I was watching a little segment on YouTube about two guys who pulled a strange and unfunny stunt on a live Fox News program. It was about two brothers who made Internet videos about how easy it is to steal a bike even when chained; as one of them demonstrates by using a portable saw to cut through a heavy chain, the other fakes getting injured, falling to the ground screaming, which supremely pissed off the Fox reporter.

Why mention this? Because I recognized them. They are Casey and Van Neistat, the same clowns who made a big splash two and a half years ago by wildly exaggerating iPod battery deficiencies. In short, they used their iPod almost constantly over one and a half years, and then were outraged when the rechargeable battery lost its ability to maintain a long charge (something that would be obvious to and fully expected by anyone who has used rechargeable batteries before). They claimed that it was impossible to replace the battery, and so started defacing iPod ads all over New York; they became famous when their video of this defacement became popular on the Internet.

When it was demonstrated that the iPod battery could be replaced, they countered by buying the most expensive one and badly botching the replacement job, then claiming that an overpriced $100 replacement was impossible to do anyway–when in fact, replacement kits could be bought for $50 and were easy to perform flawlessly.

None of that seemed to matter as the Neistats launched to fame–for at least a while. Now they’re in the news again after having made videos of themselves stealing bikes from all over New York, and the Fox segment made a bigger splash–not because their badly-performed decapitation prank was funny at all, but because of how the reporter, Jodi Applegate, reacted to the prank.

Frankly, as much as I detest Fox News, I couldn’t find much fault in Applegate’s reaction aside from her rather sophomoric use of language for a network news reporter–“That was totally uncool!” “That was not cool, dude!” “They’re jerks, and we were totally not part of planning that!” I probably would have reacted much the same way, though with slightly more dignified vocabulary. That said, it is still somewhat her own fault for having these two guys on the air without first checking them out; she could have easily figured out that they were nothing but juvenile publicity hounds.