The primary time that MBox ever went rushing round Occasions Sq. in New York Metropolis, he didn’t understand it was going to alter his life.
He had slipped into the automobile of his pal, a driver recognized on-line as Squeeze or Squeeze.benz, who MBox says was 21 years previous—and set off for a drive within the early hours of the morning. The duo was armed with nothing however a digital camera, Squeeze’s BMW, and the shared want to “go viral.”
The video they ended up filming that evening exhibits them working purple lights, narrowly avoiding scrapes with different automobiles, doing donuts at intersections, and even driving backward up a one-way road, all at excessive speeds. After being posted to YouTube final 12 months, the footage was considered greater than 11 million occasions. It appeared their model was on the rise—no less than, till the New York Police Division bought concerned.
On Might 21, the division’s deputy commissioner of operations, Kaz Daughtry, proudly posted on X that the NYPD had “Squeeze.benz” in custody. Authorities cited his reckless driving, together with outracing police. However when the NYPD charged Antonio Ginestri, 19 on the time and linked to the social media account in a New York Publish report, the offense was third diploma assault, which regulation enforcement stated stemmed from an unrelated incident a number of months prior. “One of the prolific road racers in NYC can not deal with the Massive Apple just like the Indy 500,” Daughtry claimed.
There’s only one downside: MBox swears the New York Police Division implicated the fallacious man as Squeeze.
“I don’t even need to get an excessive amount of into that, however that was any person else. They don’t have the true Squeeze,” MBox, an up-and-coming rapper in his mid-20s who claims to be Squeeze’s “finest pal” and interpreter, alleges to me by way of a Discord voice name. (MBox, like different YouTubers WIRED interviewed for this story, declined to offer any figuring out particulars.) “The actual Squeeze is true subsequent to me—he hasn’t been publicly recognized.”
It could be straightforward to put in writing this all off as bravado from a bunch of high-speed clout-chasers, apart from one factor: In September, greater than three months after Ginestri’s arrest, whereas he was nonetheless in custody, a brand new video appeared on the Squeeze.Benz YouTube channel. It confirmed footage of a number of automobiles—one purportedly being pushed by Squeeze—drifting and doing donuts within the middle of Columbus Circle and Occasions Sq., surrounded by pedestrians they narrowly missed hitting with their convoy of automobiles.
It’s one among a barrage of clips uploaded to the channel, which has greater than 735,000 subscribers and options video after video of high-speed, palm-sweat-inducing jaunts round New York Metropolis. Collectively, MBox and Squeeze have amassed an unlimited fanbase of automobile fans and adrenaline junkies—and set the scene for YouTube’s riskiest new area of interest: “swimmers” who weave by site visitors at breakneck speeds.
The pattern, partly pushed by the lure of web clout and social media fame, has turn into a focus for the NYPD, who appear decided to stamp out the apply. Now, the drivers swear they’ve plans to go legit—earlier than they get arrested, or worse.
