Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story
Mon, 24 Feb 2025
Taiwanese YouTuber Chen Neng-chuan, known online as "Goodnight Chicken," and fellow streamer Lu Tsu-hsien staged a fake kidnapping in Cambodia to attract online attention. They live-streamed fabricated abduction scenes in Sihanoukville, a city notorious for actual kidnapping and scam operations, falsely portraying themselves as victims. Their actions led to their arrest by Cambodian authorities, who charged them with incitement to disrupt social order. Both were sentenced to two years in prison.
Chapter 1: Who is Goodnight Chicken and what does he do online?
So this YouTuber is about to spend the next few years in prison for pulling a dumbass prank. Now he goes by the name Goodnight Chicken, and he's 31, he lives in Taiwan, and his whole thing is he likes to go to abandoned haunted places and hunt ghosts. And he'll like live stream the whole thing. And one night in 2020, he's out exploring an old sketchy abandoned hospital.
And this is actually a picture of it. Now, this hospital is just another dark, creepy place that he's trying to make a video about. And so he's there and he's walking around live streaming. And that is when Chicken starts to smell something pretty awful. And he just keeps going. And eventually, boom, he sees it. A body hanging there.
And Chicken is of course freaked out, and so he calls the police. And pretty quickly they come and they check it out. And it turns out that this body he found is the body of a local guy who had been missing for over a year. Like his family had been looking for him and stuff.
Chapter 2: How did Goodnight Chicken's ghost hunting video bring him fame?
And so Goodnight Chicken's attempt to make a video in this location actually ends up bringing much needed closure to the guy's family. And soon enough, this story makes the news. And suddenly everyone there in the area is talking about it. And Chicken and his social media starts getting all kinds of attention. And he starts blowing up. And from there, Chicken keeps making these videos.
And people keep watching them and his audience grows bigger and bigger. Over 100,000 followers on YouTube. Almost 300,000 followers on Facebook. And so naturally, he's like, oh snap, I gotta keep doing this. And over the next few years, he's going to all kinds of creepy abandoned buildings and all kinds of places to film. And his audience loves it, and they love him. But then, it all goes wrong.
Chapter 3: What led Goodnight Chicken to plan a fake kidnapping?
Because Goodnight Chicken isn't quite content with how big his audience is. He wants more. And in 2024, he gets an idea. What if he went to one of these abandoned places and he got kidnapped during a live stream? I mean, people would freak out and they would start looking for him. Everyone would be talking about it. His name would be all over the news again. He would get so many new followers.
Now, of course, the odds of him actually getting kidnapped aren't very high. So he decides that he's going to have to fake it. Now, this is actually a pretty big scam, and he can't fake a kidnapping alone. So he hits up this other influencer, this guy, Lou. And I imagine Chicken is like, hey bro, you want to help me fake my own kidnapping? And Lou is like... Alright.
And then they decide that the perfect place to do all this is in Cambodia. So Goodnight Chicken gets on his livestream and he tells his audience that he's about to go to Cambodia to explore a dangerous place where foreigners are known to get kidnapped. He's setting up their expectations. Then he and Lou fly from Taiwan down over to Cambodia.
Chapter 4: How did Goodnight Chicken and Lou execute the fake kidnapping?
And they buy a bunch of props to pull this thing off, like military uniforms, fake pew-pews, fake blood. I mean, they're going all out. Then later that night, the guys are ready to set this plan in motion. And so Chicken and Lou, they go to this shady place. And there he goes live and he tells his audience that he broke into the place, which I suppose he actually did.
And so he's sneaking around in there or he's pretending to sneak around. Then he sees someone with a flashlight, someone in a military uniform. And the footage of it kind of sucks, but I do have some screenshots. You can kind of see like a person holding a flashlight back there. Now, this person in military uniform is actually his friend Lou. But Chicken pretends it's a kidnapper and he runs.
And then he pretends to struggle as if he was just caught by the kidnappers. And you can hear him making noises as if he's getting beat up in real time.
and then it looks like one of the kidnappers picks up the camera and points it back down at him and he's just like lying there like he just got knocked out and you can see his legs there and then the live stream suddenly just ends like it's so dramatic and ridiculous and obviously fake but remember this is live and he's really popular so
Chapter 5: What was the immediate public reaction to the fake kidnapping livestream?
So there are 10,000 people watching and they all think he literally just got caught by some goons and beat up and potentially kidnapped. And so all these people are watching and they're like, what the f**k? Is Goodnight Chicken okay? Did he just like die on livestream? The next day, back in Taiwan, Chicken's wife and some friends post a video on Facebook.
And they're all upset and they're saying that Goodnight Chicken is missing and he needs help. There's his wife there in the middle. And it is unclear to me if she's actually in on this scam too, but I assume she is. One, because they're married and that would be really messed up to trick your own wife into thinking you're kidnapped.
And two, because if you look at the footage of her, she doesn't really look all that upset. She actually kind of looks a little bored. But anyway, then later that same day, Chicken suddenly appears on live again.
And this time, he's filming himself running, as if he's running away, as if he's running away from his kidnappers, and was like, oh snap, I better livestream this, and then pulled out his phone and started filming himself. But whatever, he's committed to the bit, I'll give him that. But then he stops and he starts telling his audience that he just escaped.
And he says that the kidnappers robbed him and they shaved half his head and then they tased him. And of course his fans believe it and they're like, oh my God, I hope you're okay. And then his stream just ends again, leaving everyone on a cliffhanger, leaving everyone wondering again. And if you're like, Ray, influencers do fake pranks all the time.
Did people really believe that he got kidnapped? Yes. Goodnight Chicken is a popular high-profile influencer back in Taiwan. People know who he is. Apparently, the governor of the Cambodian province he was allegedly kidnapped in posts all these photos on Facebook asking for help in locating Goodnight Chicken's whereabouts. So, like, the government is now involved.
Regardless, his scam worked, and he seems to have everyone fooled, and he's definitely now getting the attention he wanted. Until... Okay, so not everyone believes Chicken's story. Some people are actually skeptical. Specifically, this guy. His name is Lu Yu, but his Twitter handle is, and I'm not making this up, xxxxgay1069. So we'll just call him Gay1069.
So Gay1069 sees this livestream footage that's now floating around of Chicken allegedly running from his kidnappers, and he analyzes the hell out of it. He's checking Google Maps, he's looking for landmarks in the background, he's trying to figure out Chicken's location. And that is when he finally solves it. Chicken isn't running around in this shady area of Cambodia.
He's actually in a fairly nice area of Cambodia, next to a beach, an area where he could stop and ask anyone for help at any moment if he wanted to. Not only that, by looking at the background, he notices Chicken isn't running far away. He's actually running in circles. Like he's just kind of running around the same block over and over again.
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