You Better FOOL People Into Thinking Your a Star and The Dummies Fell For It!

Brett Cohen isn't your typical 21-year-old, at least not according to the tourists in New York City's Time Square on July 27.

Cohen is now "famous" after pulling a huge prank on the city, posing as a celebrity and wandering the streets of Manhattan.

Accompanied by two bodyguards he hired on Craigslist, as well as three cameramen and four photographers acting as his own paparazzi, he attracted a huge fan following and caused quite a stir in response to what he calls his "social experiment."

"It was a social experiment. It confirms the theory of how our culture is so obsessed with celebrity and fame," Cohen told ABC News.

Cohen recorded the entire experience and posted the video on YouTube on Aug. 21. It went viral almost overnight. He said the entire idea originated from a simple conversation he had with one of his best friends.

"I said, 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?' joking around. What would we need to pull off a stunt like this, never thinking we would or could. And then it turned into 'All right, let's look into this,'" Cohen said.

And so they started planning...

"I had photographers follow me around and act as paparazzi. There were 15 people in total that were Courtesy Brett Cohenactually in on it. No planted fans or anything like that. Everything you see in the video is completely real," Cohen said.

Cohen admitted he was nervous he might not be able to pull off the stunt, but said there was one defining moment for him.

"We had a meeting with the whole crew before it all started. I was a little bit nervous that it wouldn't work. There's no guarantee it would work. When we were just standing there on 46th street, people were already asking me to take a picture. It's not even on tape," said Cohan. "It proved to me and everyone on the crew this thing was going to work. We were all so confident and fired up going into it, and I think that's why the video was so successful."