TikToker stages own death and appears at funeral
David Baerten, a 45-year-old TikToker from Belgium, shocked his friends and family by attending his own funeral. According to Delfi, the blogger, also known as Ragnar le Fu, attempted to convey a lesson to his loved ones about the importance of maintaining contact. Apparently, he believed that pretending to be dead would be a good way to do so.
Baerten's wife and children helped him bring this idea to life. "Rest in peace, Dad. I will never stop thinking about you," wrote one of his daughters on TikTok before the funeral. "Why is life so unfair? Why did it have to be you? Soon, you will become a grandfather, and there is a whole life ahead. I love you! We all love you! We will never forget you."
The TikToker, whose account has over 165,000 followers, later staged a grand "resurrection" by arriving at his own funeral in a helicopter.
Many people criticized the prank as cruel, especially after the TikTok video went viral, and the TikToker himself received significant backlash. One user called it "unforgivable," while another questioned why he thought it was a good idea in the first place. Another follower wrote, "Boycott him; he doesn't deserve anything more."
Here are some comments from other TikTokers:
"This should be banned, and it should be the end of his career," wrote one user.
"This is an idiotic show. If he wanted to become famous, he should have done something else," pointed out another user.
However, Baerten explained to journalists why he took such action, and it seems that the negative reactions did not affect him.
"What I see in my family hurts me. I am never invited anywhere. Nobody sees me. We have all grown apart. I felt undervalued. So, I intended to give them a life lesson and show that you shouldn't wait until someone dies to meet them," he said.
As previously reported by The Gaze, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a law banning the popular social video platform TikTok. Montana became the first state in the country to take such action. The state government took this step due to public scandals amid growing concerns about data privacy and national security, particularly regarding TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance.