Tom Mabe is an American comedian,

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influent ...

prank A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...

ster, and

jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually t ...

writer.

Career

Mabe, based in

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

, achieved notability with his prank responses to telemarketing calls. Upon receiving an unsolicited call, Mabe would engage telemarketers in an unexpected and often uncomfortable conversation while recording the incident. One of his best known pranks of this genre involved convincing a telemarketer that he had inadvertently called the scene of a homicide. He has been featured on ''Drew & Mike in the Morning'' on

WRIF WRIF (101.1 FM) is a commercial active rock radio station licensed in Detroit, Michigan and serving Metro Detroit as well as bordering city Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The station is currently owned by Beasley Media Group. WRIF is a grandfathered ...

numerous times and has released three comedy

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

s of his calls through Virgin Records Nashville. Mabe now operates a YouTube channel entitled "MabeInAmerica" onto which he uploads his pranks. His exploits now primarily focus on the

candid camera ''Candid Camera'' is a popular and long-running American hidden camera reality television series. Versions of the show appeared on television from 1948 until 2014. Originally created and produced by Allen Funt, it often featured practical jokes ...

style of pranking, although telemarketing related and other prank calls are still included on occasion. In 2008, Mabe was the Executive Producer, writer, and talent for the CMT (

Country Music Television Country Music Television (CMT) is an American pay TV network owned by Paramount Media Networks, a division of Paramount Global. Launched on March 5, 1983, as Country Music Television, CMT was the first nationally available channel devoted to coun ...

) comedy series, ''Mabe In America''. Six episodes have been produced, including two "best of" shows that showcase his most popular features. He appeared in the second episode of ''CMT Comedy Stage''. Mabe also performs as a

standup comedian Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories ...

. The current center of focus of his acts generally revolves around issues that Americans tend to find annoying including

email spam Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...

, bad customer service, and high gas prices. In December 2013, Mabe created a prank video, intended to discourage

driving under the influence Driving under the influence (DUI)—also called driving while impaired, impaired driving, driving while intoxicated (DWI), drunk driving, operating while intoxicated (OWI), operating under the influence (OUI), operating vehicle under the infl ...

, in which he and several accomplices convinced a mutual friend with a history of multiple DUIs that he had just awoken from a 10-year coma resulting from a drunk driving crash. It became a

viral video A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander Haupt ...

, earning over 28 million views on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

by October 2017.

Discography

*''Revenge on the Telemarketers'' (1997) *''Revenge on the Telemarketers: Round One'' (2000) *''Revenge on the Telemarketers: Round Two'' (2000) *''A Wake Up Call for Telemarketers'' (2003) *''Mabe In America'' (2006) *''King of the Ring'' (2011)

References

External links

MabeInAmerica
Official YouTube Channel
Official site"CMT/Mabe in America" website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mabe, Tom American male comedians 21st-century American comedians Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Prank YouTubers Entertainers from Louisville, Kentucky American YouTubers YouTube channels launched in 2009 Comedians from Kentucky YouTubers from Kentucky