Younger girls are pranking their dads by saying they’re going to work on oil rigs. The responses are heartwarming: ‘Money can’t convey your life again.’

“It would be one thing if I said regular welder,” Michelle advised Fortune, “but something as dangerous as going deep underwater from the shore, and I can’t actually swim, I was expecting him not to be on board at all.” 

The prank, trending on TikTok, entails dozens of ladies calling up their fathers, brothers, and companions about touchdown a six-figure job provide at an offshore oil rig. The ladies clarify that the job entails spending six weeks as an underwater welder or apprentice, and revealing their family members’ reactions. Except for a poignant, confused silence that often follows the ladies’s announcement, the reactions sit someplace between protecting, supportive and reasonable–a lot in step with the large dangers of damage and demise that oil rig staff face in trade for a comparatively excessive wage. 

Michelle’s father has been a welder most of his life, she mentioned. He labored at building websites in Maryland for many years and is greater than conscious of the ache and bodily stress that comes with the job. “He doesn’t like the profession,” she mentioned, including that her father describes the labor as one thing that’s added “10 years” to his life.

“Your body breaks down from all of the heavy labor, using hot metal,” Michelle mentioned. “He wouldn’t want me to have to do that.” 

When it comes to her prank, she thinks she misplaced him on the phrase “rig.” She was interested in how he, a blue-collar employee, would reply to his daughter, a self-described “girly girl” who “wouldn’t even last for a day of training” on a rig. In his transient, two minute response, customers on Tik Tok observed how a lot concern and assist he confirmed her. “I didn’t think that people could really see how good our relationship is just from that little snippet of our conversation,” she mentioned. “It made me smile.” 

One other Tik Tok person, Olivia Prewitt, a 25-year-old Kentucky native who’s now primarily based in Florida working as a realtor, advised Fortune that she found the pattern shortly after she “had mentioned moving to California on a wild hair” to her father. He advised her she’d want a job that might assist the excessive price of residing on the market. 

“Once I saw the trend take off,” mentioned Prewitt, she realized: “He might actually fall for this.”  

Her post-graduate life has not been as conventional as another younger adults in her southern hometown, the place, Prewitt mentioned, “there is an idea of what a traditional post-grad life looks like.” That life contains “immediately starting a job or family.” 

Her personal trajectory was a bit completely different–she moved to Florida and began work as a realtor at a job that additionally permits her time to journey. She’s a former Miss Kentucky Teen USA–and now visits her pals who’ve ended up everywhere in the nation in cities like Los Angeles, Boston, and Miami.   

Her father’s response was very dadlike. A protracted pause, after which, “That’s not anything you’d want to do.” She pushed him, saying the pay was $185K for six weeks, to which he replied, “Aw shit, you ain’t gonna do no welding.” 

At first she solely deliberate to share the video with pals, however determined to put up it publicly. It has racked up 4.5 million views and impressed a wave of latest pranksters eager to gauge how their household and pals will react. For Prewitt, who additionally described herself as a “girly girl,” the pranks are humorous due to how the “dads, boyfriends, and brothers jump into protective mode.” Nonetheless, she mentioned, she is aware of that if she had been critical her dad can be supportive. 

Oil rig work has been garnering interest for months–Google searches for associated jobs reached a five-year high, with specific curiosity from the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas, that are close to the Gulf of Mexico and its 6,000-plus oil and gas structures, or rigs. Oil rig welding jobs provide a wage over $55,000 for simply half a 12 months’s work, a prospect particularly engaging to college-aged males who could be tempted by the excessive pay minus the  greater schooling element. 

However, as the ladies accurately intuited, the pay is excessive for a cause. Oil rig crews face among the highest charges of accidents and deaths within the nation, based on Arnold & Itkin, a regulation agency that represents oil business staff. In response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 470 oil staff died between 2014 and 2019; greater than 400 of them had been on the job and 69 of them died from cardiac problems. The demise price has additionally been growing: In 2019, the speed of oil employee fatalities was about 12%, in comparison with about 6% in 2017.  

The commonest causes of accidents embrace fires, falls, fatigue, equipment malfunctions, and lack of safety culture on rigs. In a single Reddit thread, almost 100 customers shared their most terrifying experiences on oil rigs—describing brutal burns, gear that maimed individuals, and witnessing total coastlines degrade shortly. 

Each Michelle and Prewitt had been fast to inform Fortune that the work is one thing they may by no means do, however they had been equally fast to say that they know different girls might–and that they’re curious if the pattern may even reveal some extremely supportive conversations from households. 

Prewitt mentioned that she has “no doubt that there are amazing, strong women fully capable” of oil rig work. However, she added, “I am not one of those women.” 

The demand for oil rig labor is basically primarily based on the “boom-bust” nature of the business. Throughout booms, or durations of excessive demand for oil, buyers pour cash into the business and set off overproduction, based on the Colorado School of Mines. Bust durations comply with, which sees decrease oil costs and underinvestment by the business, which triggers extra demand for affordable oil and shifts the worth greater once more to proceed the cycle. 

Beyond the dangers of damage, suffocation and chemical publicity to individuals, it’s a job that additionally wreaks havoc on the atmosphere. The oil business is chargeable for 38% of all methane fuel emissions within the nation, and 3.8% of all greenhouse gasses.

In response to WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit that protects wildlife and landscapes within the American West, oil drilling additionally produces air pollution booms in states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Texas and extra. 

In Texas, the nonprofit wrote, “drilling near schools and homes is releasing toxic fumes,” and in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, drilling threatens to undermine “years of hard-earned progress in cutting air pollution.” 

In response to a report by IMPLAN, a supplier of financial influence knowledge, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado collectively contribute to over 65% of the overall U.S. oil-and-gas manufacturing. This 12 months, crude oil manufacturing is anticipated to lower from 1 million barrels per day to 170,000 barrels, which can end in hundreds of fewer jobs obtainable this 12 months.

Oil rig content, although, has been cropping up on social media platforms like TikTok in different varieties too–and fairly a couple of come from girls creators. One lady documented her gym routine on an oil rig, whereas another posted outdated pictures of herself kitted up in neon protecting gear. 

Different staff have documented their living quarters, with picket flooring, televisions, and sea views, the place many individuals dwell for weeks to months at a time. 

On her video, Prewitt noticed questions flood the remark part, asking if the wage was actual and if it was a job they may apply for. “If it is,” she mentioned, “there’s probably a reason and I’m not sure it’s worth it.”