Alexa Rivera facing backlash after “going missing” for scavenger hunt YouTube video

YouTuber Alexa Rivera is being met with heavy criticism after uploading a video claiming she was “going missing” for 24 hours as part of a scavenger hunt for her friends.

Alexa Rivera, who currently has over 5 million YouTube subscribers, uploaded a video on December 26 that boasted a fun scavenger hunt for four of her friends and a winning prize of $1,000.

However, the scavenger hunt has gone viral for all the wrong reasons — mostly due to the video’s title and part of its premise, which included Rivera going “missing” for 24 hours.

The purpose of the scavenger hunt was to “find” Alexa, and while that alone might not seem outrage-worthy, it even featured a series of mock “missing persons” posters with her photo on them (not to mention the video’s thumbnail).

While her friends ran around town solving her scavenger hunt, Rivera stayed overnight in a hotel room to better “sell” her missing status.

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The winning team eventually discovered Rivera hiding in a festively-wrapped box in her driveway, and although everyone seemed in good spirits after “finding” her, the internet is decidedly less than amused.

Rivera’s video soared to the top of YouTube’s trending page on December 29, with commenters decrying the upload’s title and premise as being disrespectful to actual missing persons and their families.

“Pretending to be ‘missing’ isn’t a joke,” one commenter wrote. “There are people who go missing for real every day, some of whom are never seen again. No one should ever be making fun or light of real-life situations like these. If I were you, I would take the video down.”

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“Wow this is so funny, oh my gosh this totally doesn’t hurt families that deal with missing people and family members,” another said. “This is horrible.”

“Couldn’t it just have been titled ‘Sending my friends on a scavenger hunt’ or something that isn’t, like, a serious problem?” yet another wrote.

Thus far, Rivera has yet to respond to the outrage surrounding her latest upload, which has garnered over 7 million views at the time of writing.