The endless runner games have come to real life. Last month, a TikToker going by the handle Swhileyy ran through the Scientology building in Los Angeles, California, to see how far he could get before a member of the church could stop him. That has created a trend of people replicating the run, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, Swhileyy would really like them to stop.
Swhileyy’s original run, which he filmed on a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, was posted on TikTok on March 31st, and managed to amass more than 90 million views. It resulted in another creator, isdurpyy, to replicate it, per THR. And since then, the copycats have been cropping up all over. A group of teens reportedly made their own run through the Scientology building with masks on and air horns in hand. Another run at the Scientology church in Palm Springs, Florida resulted in an arrest because one of the runners shot out one of the building’s windows with a BB gun.
Swhileyy apparently doesn’t think those guys are doing it right—and shouldn’t be doing it at all. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I never once in any video or any comment section or anywhere promoted the idea of running through there or beating my record.” Which is… technically true, but when you post a video labeled as the “Deepest recorded Scientology run,” it does make it sound like it’s a thing.
It seems pretty clear that this thing just broke containment in a way that Swhileyy, who is 18 years old, wasn’t prepared for. Now he’s doing a lot of work to differentiate himself from his copycats. He said of the copycats, “They should not have done that shit,” and called his own video a “one-off” that was not designed to target Scientology—though he also said in the same conversation that after he made a different video about the church, “From there on out, I pretty much knew that Scientology was like a free gateway to a lot of views.”
Swhileyy has reportedly not been contacted either by Scientology nor by the police, though the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an investigation into the trend, according to KTLA. But from the way the burgeoning influencer talked about the stunt throughout the interview, you’d be forgiven for wondering if he got a call from Tom Cruise telling him to call off the copycats. Really, this whole situation seems like it can just be chalked up to some kid doing something dumb, and it got out of hand. It’s hard to suggest that Swhileyy should be held responsible for the trend hoppers on his coattails.
That said, his other content is not exactly commendable. He mostly does prank videos where he makes other people’s lives kinda miserable while filming them on smart glasses. He spends a lot of time exploiting people on Skid Row, whom he typically refers to as “tweakers,” for views. With the Scientology gag, he at least picked a target for which most people won’t express much sympathy. And he’s a kid, so he’s got plenty of time to grow out of this.
But man, we’ve really created some perverse incentives for the youth. Just look at how he responded to THR asking if he was interested in acting: “It’s just not very realistic for me. There’s other things I could spend my time on to get a better ROI.” What did we do to make 18-year-olds worry about return on investment? We’ve managed to create a permission structure for acting like a shithead because you can monetize it. It’s hard to blame the Swhileyys of the world for capitalizing, but it’s clearly not great that violating the social contract can be so lucrative.
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