It’s Friday afternoon and things are looking up. The clouds have taken the day off and the sun is riding high in the sky. Suddenly my phone judders into life with a call from an unrecognised number.
“Hello?” I answer. “Yeah. Hello,” comes the reply.
“Hi. Who is this?”
“It’s Mizzy, innit.”
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Mizzy, real name Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, is the 18-year-old enfant terrible of British internet culture, a TikTok prankster whose antics transcend social media. The summer has been cool, but not for O’Garro, who lives in Hackney. He has taken ferocious public heat since May, when he was fined by a judge and roasted by British media for a prank where he walked into a random house and sat on the couch. The frightened family inside pleaded with him to leave.
O’Garro found it hilarious and posted it online. As well as being banned by TikTok, he was fined £365 (€425) in court for breaching a previous criminal behaviour order (CBO), which he received last year for a litany of pranks harassing the public.
In one video he ran off with an old lady’s dog. In another, he leapfrogged the shoulders of a man at a bus stop. He jumped counters at fast food shops and ran around kitchens. He rode an electric bike through a Sainsbury’s.
O’Garro went viral, held up as an example of everything that is wrong with youth internet culture and its obsession with attention. Public opprobrium overflowed.
On the day he was fined, he was interviewed on TalkTV by Piers Morgan, who lambasted him. The presenter, who has performed plenty of cheap stunts of his own, scolded O’Garro as a “product of his upbringing” and his lack of a father figure. It was an incendiary stereotype to throw at a young black man. O’Garro pulled him up on it.
Morgan roasted him even as O’Garro expressed remorse. If the presenter had listened more, the encounter might have been more enlightening. O’Garro tried to explain “hate brings money, likes and views” and he uses it to build audience.
It’s cynical but not untrue as social commentary and a reflection on media priorities. In a way, Morgan, through his spittle, was also profiting from the outrage at the couch prank video. He was just raking in his coin from higher moral ground.
He wants to move on from his internet persona and be more himself, Bacari, online. But the Mizzy stuff is always going to be there
O’Garro was arrested again for another alleged CBO breach. Soon after, he was on BBC’s Newsnight. Presenter Kirsty Wark pressed him about taking PR advice from Andrew Tate, a controversial online influencer derided for his misogyny and accused of rape in Romania. Without fully disowning Tate, O’Garro, raised by a single mother, rejected mistreatment of women. But he said mainstream media also held some responsibility for Tate’s prominence and profited from it.
Days later, he was on the TalkTV show of Andre Walker, a shock jock who makes Morgan seem refined. Walker exploded at O’Garro and threatened to drag him by his hair in what seemed a performative rant. O’Garro did not retaliate by living up to the stereotype of the angry young black man and walked off set. Public criticism was at its zenith. Even MPs waded in.
The Mizzy saga simmered over summer. Suddenly, last Wednesday, he popped up again. He was given a dispersal order by police on Oxford Street, who were dealing with public disorder by youths, organised on social media. O’Garro denied any involvement but was associated with the story anyway. I noted commentary from him online where he said the Mizzy persona is a ruse to expose “what happens when culture values nothing but attention”.
“Love me or hate me, you’re still going to watch me.”
I contact O’Garro and he rings me back on Friday. He argues some of the anger he gets is because he represents a stereotype of errant black youth. We arrange to meet on Monday. I show up as arranged at Dalston Junction. He doesn’t.
I try the two numbers I have for him. No joy. I walk the area and come back to wait again. Mizzing in action. I look up his Twitter and the accounts of his friends. O’Garro had publicly revealed he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act for 20 days from mid-July, suffering from psychosis. He was barely out of hospital when he was nabbed on Oxford Street.
At 10.50pm on Monday, my phone rings again. This time it recognises the number – Mizzy. He says he was arrested again at 7am. “What for?”
“My accounts got hacked and my IP address leaked. Videos were posted on my account that police say breached my CBO, but they’re old videos. I’ve been bailed until October.”
I ask about his mental health. “Much better now,” he says. But he agrees the pressures created by his social media antics and the backlash may have played some role in his difficulties.
He wants to move on from his internet persona and be more himself, Bacari, online. But the Mizzy stuff is always going to be there.
“I have remorse for it. But you gotta make some juice out of it too.”