Was video of hitchBOT attack part of a prank?

The world is full of terrible and average people, lots of half-decent ones who do dumb things when they're drunk, and those rare heroes who lift our collective spirits with a game-winning touchdown or successful round of CPR.

That whole mishmash of humanity exists in Philly, like a plate of steaming scrapple, and it's evident in the people offering to rebuild a hitchhiking Canadian robot and those who allegedly jumped him over the weekend in Old City, ending - or possibly answering - his mission to gauge the kindness of strangers.

Some folks in the Philly tech community want to rebuild hitchBOT and to send him on his way, to trek across the rest of America where everyone apparently bakes cookies for strangers and only peppers their professional athletes with praise.

"If we had to replace every part, I think it would cost about $1,000," said Georgia Guthrie, executive director of the Hacktory, an art-and-technology collective in University City. "I definitely thought we would have the tech knowledge to build the robot."

Two Philadelphia-area pranksters with millions of online followers, Jesse Wellens and Ed Bassmaster, were the last people to see the robot intact and left him on Elfreth's Alley on Saturday morning. Keep that in mind.

Wellens told reporters that he was going to review "surveillance" footage from the Elfreth's Alley location and somehow he did produce surveillance-like video today on his Snapchat account that shows a man in a Randall Cunningham jersey stomping something on a bench.

One of Bassmaster's most beloved characters is "Teste," a Philly hustler always decked out in a Cunningham jersey and looking for a handout, a bite of your pizza, and a job that doesn't require work.

Wellens didn't return requests for comment about the origin of the video.

Bassmaster reportedly is getting his own show on Country Music Television soon. On Sunday night, WPVI-6 interviewed him in character as "Always Teste."

"Cops tryin to blame Always Teste," Bassmaster tweeted earlier today.

Still, someone trashed hitchBOT, and its creators, David Harris Smith of McMaster University and Frauke Zeller of Ryerson University, haven't said whether they'll rebuild him. Kyle Silva, a Rhode Island man who drove hitchBOT around New England last month, says a fellow Rhode Island hitchBOT devotee had traveled to Philly to scoop up his innards and was trying to get them back to Canada. A spokeswoman for the robot couldn't confirm that today.

It took a night in Philly to show the world that life's not all emojis and "Game of Thrones" references. Jon Snow may return to our Sunday nights once more, but Silva thinks it's a little naive, perhaps, to think hitchBOt should live on.

"If a real hitchhiker was killed, you obviously can't bring him back" said Silva. "I guess the lesson to learn is don't hang out on the streets of Philadelphia at 4 a.m. Don't hang out on the streets of any city at 4 a.m."