On YouTube, where view count is king, traffic-hungry content creators have long embraced the Faustian bargain of challenge culture, leading them to engage in increasingly risky behaviors in order to increase their viewership.
Opportunistic YouTubers take advantage of trending challenges, such as eating spoonfuls of cinnamon or handfuls of Tide Pods, in hopes of achieving overnight fame, but sometimes their foolishness instead lands them in the hospital or the police station. Whether their hijinks pay off or not, these YouTubers are unafraid to put themselves out there, even if it means something terrible could happen.
Here are some of the craziest (and stupidest) things that YouTubers have done for more views.
1. One million calorie lasagna (Epic Meal Time)
By far the grossest and most expensive lasagna ever made has to go to Epic Meal Time’s 1 million-calorie lasagna. To make their highest caloric recipe yet, the Canadian YouTubers use 60 boxes of duck fat, 15 bricks of lard, five bricks of butter and 10 cartons of cream; watching them mix the ingredients alone makes you feel 20 pounds heavier. The cheese includes eight wheels of brie and 10 bags of mozzarella for a grand total of 1,014,721 calories and 32,362 grams of fat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzuQTppd66E
Epic Meal Time is known for making high-calorie foods, such as an 84-egg sandwich, 100,000-calorie burger and an all-bacon burger. Their favorite food and drink is Jack Daniels and bacon, which they always find a way to add to each of their meals. Once the meal is made, Epic Meal Time chows down in slow-motion shots their enormous creation with, of course, epic music playing in the background.
2. All “on the roofs” videos
If you fear heights, don’t watch any “on the roofs” videos. Two daredevils, Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov, free-climb skyscrapers and bridges for city views that few have ever seen before. They have climbed the Shanghai Tower and the Shenzhen Centre, at 650 and 660 meters, respectively, and stood at the tips of cranes with nothing but the view below them. I don’t even fear heights that much, but I still got sweaty hands and wanted to throw up after watching these videos.
As much as they love climbing buildings, “on the roofs” has also hacked a billboard in Hong Kong to say, “What’s up Hong Kong?” with footage of them climbing other buildings, and they even made their way to the top of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Most of the time, they climb at night to hide from the police, but many followers support their fearlessness and breathtaking views.
3. Pool Drop #8 (8booth)
8booth might not be as high up as “on the roofs,” but he jumps down from buildings into shallow pool water in an extremely dangerous feat that should never be attempted by anyone. In his eighth video pool jumping, 8booth landed feet-first right beside the pool before falling into the water.
He shattered both his feet and said that he could see bone fragments in the water as he was dragging himself out of the pool. The footage shows both of his feet completely out of place as he slowly gets out, which won’t sit well in your stomach if you don’t like looking at broken bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wnyph44ogI
He was interviewed by KCAL9 following his foot surgery and continued to jump after regaining his ability to walk. However, 8booth got sentenced to probation and community service for four misdemeanors of trespassing and unauthorized entry. Through broken bones and arrests, 8booth still pool jumps, and from his interview with KCAL9, he won’t stop jumping until he dies because he believes what he does is beautiful.
4. 13,600 Liter pool with some mentos (Prankster)
Prankster filled an above-ground pool with 13,600 liters of Coca-Cola in an attempt to create a human mentos and coke experiment. It took four days to fill the entire pool, and the backyard turned into a trash site for plastic bottles. After the pool was filled, one of the members of Prankster taped mentos to his body, simulating a giant human mento.
To save you 20 minutes of your time, the guy didn’t explode up into the air or fizz as much as you might expect. He seemed like he was in a bit of pain, but unfortunately, the video is in German. With all that effort to fill up the pool with coke, the end result was not as exciting as you would hope.
5. Shark fishing (Dude Perfect)
Instead of reeling in fish in the open water, Dude Perfect decides to fish for the most dangerous creatures in the ocean. The challenge involves five members of Dude Perfect that are trying to catch the as many sharks as they can along a beach, starting at noon and ending at midnight.
All of the sharks caught were safely released back into the ocean, but that wasn’t without some of the YouTubers getting a nibble on from the sharks.
6. Rooftop escape from Hong Kong police (STORROR)
Running from the police seems to rack up millions of views for STORROR, parkour YouTubers who travel the world in search for awesome buildings to jump from. In the video, the parkour crew begins at the top of a Hong Kong skyscraper with a man having already called the police on them. STORROR decides to make a run for it as sirens blare in the background with at least five police cars all surrounding the building that they left behind.
STORROR has jumped around North and South America, Asia and Europe with some death-defying runs across city skylines to find their way back down to street levels. Besides being chased by the cops, STORROR has purposely gotten themselves stuck in an abandoned pool, roof-jumped with monkeys and performed in front of millionaires.
