In recent years there has been a minor trend where a somewhat popular tiktoker will travel to a foreign country and deliberately commit minor crimes there on stream for internet clout and views. (They are usually tiktokers because neither Twitch nor YouTube allow this kind of thing, and such videos would be quickly removed and the user restricted or banned. I believe there are a couple of other video sharing platforms that are more permissive, but tiktok is by far the largest one.)
Every example I'm aware of has been an American doing this, and most often it will be an east-Asian country that they travel to, sometimes some other one (such as Israel).
Several of these cases have got notoriety because the streamers in question are currently facing years in prison in those countries (and in fact, at worst tens of years if given maximum sentences for each individual crime.)
One has to question: What exactly are they thinking? Are they insane? Why risk going to jail for years, perhaps even decades, for a few views on tiktok?
What I believe is happening is that they have not done any research about how the law and the legal system works with respect to foreign nationals, and they might truly believe that a country like South Korea or the Philippines would not dare (or even outright can't) put foreigners in jail for extensive periods of time. Maybe they'll give them a couple of weeks of jailtime at the very most, and then let them go. They might think that they either can't, or don't dare, to put an American citizen in their own jail for years because that would be considered an international incident and the American government would intervene, or something. A few weeks maybe, but no more. Even if that. And they are willing to endure it for the sake of the views.
They don't seem to understand, nor have they researched (even though in this day and age it's easier than ever) that yes: Even foreigners can be put in local prison for tens of years, and their countries of origin will rarely intervene unless it's an actual human rights violation. Most usually their own government will pay little attention, and even if their attention is drawn to it, if they deem it a fair trial and justice system in that country, they will not interfere, even if it's their own citizen being put in a foreign prison.
Even when it is deemed some kind of human rights violation (eg. the conditions in the prison are completely inhumane and against international human rights agreements), it can be quite a nightmare to actually do something about it. In those cases the government of the prisoner can put some pressure on the foreign government, but whether that will actually work is not a given. Very, very rarely will the prisoner's government (eg. the United States) go to an outright economic war with economic sanctions or something like that, even if they deem their own citizen being held in inhumane conditions. That would be a diplomatic nightmare.
If the country in question is something like the Philippines, the conditions in their prisons are (as far as I know) indeed horrendous, but it's still unlikely that the US government will do much about it. When it comes to an ultra-rich first-world country like South Korea, no chance. If someone gets convicted there, even if a foreigner, he'll have to suffer his sentence.
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