- 13 minutes ago
Reckless Ben visits WIRED to answer his most searched questions on Google.
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00:00Hello, I'm Reckless Ben and this is the Wired Autocomplete interview.
00:07I feel like I'm in heaven in here. It's all so white.
00:16What is Reckless Ben's real name? My real name is Benjamin Paul Schneider.
00:24So everyone trying to steal my identity, that's my real name.
00:26Reckless Ben came from, I don't know, I think I was setting up a slack line.
00:32Like it was like a really long one, like a thousand feet in the air.
00:35They were like, wow, this guy, he does like backflips on slack lines.
00:38He walks the really long way. He just doesn't care. He just does whatever he wants.
00:42And then they all started calling me Reckless Ben.
00:44And it was like way before I started YouTube.
00:46And so I just changed my Instagram name to Reckless Ben.
00:49People just started saying it, I guess.
00:51What is the Reckless Ben Lego scandal?
00:54It kind of became one of the biggest stories on the internet.
00:57So this fan emailed me a couple of months ago and said, hey,
01:01my dad put his life savings in these Star Wars Lego sets.
01:04It's actually the biggest Star Wars Lego collection in the whole world.
01:08And it got stolen by a company called Bricks and Minifigs.
01:12And we've tried everything. We've tried suing them.
01:14We've tried asking for it back politely.
01:15And they're just evil and they won't give it back.
01:18So I need your help. And I was like, I'm down.
01:21He kind of seemed like the most evil person in the world,
01:24using all these legal loopholes for evil.
01:27And I was like, well, I can use legal loopholes for good.
01:29It'll be the perfect battle.
01:30So we just battled it out.
01:32We were both using our legal loopholes against each other.
01:34And it's still going on.
01:36That is the Reckless Ben Lego scandal.
01:38What is Reckless Ben known for?
01:42I don't know. I just do a bunch of stupid stuff.
01:44I guess first it was slacklining.
01:46I just was trying to do all these crazy flips on a bouncy tightrope, basically.
01:51After that, I just started infiltrating cults
01:54and trying to solve mysteries that could never be solved.
01:57I try to do documentaries in a different way.
01:59So I watch a documentary.
02:01People are like, OK, here's a really bad thing.
02:02And let's talk about the bad thing.
02:04But let's not do anything about it.
02:06You know, let's just let's just talk about how bad this is.
02:08And then, boom, end the documentary.
02:09And you're just left feeling with this like feeling in your stomach,
02:13like something's not right.
02:14And I hate watching documentaries for that reason.
02:16So I was like, if I ever make documentaries,
02:18I'm going to actually solve the problem.
02:20I'm going to go out and be in the field and try and solve it.
02:23But that way, when you finish the documentary, you feel good.
02:25You know, what can I do to help Reckless Ben?
02:30The stuff I do is kind of crazy.
02:31I don't know if getting fans involved in my craziness is really the best look for me.
02:35Someone like dies or gets sued for like $10 million.
02:38And that's my responsibility.
02:39Maybe like watch the videos or something.
02:42I try to make entertaining stories for people to watch.
02:45So, I mean, that would make me happy if you guys enjoy the videos.
02:49What is Reckless Ben doing next?
02:52I have 12 different projects I'm working on.
02:54I'm undercover and pretty much all of them still.
02:57So it's kind of one of those things like if I told you, I'd have to kill you
03:00because then you could like leak it to someone else, you know, and then that could, I don't know,
03:06like you tell one person on the side of the street what you're doing.
03:08And then within two hours, like 50,000 people know it's on the front page of Reddit.
03:12And everyone's like, this is what Reckless Ben's doing.
03:14I'm like, I told this to one stranger on the street.
03:16How does everyone know about this now?
03:17You know?
03:17So yeah, we've had to basically like every time like we're on an undercover mission now,
03:22it's basically like, hey, you can't tell anyone about this.
03:25Like you can't even tell yourself about it.
03:27That's how secretive it is, you know?
03:28And wow, I guess we got through the whole what Reckless Ben column.
03:32That was cool.
03:33That was some crazy questions.
03:35Let's throw this away.
03:38Yeah.
03:39That's what I think about that, those questions.
03:42Oh, thank you.
03:43Who is Reckless Ben's favorite YouTuber?
03:47If I had to choose right now off the top of my head, I really like Meat Canyon's videos.
03:51He like goes in the territory that most YouTubers are afraid to go into,
03:54but he's also one of the most creative people I've ever seen.
03:56Like he's always thinking of like new ways to make you laugh and scare you.
03:59He's like really funny, but he's also really scary at the same time,
04:02which I don't know of any other YouTubers that pull that off as well as he does.
04:06Where is Reckless Ben from?
04:09I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, specifically Fairfield, Ohio.
04:13I grew up in a neighborhood.
04:15There's a lot of cool things to do.
04:17We would explore abandoned buildings, a lot of abandoned buildings,
04:20completely different than Los Angeles where I live now.
04:22Where is Reckless Ben now?
04:25I am in a white void right now.
04:28I'm surrounded by white.
04:29I've never been around this much white before.
04:31I don't think you guys want me to dox your location, right?
04:34But yeah, I guess I'm in Los Angeles.
04:35It's like a two minute drive from the studio I have.
04:38So it's really close.
04:39Did Reckless Ben go to Harvard?
04:41No, I went, well, okay.
04:43So the reason people were probably asking this question is because I pretended for a video
04:47to go to Harvard.
04:48We flew out the leader of the Flat Earth Society.
04:51We basically wanted to have like a fake debate between the leader of the Flat Earth Society and
04:54these like Harvard students, which I was playing.
04:57And then during the debate, we find out that the earth is actually flat,
05:00but we gave them like the worst evidence ever.
05:02So it was like how, it basically is like a psychology piece of like,
05:04how do Flat Earthers like cherry pick evidence to support their side?
05:07And so we did a whole thing where I just pretended to be a Harvard student.
05:10But no, I didn't go to Harvard.
05:12I went to University of Cincinnati for four years.
05:16I was a part of a five-year program.
05:17I was there for a little under four years and didn't graduate.
05:20I ended up quitting because I ended up like working a job in a cubicle as a mechanical engineer
05:26for a part of it.
05:27And I was like, is this really what the rest of my life is going to be like?
05:30I just quit and started a new life for myself.
05:33These were some good questions.
05:34Wow.
05:34You guys on the internet are asking some good questions out there.
05:38Yeah.
05:39Okay.
05:39On to the next question.
05:41Oh, thank you.
05:42Wow.
05:43Does reckless Ben have a law degree?
05:46My whole thing with when it comes to the law is it's so boring.
05:52And so how do you create entertaining content about something that's so boring?
05:56You do the exact opposite.
05:57I basically just think like, what would a lawyer tell me to do?
06:00And then I'm like, I just, okay, let's scrap that idea.
06:03Let's do the exact opposite.
06:04You know, I want to make a lawyer like cringe in his chair, you know,
06:07because that's what's fun.
06:08And so, no, I don't have a law degree because if I did,
06:11I'd probably be more careful.
06:12And then being more careful would result in me being more boring.
06:15We're just experimenting.
06:16We don't know what we're doing.
06:17We're just experimenting, you know, and documenting the results.
06:20Is reckless Ben real?
06:22I feel like this is kind of like the moon landing,
06:24what they say about the moon landing, right?
06:25Like, wasn't it like harder to fake the moon landing
06:27than actually just to land on the moon?
06:29Like think about how hard it would be to fake my videos.
06:31Like if we did fake it, that'd be even more impressive almost, you know?
06:35So maybe we, maybe we say it's all fake.
06:37I would be one of the greatest directors of all time.
06:39If I could get people like to act as well as they do.
06:43Yeah, I feel like that could be cool.
06:45Is reckless Ben an athlete?
06:47I guess you could say so.
06:48I've been doing sports since I was probably like three years old with like soccer and baseball.
06:52And then I started cross country.
06:54That was like my first real sport in high school.
06:56I don't know.
06:56That was like my life pretty much.
06:57It was just like school and cross country,
06:59which I guess kind of like led me to where I am now.
07:01It's basically the whole thing with cross country, just how hard can you push yourself?
07:04You know, like how far can you go where you just can't go any farther?
07:07You know, like where you just, you're dying, you're throwing up.
07:10You're like, you have no energy left, but you still have to keep exerting energy.
07:13And it's just how far can I physically go, you know?
07:16And that's kind of, I feel like what I do in my content now, you know,
07:19it's just how far can I push things?
07:21And then that led into slacklining, a lot less endurance, but more like skill based.
07:26I've been doing some other stuff since I got really into rock climbing.
07:30I kind of just do everything.
07:31Okay.
07:32Reckless Ben.
07:33Ooh, what could it be?
07:36Reckless Ben Banksy.
07:37I am not Banksy, I guess, but that's also what I would say if I was Banksy.
07:42I did do a series.
07:43It will be coming out pretty soon.
07:45It was like a five part series where we're trying to find Banksy.
07:47It's like the craziest stuff I've ever filmed.
07:49It's so illegal that I can't even talk about it yet.
07:52Statue of Limitations is three years on all of our crimes.
07:55And it was filmed about two years ago.
07:56So we've got one year left.
07:57It will be coming out next year.
07:59And then I think there's, from my understanding, there's nothing we can do.
08:01Because we'd be like, oh, well, Statue of Limitations.
08:03Yeah, we did these crimes, but you can't get us now.
08:05You waited too long.
08:06All right, on to the next questions.
08:09Yeah.
08:10Oh, thank you.
08:12Why did Reckless Ben start YouTube?
08:15Well, I originally started it to just post my slacklining videos.
08:18Then I did a slackline video where I dressed up like Spider-Man.
08:22And I was like, I'm just going to set up the slackline in the worst places in the world.
08:26And the slackline was kind of like my web.
08:28So it kind of made sense.
08:29And so I set it up over like the busiest bike path I could find,
08:31where I'm like doing backflips over people's heads.
08:33I set up like really high over jagged, sharp rocks.
08:36So if I fell, it would definitely be like broken bones for sure.
08:39And then I saw Scientology.
08:41And I don't know, I'm from Ohio.
08:42They don't really have Scientology is where I'm from.
08:44So I just knew that a bunch of people pay millions of dollars to believe in an alien
08:48that a science fiction writer wrote about.
08:50And so I moved to Los Angeles and there's Scientology is everywhere.
08:53And I'm like, huh, this is like really interesting.
08:55Let me look it up.
08:56So I watched every documentary on it and none of them could answer that question.
09:01They just interviewed people.
09:02And it's like, I want to take these people's words for it.
09:03I want to see it myself.
09:04None of the documentaries would actually show what's going on inside,
09:07even though they have like million dollar budgets.
09:08And I'm living in my car at the time thinking I have $50 in my bank right now.
09:13And I still can make a better documentary than those.
09:15And it went super viral.
09:16I'm looking back at it now.
09:17It's like super cringe.
09:18I had no clue how to tell a story.
09:20I didn't know how to edit or anything.
09:21But there's kind of a charm to that, you know,
09:23where we were just some homeless kids living in our cars.
09:27And we had a dream to make the world's best Scientology documentary.
09:32When did Reckless Ben start his channel?
09:34I climbed some really cool like abandoned buildings.
09:37And I wanted to show my friends.
09:39But the video was like too long to like text it to them or whatever.
09:42So I was like, oh, if I upload it to YouTube,
09:44I can send them a YouTube channel link to it.
09:46And so that's what I made my channel.
09:48And then I just uploaded that video.
09:50I think it's still on there.
09:51Finally, like four years later, I uploaded my second video of like slacklining.
09:56And yeah, that's why I started my channel.
09:59Reckless Ben Provo.
10:01I did do a video where I sneak into a school.
10:04It was called Provo Canyon School.
10:06It's the same school Paris Hilton went to.
10:08It's kind of like the worst school in the world.
10:10Basically, a fan hit me up and he's like,
10:12Hey, I went to this school where they like tortured me.
10:15They closed it down.
10:16But there's one that's just as bad called Provo Canyon.
10:18You should go undercover.
10:20Yeah, I basically had one of my friends work there for a month undercover.
10:24And he got me in as a student and it was a pretty crazy video.
10:30This one was kind of an easy video because they just closed down like right when we posted it.
10:35Mostly thanks to Paris Hilton, I think.
10:37But maybe our video had a little bit to do with it.
10:40But yeah, normally it's like a big fight to like take down these companies.
10:42This one just was like, Oh, we're closed.
10:45Okay.
10:46Was Reckless Ben on Tosh.0?
10:49Yeah, I was on Tosh.0.
10:50This is kind of the reason I got the name Reckless Ben.
10:52I was trying to be the first person to ever land a double backflip on a slack line.
10:56Like a thousand feet in the air was like really high.
10:58And so what's really scary about it is you're like looking upside down and you see like just a two
11:04inch
11:04line and a thousand feet beneath you.
11:06And you're like, where do I lay?
11:07It's like really disorienting and you just have to like balance on it.
11:09So I tried it and I dislocated my arm.
11:12It was really bad.
11:13I had to climb down a whole mountain while my shoulder was like hanging down.
11:16Well, I think the first time I actually popped back in like not
11:19we were able to pop it back in before I climbed down.
11:20So we go back the next day and I was like, you know what?
11:23This time I'm not leaving until I injure myself or I land the double backflip.
11:27And then I just immediately injured myself again.
11:30But this time it was like my shoulder was hanging down to like where my elbows at.
11:33I had like two elbows.
11:34It was terrible.
11:35I had to climb down the whole mountain while my arm was hanging down.
11:38It was like really bad.
11:39So he does like web redemption things.
11:41I guess there was a trend at the time where they had like first there was a standing desk
11:44and there was a walking desk.
11:46You're like walking on a treadmill.
11:46He's like, now we're going to do a slackline desk.
11:48So we did a slackline desk for all the writers while we came up with ideas at Tosh.0.
11:53And yeah, it was funny because I was like, it was the first thing I ever did with like the
11:57media.
11:58I'm going to throw this one this way this time.
12:00Oh, I almost hit the light.
12:02Okay, we're good.
12:04Oh, I can already tell these are going to be good questions.
12:06How tall is Reckless Ben?
12:10I am six foot.
12:12How did Reckless Ben get the hard drive?
12:15There's this place called McKamey Manor and it's advertised as the world's scariest haunted house
12:21and no one's ever completed it.
12:22That's how scary it is.
12:23First person to complete it gets $20,000.
12:26And there's these like Navy SEALs that train for that, you know,
12:29and they go in, they're like, oh, I can do this, you know,
12:32and then the video cuts and they're just crying like halfway through.
12:36And they're like, oh, I shouldn't have done this.
12:37Like, this is way harder than I expected.
12:39So I looked at it and I was like, you know what?
12:41I've done some pretty crazy stuff in my life that basically every single other person
12:44in the world has been scared to do.
12:45I can do this.
12:46I'm going to be the first person to beat it.
12:48And I went there.
12:49It turned out the whole thing was fake.
12:50And I was like, what?
12:51This sucks.
12:52So I ended up overthrowing his company and I actually own McKamey Manor now.
12:56I ended up throwing it ethically.
12:58Everything he advertised, I tried to do in real life.
13:00But basically there was this rumor.
13:02It's like kind of like a B plot.
13:04There was this hard drive that is like floating around that has all the footage on it.
13:08And somehow he lost it.
13:10And so I guess this question is asking, how did I get that hard drive?
13:12Because I got it and I released a lot of the really important footage on my YouTube channel.
13:17There was like a few people that had it and they were all just really scared
13:19because every time they tried posting it, he would just threaten their lives.
13:23And he has like a cult of people that would just like make fake bomb threats
13:28in their name and stuff.
13:29And I think he like lost his kids.
13:31He lost his job.
13:32He lost everything because he just posted a picture saying he had this hard drive.
13:35So I made a challenge to him.
13:37There's a thing at the end of every single haunted house where he's like,
13:40okay, let's get pizza together.
13:41Like, yeah, I just tortured you for like six hours, but you want to get pizza.
13:44It's kind of like adding, like it's basically his ways of making fun of them,
13:48you know, and making them look stupid.
13:49Like, hey, let's get pizza afterwards, a way to humiliate them even more.
13:52So I told the hard drive guy, hey, if I can convince Russ to eat pizza with me,
13:56something he would never do unless he admits defeat,
13:58then will you give me the hard drive?
14:00And he was like, sure, because now it's in Russ's head,
14:04the owner of McKinney Manor, if he eats pizza with me,
14:06somehow it will mysteriously close his haunted house.
14:08So we got this huge like crusade basically to try to get him to eat this slice of pizza with
14:13me.
14:13And we actually put him through his own haunted house.
14:15And his safe word is he has to eat a bite of pizza.
14:17And he got so scared that his haunted house experience wouldn't end that he ate the slice of pizza.
14:22Next thing you know, there's a hard drive coming to our house.
14:25And we released the secrets on my YouTube channel.
14:27How did Reckless Ben get his name?
14:31Basically, I was just doing the stupidest stuff ever, like dislocating my arms.
14:37I was in the hospital once a month for almost a year for just injuring myself.
14:42I was just constantly getting injured.
14:44And so the Slackline community called me Reckless Ben.
14:47They're like, he's reckless.
14:48He just wants to do the coolest stuff ever and doesn't care about the consequences.
14:50That's something a reckless person would do.
14:52How does Reckless Ben come up with video ideas?
14:55I don't know, I just think of ideas that are so stupid they might just work.
15:00So I like to describe it when you're playing chess against someone,
15:04they're like a medium level player.
15:05And say I'm a medium level player, then it's gonna kind of be an even game where I might win,
15:10I might lose, you know, because I know we're just even.
15:13But if someone plays a move so out of pocket, I'm like, what the heck are they doing?
15:17I don't know how to play this.
15:18I've studied all the openings except for that.
15:20You know, I've studied how a normal player would play,
15:23not how an unhinged reckless chess player would play, you know?
15:26So I try to do the same thing when it comes to the law.
15:28I come up with ideas that are so stupid that no company could ever prepare for what I'm about
15:34to do to them.
15:34So when I do it, even if it's not the best idea in the world, they have no defense.
15:38And so if they have no defense, I kind of just win by default.
15:41And that's what happens basically every time I just bank on that.
15:46Oh, that didn't work how I thought it was going to, but oh, that's it.
15:50All right, those are all the questions.
15:52Thanks for watching.
15:53Come back to the next interview.