The first time That Mbox ever went to Times Square in New York, he didn’t know it was going to change his life.
He slipped into the car of his friend, a driver known online as Squeeze of Squeeze.benz, who was 21 years old – and departed in the early hours of the morning. The duo was armed with nothing but a camera, Squeeze’s BMW, and the shared desire to ‘become viral’.
The video they filmed at night shows that they run red lights, to avoid scratches with other cars, do donuts at intersections, and even drive backwards in a one -way street, with high speed. After being placed on YouTube last year, the footage was seen more than 11 million times. It seemed as if their brand was on the rise – at least until the New York police were involved.
On May 21, the department’s Deputy Commissioner of Operations, Kaz Daughtry, proudly posted X that the NYPD had “squeeze.benz” in custody. The authorities quoted its reckless driving, including the police. But when the NYPD Antonio Gineestri charged at the time and was linked to the social media account in a New York Post report, the offense was a third-degree assault, which, according to law enforcement, was out of an unrelated incident a few months before. “One of the most productive street racing in NYC can no longer treat the Big Apple like the Indy 500,” Daughtry claimed.
There is only one problem: MBox swears that the NYPD implies the wrong man as squeeze.
“I don’t even want to end up in it, but it was someone else. They do not have the right pressure, “Mbox, an upcoming rapper in his mid-twenties who claim to be Squeeze’s” best friend “and interpreter, claims to me via a Discord voting call. (Mbox, like other YouTubers Wired who was questioned for this story, did not want to give any identifying details.) “The right pressure is right next to me – he is not identified in public.”
It would be easy to write it all off as Bravado from a bunch of high-speed chasers, except for one thing: in September, more than three months after Ginestri’s arrest, while still in custody, a new video has the squeeze.benz YouTube channel. It showed footage of several vehicles – allegedly driven by Squeeze – who drove and did donuts in the middle of Columbus Circle and Times Square, surrounded by pedestrians who have now missed their convoy cars.
It is one of a barrage of cuts uploaded on the channel, which has more than 735,000 subscribers and contains videos after a video of high velocity, Palm sweat-inducing cheer around New York. Together, Mbox and Squeeze gathered an enormous fan of car enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies -and set up the scene for YouTube’s risky new niche: “swimmers” weaving through traffic at the speed of traffic.
The trend, partly powered by the attracting internet beat and social media fame, has become a focal point for the NYPD, which seems determined to vote for the practice. Now the drivers swear that they intend to go legal – before they are arrested, or worse.