Adelaide radio hosts Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton, who you may recognise as Triple J’s Ben & Liam from back in the day, were completely banned from TikTok for filming a bunch of people on a nudist beach. Seems like a pretty straightforward story, but the video is back on the app after the boys appealed on a technicality. Buckle up for this wild ride.
Ben & Liam are the hosts of an Adelaide breakfast show aptly titled Ben & Liam on Nova 919.
In the controversial TikTok, they attempted to do something they called “reverse streaking” — which involved them running around a nude beach fully clothed. Get it? Like the exact opposite of streaking? You get it.
The vid involves the pair being tackled to the ground by a naked man and a woman yelling at them to “get out”.
At first, the video comes across as quite jarring. Here are two random guys interrupting a cricket match on a nude beach while filming. Definitely raises a few eyebrows about the invasion of privacy and things of that nature.
TikTok seemed to agree, banning their account for “sexually explicit” content.
But here it is, back on the app.
https://www.tiktok.com/@benandliam/video/7155340513812483330?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7078088338762352133
“We can’t believe it’s been pulled,” Liam Stapleton said in a statement to PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“You see some pretty raw stuff on the Tok but this certainly isn’t in that category.
“It’s all harmless, we even blurred their bums to be on the safe side… Some nice bums in there too, a real crying shame they’re not seeing the light of day.”
Without any context, Liam’s quote here seems a bit flippant. I mean, he just got banned off an app for filming naked people on a beach without permission and now he’s saying they had “nice bums?” Quite a messy situation.
The catch? Ben & Liam set the whole thing up and everyone in the video said yes to being filmed. They were basically actors.
“It was all set up and organised with a nudist society. Everyone agreed to be in the video,” a representative for the duo told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
It was on this technicality that the duo managed to appeal to TikTok and have the video restored. All the bits are blurred and all is fine and dandy now that we know consent was granted to film.
What first appeared to be a video of two blokes filming themselves raiding a nude beach and then posting it to TikTok actually turned out to be a skit well-planned in advance.
I’m going to need a lay down on a nude beach after all this.
