"Everyone hates us": The Israeli who trolled the trolling host and went viral
Almost 3 million users have already seen 16-year-old Romi Stein successfully troll the interviewer who "tried" to figure out which country she is from. In a typical TikTok street interview in London, the Israeli was asked all sorts of leading questions that could have easily exposed her country of origin, until she realized what was going on and called him an idiot. "He tried to make a fool of me and I made more of a fool of him," she tells mako.
About two weeks ago, 16-year-old Romi Stein flew to London for an Ariana Grande concert, not thinking she would become the latest Israeli to go viral thanks to the TikTok street interview genre. In a video uploaded to the brainwrappedgram page, the interviewer tries to discover Stein's country of origin with the help of several leading questions. Israelis realize very quickly that Stein is part of the tribe, as early as the first answer where she responds to "what makes you unique?" with "everyone hates us." The accent and the rest of the answers also make the video quite clear. Stein, unlike other interviewees on this channel, realized quite quickly that the interviewer was trolling her and started shouting in Hebrew that he is an idiot.
The video from London went viral quite quickly, both on the brainwrappedgram page and on other pages that shared it again. In total, the video has been watched at least 2 million times on Instagram and several hundred thousand more times on TikTok; together we are approaching 3 million views in less than 24 hours. In addition, it received thousands of comments and tens of thousands of likes. One of the reasons for the virality is, of course, Israel; the comments section on the Instagram page filled up very quickly with curses against Israel, but also with comments from Israelis who encouraged Stein or were less into her style and claimed that she does not really represent us with dignity.
On the jewishbreakingnews page, which uploads content in favor of Israel and Jews, they uploaded the video and wondered if the interviewer really didn't understand that it was Israel or if he was pretending to be stupid on purpose because it was Israel. So here is the answer for you - he is a known troll. All you have to do is look at his other videos and it is easy to understand that this is exactly what he does with everyone: asks questions like what is the food known in your country, and when a very clear answer like dim sum is received, he asks "Russia?" or, for example, asks the interviewee if they are from the USA after they answered that they are from Europe. A classic example: it's not a bug, it's a feature.
"I didn't think it would blow up like this," Stein tells mako in an interview about how she was filmed for the video: "I was walking down the street and saw people filming something, I thought they were filming an advertisement. Two hours later I was still in the same place, I went back there and saw they were still there. So I went to the person who was filming and asked 'what are you doing here?' and then he answered 'videos for TikTok' and asked if I wanted to participate. I didn't think it would blow up like this, and I didn't think he would upload it at all."
When did you actually realize that he was kind of trolling you with his answers? "Honestly, I noticed he was trolling me but I just went with it, like I understood that this is what he does on TikTok. It's clear to me that he wouldn't want to say Israel so that he wouldn't get backlash in the comments, because anyway all the comments there are 'Free Palestine', but he kind of tried to make a fool of me and I made more of a fool of him."
It turns out that the call to her friend is a kind of inside joke of Stein and her friends: "This is actually my best friend. We call her Riki, all the friends, now she has a thing to always say 'it will be a btch' (Hebrew: 'yihye ben zona'), so we laugh at her back and say to her, 'Riki, you btch' (Hebrew: 'Riki, ha-bat zona'). And when he interviewed me I was with another friend in London, so I was with Riki on a phone call, and I gave the friend the phone to be on a call with her, and I said to her, 'hold the phone, I'm going to be interviewed by him for a second.' So he said to me, 'say something in your language,' and I was on a call with her, so I said, 'Riki, you b*tch.'"
It turns out that the second part where Stein speaks Hebrew was not as authentic as we thought, and the interviewer actually edited the video. "I must also say that regarding the fact that I called him an idiot, he asked me to say it. He said to me, 'say that I am an idiot in your language.'"
Stein says that her followers on TikTok jumped 2x and rose to 2,400 in the last day, and this without her even being tagged or responding to him in English. The reason is quite clear: "I responded to him in English, but then I saw that many pro-Palestinian pages were answering me and following my profile, and I didn't want that, so I deleted the comment and wrote only in Hebrew."
It should be noted that on the pro-Israel page, Stein received praise, far beyond the original page. "There are a lot of comments that are 'Free Palestine', which is fine, I expected that, but there are a lot, a lot, a lot of good comments. They uploaded me to a page that is actually a Jewish community and it has a million followers, there are also bad comments, okay, I understand, but there are plenty of good comments and it really makes me happy," says Stein.
