “The genius of NASA,” has a lot of Twitter users asking if it really works. But you don’t need to try it out for yourself. We can confidently say it doesn’t work, because this hoax video is three years old and has already been debunked.
The video even uses Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” a tribute to another viral video in 2020, where a skateboarder named Nathan Apodaca was lip-syncing to the song while drinking from a container of Ocean Spray cranberry juice.
What’s actually going on here? The man on the skateboard is Mike Allbee, an attorney in Arlington, Texas who runs the Allbee law firm. And his video, which was filmed in 2020, was just a joke.
“After watching TikTok user 420Doggface208, Mike Allbee decided to make a spoof video that made it look like he was being propelled on his skateboard by his Echo leaf blower and an umbrella,” the Allbee law firm explained in a YouTube video.
How did Allbee pull off this joke? He doesn’t explain, but it seems pretty clear that he just worked up some momentum on his skateboard and then started up his leafblower, which doesn’t have any real impact on his movement. Allbee also published a follow-up joke video that simply plays in reverse, saying his leaf blower must’ve been “pointing the wrong way.”
Allbee’s original video on TikTok has received over 2.2 million views but was shared by people on a number of other platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, just as it’s currently being shared again on Twitter.
The internet is filled with fake viral videos, like Kamala Harris speaking giberrish, Bud Light running terse billboards, or people from the 1950s predicting the covid-19 pandemic. And while those viral videos all have political components that seek to fool people in these polarizing times, it’s kind of nice to come across a video that’s just goofy, like Allbee’s fake skateboard video.
If you don’t believe this video is fake, you’re free to try it for yourself. But the laws of physics aren’t going to allow you to make it work. If it did work, it would certainly change the world of transportation in ways we can’t even imagine.
