Crime Stoppers Victoria Joins Police On The Narc Side Of TikTok And How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?
“✨ come catch a criminal with us ✨"
Crime Stoppers Victoria has jumped on the TikTok bandwagon with a new video encouraging kids to report offences using relatable, average, totally normal youth plucked from the streets of Melbourne.
The clip shows an outfit of the day (OOTD) vlogger capturing several looks in front of a mural, with a staged drug deal in the background. “There was some low-key strange behaviour behind me,” read a caption to the video titled: ‘Your fav fashion girlie busts a drug deal’.
It’s my first day as social media manager for Crimestoppers Victoria can you please tell me if I’m doing a good job pic.twitter.com/ZDulQjH0iT
— cheese and onion skittles (@zeroasalimit) July 20, 2022
The video is part of rolling campaign ‘Evidence Dump’ aimed at Gen Z to explain online reporting, inspired by photo dump trends, explained in one video as “being baddies, until we caught an actual baddie”.
Its intention was to get the next generation to report suss behaviour that they may or may not capture when glued to their phones, including other grand examples like “watch me solve a crime mid-kickflip”, “POV: you take pics of literally everything, and then it solves a crime”, as well as “there’s something illegal in these pics and it’s not how good we look”. Go off, Nancy Drew.
Perhaps the best part of all is collaborating partner Bullfrog Media discussing their attempt to not be out of touch, but somehow managing to achieve the exact opposite. “To avoid the old ‘hey fellow kids’ trip, we had to make sure everything looked and sounded like something you’d find on a ‘For You Page’,” said creative director Daniel Sparks in a statement.
The Crime Stoppers branch is clearly taking a leaf out of the books of NSW Police, who’s tactics include using Lizzo songs to soundtrack their copaganda, a contextually concerning stomp trend, and meme’ing classic donut eating stereotypes.