A 15-year-old girl pretended to be pregnant and had a fake wedding for 'clickbait'
The mother of Danielle Cohn, a 15-year-old YouTube star, claims that the Las Vegas wedding ceremony depicted on her channel with her 16-year-old boyfriend, Mikey Tua, was done for "clickbait." However, the mother, Jennifer, went on to tell BuzzFeed that the "marriage" was not "done for a stunt."
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Cohn, who started her career after becoming popular on an app called Musical.ly (which was purchased and combined with the app TikTok), released a monetized YouTube video over the weekend to an audience composed of many young and impressionable fans.
In the video, Cohn and Tua are shown standing as bride and groom in a Vegas chapel, complete with an Elvis impersonator. They repeatedly claimed they were in Vegas to "get married" in the video.
Jennifer, who serves as her daughter's manager and controls her accounts, told BuzzFeed that the two teenagers are not actually married. "It was a YouTube video like most YouTube people do for clickbait," she told the outlet.
Despite admitting that the video and fake wedding was done for clicks, the YouTuber influencer's mother claims that it was not "done for a stunt." She states the young couple "made a promise."
“She committed to her best friend in Vegas ... legally they can’t get married,” Jennifer said. In Nevada, people under the age of 16 must have parents' permission in order to get married.
The Little Vegas Chapel is set as the location in Cohn's Instagram photos. The Little Vegas Chapel offers pretend weddings, as documented on their website, which states, "Pretend ceremonies are performed with many similarities to an actual Vegas wedding! They are perfect for those who want to express their love for one another without making the ultimate commitment of marriage. Get ‘married’ to your best friend for life, your longtime partner, your cellphone, anything really!"
On top of a fake wedding ceremony, a pregnancy rumor — which Cohn fueled on Instagram after she shared a photo of Tua kissing her stomach — has started to circulate. Tua tweeted, "Expecting 08/14/19 #manibaby.”
Tua dropped his own announcement titled "We Are Expecting..." in which the teens tell their family and friends they are pregnant. On Tuesday, Tua also uploaded a video titled "We Went to the Doctor," in which he and Cohn allege they went to get an ultrasound and were purchasing donuts for a gender reveal.
Fans were quick to attempt to piece the puzzle together.
"How is it your first ultrasound but you know you're 5 months pregnant?" one person wrote on a YouTube video. "Guys, they’re at a dentist office there’s proof someone posted online. Everything’s staged," another wrote.
People also took to social media to remind the YouTube stars that pregnancy is not a practical joke, as many women struggle to become pregnant. Such a "prank" proves to be a sensitive subject to people who have experienced miscarriages or other infertility issues, as Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin learned after their own pregnancy prank on April Fools’ Day this year.
Meanwhile, Cohn's mother told BuzzFeed that she thinks it is "pretty sad that this has become such a huge deal." She added, "People prank and do all kinds of stuff on the internet."
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