Stokes Twins

Alan and Alex Stokes are identical twins who built an audience on pranks, took one prank much too far, and ended up pleading guilty in a California court. What makes their story unusual is what came next: they rebuilt their channel into one of the largest on YouTube, and were later named among the most influential creators in the world.

Twins

Alan and Alex Stokes were born on 23 November 1996 and grew up in Southern California. As identical twins, they found early on that being hard to tell apart was a comic device in itself, and it became a recurring theme of their videos.

They first found an audience on the short-video app Vine and then on Musical.ly, the lip-syncing app that later became part of TikTok, with quick comedy sketches. When Vine closed, they moved their attention to YouTube.

The Prank Years

On YouTube their channel grew on pranks, challenges and sketches aimed at a young audience. As on much of YouTube in the late 2010s, the pranks became bigger and more elaborate in pursuit of views, often involving members of the public who did not know they were being filmed.

The Irvine Case

On 15 October 2019, in Irvine, California, the twins dressed in black clothing and ski masks, carried bags full of cash, and pretended to have just robbed a bank while a videographer filmed. In one stunt they tried to get a ride from an Uber driver, who refused; a bystander, believing the robbery was real, confronted the driver at gunpoint until police arrived. Hours later they staged a similar scene on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, prompting more emergency calls.

In October 2020 prosecutors in Orange County charged them with felonies. In April 2021 they pleaded guilty to misdemeanour false imprisonment and to falsely reporting an emergency. Each was sentenced to a year of formal probation and 160 hours of community service, and ordered to pay restitution. The judge also ordered them not to make videos that imitate criminal activity. They were not jailed.

The case became a widely cited example of how the chase for views could put real people in danger, and it added to pressure on YouTube to tighten its rules on dangerous pranks.

The Rebuild

After the case, the twins changed direction. They moved away from pranks on unsuspecting strangers towards high-production challenges, competitions and comedy sketches, often built around the confusion of being twins, and invested heavily in YouTube Shorts, the platform’s vertical short-video format.

Their short, visual videos needed little dialogue to follow, which helped them travel across languages and countries. Their audience grew sharply. By 2026 their main channel had about 144 million subscribers, and their channels together more than 160 million.

The industry took notice. Forbes named them in its Top Creators list in 2024, 2025 and 2026, ranking them fifth in 2024, and TIME included them in its first TIME100 Creators list in 2025.

A Business

Like other large creators, the twins now run their channel as a production business, with a team working on ideas, filming and editing, and with income from advertising, sponsorships and brand partnerships. Their challenge format, with large sets and prizes, follows the model popularised by MrBeast, adapted to their own twin-based comedy.

What Their Story Shows

Their career shows two sides of the creator economy. The first half is a warning: the pursuit of views pushed pranks towards real danger, and the law eventually stepped in. The second half is about adaptation: when one format became impossible, they found another that worked better, and grew larger than before.

The Rules Change

The twins’ case came during a wider reckoning over pranks on YouTube. In January 2019, after viral challenges in which people copied dangerous stunts, YouTube updated its rules to ban videos of pranks that make people believe they are in serious physical danger or that cause real emotional distress. Channels that break the rules can have videos removed and, after repeated strikes, be closed.

The combination of platform rules and a criminal case marked the end of an era of escalating street pranks. Many prank channels faded; others, like the Stokes Twins, turned to staged challenges in which everyone taking part knows they are being filmed.

The measure of them is the second start. Many creators whose careers are hit by scandal fade away. The Stokes Twins accepted the consequences in court, changed what they made, and came back bigger.

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