Episode 114. 10 Crazy Deaths Connected to Social Media
CONTACT US: Email: paranaughtica@gmail.com Twitter: @paranaughtica Facebook: The Paranaughtica PodcastContact Cricket: Website: www.theindividuale.com Twitter: @Individualethe Greetings to you all!Today, we are going over 10 wild and crazy stories about deaths that are associated with social media.People are separated from the rest of the animal kingdom due to their superior abilities of intellect and ability to speak, among many other things. Yet, they decide to do some the dumbest things humans can do....such as risking their precious lives. With that, let’s jump into this!!! Song At End: “Who’s To Say” by Paranaughtica.Listen Here: https://soundcloud.com/paranaughtic/wearing-clouds-like-clothes?si=f1dcc6f346344951b595b77e11271e6e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing To check out a small batch of Coops’ music, go to this this link — https://on.soundcloud.com/Q1XRaY9WSpzawV9r7 CHECK YOUR LOCAL WATER TREATMENT LEVELS: EWG Tap Water Database ***If you’d like to help out with a donation and you’re currently listening on Spotify, you can simply scroll down on my page and you’ll see a button to help us out with either a one-time donation or you can set up a monthly recurring donation. You can also go to the Facebook page where we have a link to Ko-Fi and Pay-Pal if you'd like to help out the show. We would greatly appreciate it! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
*Pewds* *Pewds* *Pewds* *Pewds* *Pewds* This is a great trip from the slaves going far from the trouble.
You just keep the guys under the curtain.
I have to write wild and sweet.
But nobody angry at you to know what to do with the devil.
You know, the air is a too cold.
I'm going to get up out of your chest.
I'm going to get up right now.
And go to the window.
Get your head out and kill.
I'm going to kill.
And I'm not going to take this anymore.
You've got to say I'm a human being.
God damn it.
My life has been.
This is the Paranautica Podcast.
I am your host, Coop, and with me is Cricket.
Cricket, what's up, buddy?
Same old excitement.
Same old shit.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to cover 10 terrible deaths connected to social media.
And there are going to be a lot more than just 10 deaths talked about in this episode.
And, I don't know, what's your take on social media, Craig?
What do you think about social media?
Assessbit. Yeah, it's the devil, man.
I don't think there's anything really positive about social media.
Maybe at first it was pretty cool, connecting us and shit, but it's turned into something completely different.
Most of the positives we found right away, and then most of the negatives came in after.
Advertising. Addiction, exploitation, all the terrible crap that they were distributing.
Granted, those things were already distributed, you know, dark web and shit before that, but making it more convenient for awful people.
For sure.
Yeah, man.
Social media, I don't know, man.
Internet in general, really, it's a double-edged sword.
I mean, sure.
Sure, cricket, right?
It's overwhelmingly marvelous, connecting us with each other.
I mean, think about it.
How, in an instant...
You can catch up with that long-lost friend you slowly grew to hate who lives halfway around the world or even find a community of strictly transgender nudist men in their 60s who spend their days toiling in the soil under the boiling sun,
growing vegetables.
You know, other people that share your quirky interests.
What do you think about that?
You have quirky interests like that?
Like that?
You want to go to a commune of...
Of nothing but transgender nudist men in their 60s, toiling in the soil under the boiling sun, growing vegetables, all sweaty?
No, but...
Not your interest?
Nah, but I like a certain selection of quality anime games.
But, you know, lurking in the shadows of all that shit, especially in the old heart and thumb emojis and the likes, is a tension that can feel a bit terrifying, right?
Like, just using the internet can be terrifying.
Like, the very internet platforms that aim to foster connection can also fuel unchecked divisiveness and discontent, making any of us reconsider how much time we spend online.
I mean, honestly, reducing our time online might actually be the best decision we could ever make, and I try to not spend too much time online anymore, even though it's impossible, because the podcast demands for me to be online constantly.
Yeah, you have to pay some...
What of attention, and that is a downside.
Yeah. Yeah, dude.
And, I mean, one can't deny that the internet has brought about numerous improvements in our daily lives.
I mean, we can all admit, yes, there are positives in this.
I mean, do you need to find a recipe for soup-poo soup, or an authentic menudo, or maybe just some shake-and-bake meth?
You know?
I mean, whatever it is, it's just a click away.
I didn't even know menudo was a food and not just a singer.
Oh, Menudo's a singer, too?
Do you know what Menudo is?
It's disgusting.
I'll tell you that.
It's a fucking Mexican, authentic Mexican soup made of cow stomach, tripe.
Yeah. Yeah, it does sound pretty gross.
Disgusting. I don't know, man.
The Mexican food, like, there's a lot of good food from Mexico, but there's a lot of fucking disgusting food from Mexico.
Holy shit.
Yeah. I think I looked it up once, but all I really remember about Menudo is the ICP line, don't forget about me like you did with Menudo.
And then everyone forgot Menudo.
So Menudo's a singer?
Yeah, apparently.
I'm going to have to look this up.
Okay, so another example.
You want to learn a new skill?
Well, YouTube's got your back, right?
And your IP.
And these digital child-locked cupboards...
Just overflow with resources that can enhance our experiences.
However, in the race to gather all those likes, shares, and followers which, ladies and gentlemen, please like, share, and follow this podcast, we often forget the potential downsides to it all.
The underbelly of social media.
The pursuit of online approval can swiftly become an obsession unmatched to anything else other than plastic surgery, maybe.
But it leads many of us to chase after endless validation and risking our lives in the process.
Yeah, I mean, you shouldn't put your life in danger for clicks and likes, but because there's always going to be a certain outlying percentage that goes more extreme, it's just inevitably going to happen.
I mean, it's a part of it.
I mean, I don't even necessarily know if we could, like, fix it.
Like, because it's a part of human adaptation.
Because sometimes those really stupid ideas end up being great.
It's just, you end up being, most of the time, the one who becomes a statistic try.
For real, I don't, yeah.
Granted, there is a certain level of risk-reward where you're just like, yeah, eating a lethal dose of some random...
Like a cleaning chemical that was placed in a pod.
Probably never going to advance our culture.
Well, that should be one that I should have put into this list here is the old Tide Challenge, right?
Yeah, I always wondered if that was even like an online one where somebody did it or if somebody literally just like or somebody just found out someone stupidly ate it because they got dared to.
Who knows, man?
Makes you wonder, because the funny thing is, I do remember it was notable because when the ad came out saying not to eat them, it hadn't actually happened yet.
But it's almost like it implanted in people's heads, like, you know, this is stupid, don't do this.
And they're like, I never even thought of that.
That is stupid.
Let's do this!
It's like the reason why there are warning labels on items.
That's why chainsaws have to tell you you're not supposed to stop them when they're moving with your hands.
Oh yeah, stop the chain.
Grab the chain to stop the chainsaw.
Don't try to grab the chain to stop the chainsaw.
Just drop it and run.
Get rid of it.
If you're in a situation where you need it, just stop and you're panicking.
Just blindly throw the chainsaw.
Fling it into the nearest metal object so it ricochets back at you.
Oh, God.
The crazy thing is if they had to put a warning label On there for, you know, every stupid thing they got sued for, they wouldn't even be able to fit it on the chainsaw.
So that means that not only was that a problem, but that was literally such a problem they had to tell people not to do it.
It's unreal.
The stupidity of people is just unreal.
I mean, you see power transformers that remind you that you shouldn't open them up and touch them.
I mean, they put a picture of a giant electricity monster on there to frighten people away.
I'm like, I invoke the electricity monster.
Be gone, mortal!
I mean, people are just willing to go to just incredible lengths just to snag a morsel of acknowledgement.
It's unreal.
And some even alter their reality to fit the mold of what they believe will attract attention.
Like... Look, boys, I'm over here in the gym, bending over, shopping my Velcro workout shoes.
Over here, look at me.
I need to be noticed.
Notice me.
Just notice me so I can scold you for looking at me like that.
You know?
All those gym videos?
Yeah, thanks to the natural progression of industry, we then get the...
Dudes calling that behavior out videos that also garner likes and clicks.
And then people try to set up those scenarios.
And it just becomes an endless...
Well, you know, all the world's a stage, apparently.
And some people just want to stage things.
They're like, you know...
We see everybody else filling their roles so well, and we just want to choreograph and run things just as well as they do.
Oh, dude, this is weird, man.
So today, earlier today, my girlfriend loves that show Bones.
I think that's what it's called, right?
That, like, crime show.
Oh, yeah, I've seen it.
She's like a savant.
Yeah, the lady's name in the show is Bones, yeah.
We were watching the show earlier.
Before this, we started recording here.
And it was the show that we were watching was made in like 2012.
And the lady, Bones, she was actually a fugitive at one point in the show.
She was a felon.
She is a felon in the show.
And she made a comment because her partner in the show is like, wait, so you were a felon?
You were on the run for three days or a week or whatever?
And she's like, yeah.
But what's weird about that?
Because, I mean, think about it.
Donald Trump's thinking about becoming president.
What the fuck?
That was 2012.
How could that even be, like, known?
You know what I mean?
Well, yeah.
I mean, the Simpsons referenced, like, we inherited a strong economic crunch after President Trump, I think you said, something along the lines of.
Yeah. Delivered as a Homer Simpson line, no less, so you're supposed to dismiss it.
Yeah, so Simpsons is a league of its own with all that foreshadowing.
Telling the future, really.
But, like, the fact...
I don't know.
It was just so weird.
Because right after that scene, there was a scene where this dude's standing in a parking lot after this festival.
And he's, like, looking for workers or something.
And all the workers are immigrants.
Illegal immigrants.
It's like, what the fuck?
So first is Donald Trump, a felon, wants to become president.
The next thing is illegal aliens and immigrants and all this shit.
It's like everything is choreographed.
Everything is scripted, man.
I don't know.
It's just really fucking weird.
That is some predictive programming stuff, right?
Yeah. So, like, my comment was like, dude, I just feel that these things come out, they write about it, whatever, they make a movie about it, they make a TV show about whatever it is, and then, I don't know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years in the future, that fictional account of whatever it might be becomes reality.
Well, yeah, and you have to ask yourself, Are they projecting it?
Or now as I'm thinking more and more, and this is where I came up with this idea for this everything's real theory, what if they're making us make it by telling us about it so that then we generate everything?
Via the subliminal things, because there's all this symbolic stuff that you're inadvertently doing and saying and evoking and invoking without realizing it.
Right. Because you're not living mindfully, for the most part.
Let's be realistic.
Most people, even if they say they are, and I'm guilty of this as anyone, are not.
Most people are on autopilot on a pretty regular basis.
Even if you're the sort who, quote, lives mindfully, there's still going to be tasks and certain things where your brain shuts down.
And so, yeah, if you got...
Subliminal programming, that's when it takes effect more than likely.
If this whole theory of making your own reality that the mystic people talk about is true, then maybe part of it is us...
Thinking about these things and then subliminally making them happen and leaning events, pushing events towards them.
Oh, for real.
I know a lot of it is like, oh, that's a good idea.
Let's work towards making that a reality.
I know a lot of that is just matter of fact.
People nowadays seem to live their lives as if they are in a movie.
But also the viewer of the movie.
So they're not even like coherent.
They're not even like conscious that they're living their life as if it's a movie.
It's because as a whole people have been discouraged from creating art and entertainment and ideas and pushed more into consuming art and entertainment and ideas.
That's why new things have such a hard time getting off the ground at this point.
It isn't a simple matter of...
Like, the algorithm's working against them.
People's interest is working against them.
People's lack of desire to actually...
Because it isn't just strictly that they don't want to create anything new.
They don't even want to find anything new.
Because newness takes effort.
And effort is a path of greater resistance.
And, well, we flow like dirty water sometimes.
We really do, dude.
And this relentless craving for social media validation, to get back on track, can easily cloud our judgment, turning our innocent Twitter posts into a dangerous game where the stakes are often painfully high.
Take, for instance, the ridiculous Blue Whale Challenge.
Remember this one?
Where, among many other young souls, 12-year-old Maria Vinogradova and 15-year-old Anastasia Svetisavarova So, in early 2018, the bodies of these two half-sisters were found in the snow outside their apartment in Ishevsk,
Russia. And it's believed that they both jumped from the 10-story rooftop and that their suicides were linked to this retarded blue whale challenge.
Why would they...
Why does...
Seriously, why would somebody jump off a building because they got challenged by something on the internet?
That's just so insane.
Yeah, it's madness, dude.
I don't understand how people's minds can get this just misconstrued.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But I can say that the dark side of social media often gets overshadowed by its glitzy facade.
All bedecked and bedazzled, it just draws you in like a fly to the old zapper.
And the reality is that seeking attention online has its obvious consequences, we all know, some of which can be rather distressing.
I mean, mental health issues are increasingly linked to social media use.
Anxiety, depression, the feelings of inadequacy can stem from the barrage of curated snapshots of other people's seemingly perfect lives, when in reality, there is no such thing as a perfect life.
Sorry to break it to you.
Oh man, all those happy pictures?
They're not real?
They're not real, man.
I mean, because sure, the Johnsons are all smiles out in public, but you have no idea what they're doing behind closed doors and all the tinfoiled windows, right?
Yeah, no idea.
And while the quest for likes and shares can offer a fleeting moment of, oh, face satisfaction, the connection we cultivate offline is far more nourishing and lasting and healthy, particularly for the deep innards of the colon.
And thus far as at this point, we have not pioneered the technology to have bots in real life.
I know.
What's that about?
Imagine like walking up to somebody, or like having somebody walk up to you and try to make friends with you, and then you find out they're a freaking android running a friendliness AI.
Oh god.
No, that's hell on earth.
Which we're literally going straight to.
See, everybody always thinks about the kill bots and stuff, but what about the just, I want to make friends with you and steal your information bots?
Yeah, what about those guys, the friendly ones?
The scammer bots.
The scammer bots.
Steal your identity.
Like, you know, they don't got the spinning blaze that bring out the eyeballs and all that get you paying attention, but they still are creepy as hell.
They can pickpocket you and take that wallet.
Yeah, it's like the potential for this kind of thing, it's like as much as everybody always says, oh, don't give them ideas, these have all been passed through and either used or are being implemented.
So it's not really any reason not to discuss them.
Well, all right, that was a lot and heavy.
So let's, ladies and gentlemen, let's strap up our Velcro bibs and booties and let's get into this.
Let's get into this.
So, the first one we have on our list here is the choking challenge.
Everyone probably should not do this.
Unless it's like you're, you know, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband in the bedroom.
Do at your own risk.
With the thrill of adolescence, often comes reckless abandon, an unquenchable thirst for new sensations.
And among the plethora of extreme behaviors young people engage in, one stands out in its sheer audacity with dire consequences.
It's the choking game, otherwise known as the pass-out challenge or flatliner or the whimsical but misleading space monkey.
Are you familiar with these?
Wow. Why don't you just have the soul-out challenge while you're at it?
Just turn away at the last second before the light for clicks and likes.
And it's like most of this is they do it alone.
They're not even with anybody.
So if you go over the edge, there's no coming back.
You know what I mean?
For those who don't know, this game is drenched in a facade of exhilaration.
It tempts players to deliberately cut off their oxygen supply with the misguided hope of chasing a fleeting high.
But behind the laughter and cheers lies a bitter yet obvious truth.
It can lead to death.
Believe it or not.
Crazy, huh?
The game is deceptively simple.
Participants employ various methods like using ropes or simple strangulation techniques like the old hands around the old neck trick, all to induce a brief loss of consciousness.
What's the aim, you ask?
To go just far enough to feel the euphoric rush that follows after being so close to dying.
Well, I mean, at least if you're doing it with just your hands, you're probably, unless you collapse your windpipe, not going to choke yourself to death.
It's just a dumb idea, and it'll probably give you brain damage.
Right. Right.
Yeah. I don't know.
Can you choke yourself out?
I don't know if you can make yourself completely pass out.
I feel like as you start faving, you would lose grip.
Yeah. I guess that's...
The point you want to get to.
It would have to be some kind of way where you forced yourself to choke and then again, and it's just as dangerous as rigging something to yourself in that case.
It's terrible.
This is terrible.
Like the internet.
And like the internet, while often blamed for the spread of fads, it did not create this dangerous trend.
The internet did not do this.
It dates back to before the era of social media.
With the first reported death occurring in 1995.
So, like, right as the internet was taken off, really.
Getting started, I should say.
Yeah, what's crazy is it's called the choking game, but, you know, it doesn't sound like people were playing it with each other, or they could have, like, you know, resuscitated them.
That should be a warning for this game.
If you're gonna play this game, do it with a partner.
Right? Or just don't cut off one of the, like, essential functions to life and think there's no consequences to it.
Yeah, I think there are better ways of getting high than extinguishing your life.
So the choking game had quietly existed, passed between friends under the radar, rooted in the thrill of danger rather than the desire for notoriety.
However, with the birth of platforms like YouTube, its revival was swift and deadly.
And between the years of 1995 and 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded at least 82 fatalities associated with this reckless act.
A staggering 35 died in 2006 alone.
Wow. Man.
Out of 82 fatalities between 1995 and 2007, 35 died in 2006 alone.
That's pretty crazy.
That's almost half in that one year alone.
What was happening in 2006?
Was that when YouTube, like, started?
That would have been around the rise of YouTube, because, yeah, it would have been back when YouTube was mostly Maya He videos and stuff.
The good old days.
Yeah, 2005 is when YouTube started.
So yeah, back when, back, like, proto-YouTube, and it was, like, Charlie the Unicorn and stuff.
Charlie! Charlie, no, not the Candy Mountain.
Such a lovely era.
So good.
Let's look at the statistics, because they tell a haunting tale.
87% of the victims were boys, aged between 11 and 16, with an average age of just 13 years.
The demographic reflects a profound truth about adolescents' recklessness, right?
Their brains are wired for risks.
Boys, generally.
Wired for risk, often immune to the long-term consequences of their actions.
And sometimes short-term.
And usually short-term.
I feel like running out of breath is a short-term consequence.
Yeah. And so among those lost in these 82 was Eric Robinson, a 12-year-old boy from Santa Monica, California.
In April 2010, filled with youthful exuberance and perhaps a hint of bravado, he wrapped a rope around his neck and hung himself from a pull-up bar.
His mother, Judy Rogg, vividly remembers the sight that met her as she rushed home.
A chilling vision of her son collapsed in the kitchen doorway.
In her desperate attempts to free Eric, she fumbled with the complex knots, but time proved merciless.
Her son, once full of life and laughter, was gone.
In 2019, Mason Bogard became another casualty.
Another name added to the grim statistics while participating in this challenge.
Emergency responders were called to teenager Mason Bogart's home about 10 p.m. that evening, and according to Vanderburg County Sheriff Dave Wedding, the call was for a report of an unresponsive juvenile.
In a Facebook post, Joanne Jackson Bogart said her son attempted the choking challenge.
Previous posts show calls for prayers as medical personnel worked to bring him back.
In a world where social media can catapult challenges into trends overnight, it is imperative to recognize the thin line between thrill-seeking and life-threatening behavior.
Well, dang, I got no jokes for that.
Yeah, it's hard to joke about the choking challenge.
Yeah, well, I was joking about it when we were just talking about people passing out and being stupid from it, but now it's just depressing.
Yeah. So, the names in this one can get a little confusing.
So, let's see.
In February of 2012, Marvin Buddy Potter was arrested for the murders of Billy Payne and his girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth.
His younger accomplice, Jamie Curd, would also be arrested for the same crimes, originally.
Jamie Curd, as it turned out, would be the secret boyfriend of Marvin Potter's daughter, Janelle Potter, and perhaps more importantly, he was her second cousin.
Okay. Secret boyfriend and second cousin.
One day, in early 2012, Marvin Potter's daughter, Janelle, would go to him and angrily tell him that the couple, Billy and Billy, who both knew Marvin well, they were actually considered his friends in the past, but Janelle told him that they had a social media dispute with her which ended with both of them unfriending her on Facebook.
And we all know how that goes.
If you unfriend me on Facebook, you unfriend me in real life, as the line says.
She also accused the couple of further harassment toward her on Facebook.
Marvin and his wife, Barbara Potter, they just couldn't stand to hear these things, these slights against their own daughter, their own flesh and blood.
And the three of them decided to exact revenge, because what else are you going to do?
What else are you going to do?
I mean, other than definitely demonstrate that you should cut these people out of your life.
Holy crap.
That escalated from, like, you know, a minor dispute to, like, murder pretty fast, isn't it?
It's pretty ridiculous.
That is when Jamie Curd came into play to help Marvin carry out that revenge.
Love struck with Janelle, he couldn't turn down an offer to help her in time of need.
Now, isn't it legal to marry your second cousin, right?
I don't know, actually.
I think third is the borderline.
I don't know about second.
Let's see.
Is it legal to marry your second cousin?
Legally allowed to marry in every state.
Yeah. That's amazing.
I didn't decide to go back and date where I originated from, so I never had to concern myself with such things.
Oh, dude, check this out, too.
So, in the United States, second cousins are allowed to legally marry in every state, and marriage between first cousins is allowed in 27 states.
Yikes. Yikes.
That's alarming.
Where have we come as a society?
I mean, I feel like at some point we just stop being concerned about genetic damage.
We're just like, ah, screw it.
Between literally everything that we do to screw it up, I mean, what's a little genetic pollution on top of it?
Doesn't matter.
I mean, we're poisoning ourselves every which way.
We've got all these neurotoxins and crap we're putting on.
It's just one more thing.
It's like there's that famous family down in the South where all their offspring were blue because of the genetic.
Problems associated with inbreeding?
I think that's why there are laws.
Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure that those kids are not, like, you know, the ancestors of Nightcrawler or anything.
So... People don't marry your cousins.
God damn it.
Don't marry your cousins.
Dropping the truly sage knowledge here.
Don't marry your cousins.
You won't, unfortunately, get it anywhere else.
But don't do this thing.
I'm guessing most people just didn't realize you needed to be told.
I think that's...
People do need to be told before they can do something.
That's where we've come, man.
It's nuts.
Maybe they're afraid that if they tell people not to do it, more will do it.
Yeah, that's usually the case.
So in early January of 2012, Marvin and Jamie arrived at the residence of Billy and Billie Jean, both armed with firearms and a knife.
When they entered the residence, Marvin would chase Billy Payne into a bedroom.
He would go on to slit Billy's throat before shooting him in the head.
In his own admission, Marvin would say that about 10 seconds after that first gunshot, a second gunshot rang out in a different room.
That being Jamie shooting Billie Jean.
In a devastating twist, Billie Jean was still cradling her seven-month-old infant son in her arms when she was also shot in the head.
Luckily, the baby boy was left relatively unharmed in the attack.
He just fell to the ground, probably bumped his head.
And was severely traumatized from the whole mom being murdered in front of him thing.
Holy crap.
Like, man, that's some...
I mean, it's probably a point of fortune that you aren't developing very concrete memories at that age.
Yeah, I mean, despite being seven months old, that still is going to leave an impression on you, you know?
That's going to be some unconscious trauma.
Yeah. Hopefully the seven-month-old infant is growing up now and is doing well.
We can only hope.
So the part I'm really curious about is, did this lady actually want any of these things to happen?
Oh, Janelle?
Like, I feel like missing from this is her actually asking them to exact revenge.
No, no, they did.
Her and her parents.
They got together and they devised this plan together, so yeah.
Okay, that's what I was wondering.
I was like, did she ask for this?
Like, oh my god.
Yeah, they, uh...
They all got together and planned this out.
I mean, it's not known if she was like, I want them to be shot in the head and slit his throat.
Like, I don't know if that was discussed.
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering.
Like, was she probably like, yeah, you should go get him back for unfriending me, thinking like, yeah, they're gonna go like toilet paper their house or like, you know, put some poop, burning dog poop on their door or something.
And then it was just like, come back like, yeah, we took them all out.
And then she's like, what?
You killed them?
Like, I wanted you to, like, you know, order a pizza and have it delivered there.
My God!
Yeah, pineapple pizza.
I wanted you to order a pineapple pizza and send it to them.
Like, that's what I'm curious.
Like, so she just kind of told him to get back at him, but wasn't necessarily involved in the planning then?
You know, I can't say for certain, but from what I did read, they, her and her parents, plotted this whole thing.
So, I mean, she had to have no...
I mean, her parents sound pretty unhinged, so it isn't really too far, like, out of step to necessarily assume that the kid was also down with it.
I mean, the fact that they just went and committed basically an honor killing over an unfriending on Facebook.
Yeah, dude.
But, dude, it gets a lot crazier, too.
So, on January 31st, 2012, one day after the murders...
A friend of the couple would discover their bodies.
And when police began their investigation, they quickly found three prime suspects because, I mean, everything's right there on Facebook, right?
So, those three prime suspects would be the couple's former friends, Janelle, Marvin, and Barbara Potter, who were all interviewed in their home just one day after the murders.
One day.
That conversation between the police and these three suspects was pivotal in uncovering the crucial facts about what happened to Billy and Billie Jean.
The police would discover that Janelle orchestrated the killings, posing as a fake CIA agent online and sending her own families.
family, that being her parents, hundreds of emails telling them she wasn't safe as long as Billy and Billy were alive.
That's how crazy it gets.
As unhinged or more so than the parents then.
Yeah, I think more so.
It doesn't sound like she just simply induced and enticed them, but she actually tricked them into it.
Posing as a fucking CIA agent.
Oh my god, how naive can you be?
For real.
Hello, I am real CIA agent.
You need to go take these people out for, uh, what was her name again?
Yeah, they're all like...
I could just imagine the dude, like, sitting there, like, okay.
Yeah, I am a real CIA agent.
This real thing needs to happen.
You need to go do this.
And you're just like, wait, did you outsource this?
You know, exactly, because it's CIA, right?
This is the CIA.
Like, how dumb can these parents be?
Like, they're getting hundreds of emails from this CIA agent saying, your daughter's not safe as long as Billy and Billy are alive.
So instead of the CIA taking control of the situation...
They task her parents to take control of the situation.
Yeah, I'm like, so the CIA, like, if she was actually being, like, legitimately in imminent danger, wouldn't they just, like, call, like, regular authorities on them?
100%. Like, no, we need to message you and be like, no, you have to go take them out.
Like, what did they think?
Like, this is your vigilante pass.
Yeah, right?
You get this one freebie.
They're like, you know, this one's not going to count as a murder because somebody posing as a CIA agent messaged you and told you to go kill somebody.
Fucking unreal, dude.
So Janelle had previously accused the couple of cyberbullying her on Facebook, which included posting hateful anonymous messages on her social media accounts.
Dude, people just need to grill the fuck up.
Seriously, man.
I mean, this is really starting to sound like some kind of, like, split personality or just insanity.
Crazy, crazy bitch.
So the police would conduct a search warrant at the Potter's family home, which pieced together the final clues needed to close the case.
These clues included an arsenal of weapons, shredded documents that were painstakingly pieced back together by detectives, and photo printouts of the intended victims.
It's funny.
You just see these photos, right?
It's the pictures of the couple.
And they just have circles drawn around their heads.
Like, die!
Die! Written around it.
I'm surprised they didn't just post up pictures of the scene with like, share, and subscribe.
Shut up.
Fucking shut up.
Like, start their own YouTube channel with it.
I swear.
These are some people who take social media.
I mean, I really view it.
Very lowly, where I really deprioritize it, but dang.
I don't think I've ever seen somebody with this level of online-edness.
No. If that's a word.
Marvin was tried and convicted of double homicide in 2013 and is currently serving out his sentence of life.
Jamie Curd took a plea deal of 25 years for his role in the murders.
However, Marvin was charging her death, which is crazy to me.
Because Jamie shot.
The girl.
And yet he wasn't charged in her death because he took a plea deal.
That's the recklessness about plea deals, dude.
Like, they fucked society up.
Plea deals are, like, horrible.
In crimes like this, like, it just sucks, dude.
Because I think it's like 97% of cases are resolved through plea deals.
So, let that sink in.
Yeah, I mean, granted, in this case, they were pretty dead to rights.
Right. The guy probably thought, yeah, there's no reason arguing this.
Like, I might as well just try to plea it down rather than fight it.
But if it's some kind of BS, especially if it's some kind of BS, that's the real hard part.
I even have a hard time trying to encourage people to do it, because God knows it's hard not to.
It is.
Because it's a huge pain in the butt to actually sit through and...
Deal with the fight when you could just pay the stupid fine and be done with it or sit the day or whatever crap.
And so it's so hard even to tell people to stand up to it because the sacrifice involved just sucks.
And people sit in jail for months, even years before they go to trial.
So yeah, that takes a toll on you.
So I get it.
I understand why people would like to take plea deals.
It's also a risk-reward thing.
I guess it depends.
If you're going to lose and it's just going to be some lame thing anyways, you might as well go fight it.
A lot of times if you just convince them you're going to, they'll offer you a better plea even because they want it that bad.
Yeah. And then there's the weird situations where they'll just drop it due to inconvenience entirely.
Right. So in 2015, all right, Janelle and Barbara.
They were both found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to two life terms, each in a joint trial.
And again, so Janelle didn't even have a hand physically shooting these people, yet Jamie Curd shot a woman, gets 25 years, and Janelle gets, and Barbara, get two life terms?
How does this even work?
I always thought the multiple life sentences thing was weird.
I mean, in this case, it's, like, one for each of the deaths, but, like, my thing is, like, Jamie fucking Kurt is the one that shot this woman, and Janelle and Barbara did not shoot anybody, and they're the ones that get two life terms, and not Jamie Kurt.
Makes no sense to me.
Like, justice?
Justice system?
Primarily related to the amount of effort involved in convicting you.
It's maddening, dude.
There's no justice in this justice system, dude.
It's just all flawed.
It's the justice system.
Yeah, the just is.
As of April 5th, 2024, Marvin, Janelle, and Barbara Potter are all serving their terms in Nashville, Tennessee, and Barbara's first parole hearing is in June 2028, five years before her sentence ends in 2033.
Yeah, they didn't completely preclude parole, so the odds are fairly decent.
I mean, unless the Dustborn timeline comes out.
The unassassinated ghoul of JFK comes back to rule.
Oh, shit.
Or whatever the hell that plot vomit story it was.
Dustborn? I have no idea.
Yeah. I'm sorry if I spoiled that game to the five people that haven't played it that intend to.
You're fucked.
You're fucked.
Cricket ruined it for you.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Evil zombie JFK comes back, apparently.
And of course, I just based that on some random other video I saw.
It's probably full of crap.
But it wasn't the most amazing concept.
I was like, you know, honestly, I wish I'd known that back when I covered it.
Because I was like, that's way more awesome than this entire game is.
That storyline right there.
The evil JFK zombie.
Yeah, like, evil, like, JFK gets, like, the whole robot Hitler treatment and comes back as, like, I don't know, like, some kind of, like, a freaking immortal super robot to rule in the year 2030.
That might happen.
The way things are, that might happen.
We just have to believe!
Or just think about it.
And think about how we don't want it to happen.
Yeah, we don't want that to happen.
And then it'll still happen.
Because that's still thinking about it.
Well, let's move on.
This is number three.
Influencers pool party for husband's birthday.
Let's head to Russia.
Land of vodka and 11 time zones.
Believe it or not, the average adult in Russia consumes 20 liters of vodka per year.
I do.
And in Russia, alcohol is the third highest cause of avoidable death.
Now, as the story was reported, three individuals lost their lives after dry ice was added to a swimming pool during a party at the Deviati Val, the 9th Wave complex in Moscow.
Oops. Guests excitedly jumped in but soon began to choke, with several losing consciousness.
The deceased were linked to Instagram influencer Yekaterina Dedanko, who was celebrating her 29th birthday at the venue.
Her husband, 32-year-old Valentin Dedanko, was among the victims, succumbing to acute carbon dioxide poisoning, along with two others.
The dry ice was thrown into the pool after attendees complained about the warm water.
And for those unfamiliar, dry ice is a solid carbon dioxide.
And if it's used in a poorly ventilated area, it can lead to dangerous inhalation of the gas.
Following Valentin's passing, Ekaterina quickly began dating 22-year-old actor Vlad Chern...
Chernik... And they seemingly tied the knot in the Maldives within one year.
And just three months after her husband's death, the mother of two underwent breast surgery shortly after starting her relationship with Vlad.
Probably no connection.
She's quoted as saying, While I'm enjoying life on a beautiful island, there are people who are more concerned about my personal life trying to set me up, claiming I'm pregnant, and even naming our future child.
She denied moving on from her late husband, yet acknowledged her feelings for her new partner and had this to say about it.
Thank God I have someone to live for.
And get this.
While Valentin was in his final moments on the hospital bed, she was live posting from a nearby hospital room for her Instagram followers, which sparked a lot of backlash.
And a psychologist from Moscow later assessed her, stating she was so absorbed in the online world that she struggled to distinguish reality from fiction.
Ekaterina also refuted claims that her breast surgery was to impress someone new.
She said, Some think I'm doing it for a guy, but it's for me.
I want to look in the mirror and like what I see.
I will say this.
I 100% believe that she didn't do it for a guy.
She did it for a whole bunch of guys.
She did it for all of her Instagram followers.
And probably the man she ended up marrying after her fucking husband died.
Like, it's just so shady.
But yeah, God, the disconnect.
Like, you know, final moments, LOL.
Like, what is wrong with you?
So shady, dude.
She was obviously having an affair with this guy.
This actor.
You'd think she'd be a little broken up and maybe, like, you know, take a break from social media.
Yeah, she didn't even shed a tear during this whole thing.
She was just like, no looking back, no cares given.
She'd be like, has anyone ever livestreamed the end?
Like, could I be the first?
Like, freaking psycho, dude.
Right? Livestreaming her fucking husbands.
Death. Like, what's going on with you, woman?
Like, hey, you mind if I just set up a stream in here and just go 24-7 till we're done?
I hate women like that, man.
I just fucking hate them.
Like, uh...
What do you do?
Yep. It's like the people that the TikTok song was wrote about.
What's that song?
Oh, it's, uh, voiceovers.
Filmed it.
Pet videos.
Filmed it.
My boyfriends and my girlfriends are breaking up.
Filmed it.
Jesus Christ.
Just basically, like, everything.
Like, drama, problems, somebody, like, bleeding out in the street in front of me.
I should save them.
But first...
I gotta log on and get this TikTok.
Bro, can you hold this camera?
I'm gonna save this life.
Disgusting. Wasn't TikTok...
I think the United...
The US government decided that TikTok can stay, but it's gonna be ran by, like, some...
Some agency within the Department of Defense or something?
I mean, the propaganda against it makes a lot more sense.
Considering China's scraping all of our data, which they demonstrably showed when they unleashed DeepSeek and it had all of that open AI tokening all over it.
Yeah, they're already scraping our...
China's already scraping our data realistically from all of these other social media apps, too.
But TikTok wasn't under the control of the DoD.
But Facebook's not like that.
Twitter's not like that.
It's like, yeah, they're all like that.
They're all being ran by Defense Department.
I mean, I'd like to think that it's because of the self-harm and the spying and the deep fake videos saying China number one, but let's be honest with ourselves.
Their government's not working for our benefit.
It'd be naive to think so.
All those are really good reasons to want it banned, but we know those aren't the reasons they are banning it.
Yeah, they just want control.
And they got it.
Because then they'd be banning themselves and, like, you know, restricting these practices, which they'd have every ability to do because this isn't, like, getting away with, like, running a front business or something.
You're kind of, like, out in the open.
Well, yeah, and they need a TikTok because that's another avenue of them to continue their social engineering and all these experiments they do with psychological shit on our fucking brains, especially our children's brains, dude.
It's like they needed that.
They need control of all of these social medias so they can continue their operations.
That's all it is.
I don't give a fuck that I'm always on the TikTok.
Alright, so this next one is one of my favorites.
And I can say I am guilty of partaking in this one.
This didn't result in any deaths, did it?
It did, actually.
That's why it's on our list, buddy.
Oh, man.
It's planking.
Everyone's favorite.
Do you remember when this was going on?
It was big in, I don't know, 2011-ish?
Yes, I remember.
I remember initially wondering what it meant, and then finding out what it meant, and then thinking, wait, that's it?
That's a trend?
It's retarded.
It's retarded, and I partook in this one.
So, planking.
Increasingly popular in Australia involves people lying flat on their stomachs in various and sometimes dangerous settings and then posting photographs on the internet.
You literally just lay there on your stomach, planking.
You don't move, you don't say anything, you're just a plank.
It was originally called the lying down game.
That just rolls right off the tongue.
But it eventually became known as planking.
When people realize that's not really a game.
Yeah, lying down game.
What kind of game is this?
Sleep? I need a point system.
Yeah, exactly.
How's this a game?
Alright, this tremendously awesome fad took off when a rugby player named David Wolfman Williams showed off his impressive skills during a game on live television.
Very impressive indeed.
It became so popular on social media that people were rushing to post pictures of themselves planking in bizarre and unusual places.
News anchors planking on their desks in the studios, doctors planking on their patients, pilots planking on the controls amid flight.
Border Patrol agents planking on illegal immigrants, dolphin trainers planking on the dolphins, even cops planking on fresh detainees.
The creativity went on and on and on and on and on.
And although it was intended to be harmless fun, people were constantly trying to one-up each other and began moving into dangerous locations to carry out the stunt.
When I was doing planking, I literally, I wasn't doing it.
I did it like once or twice or something, but I was in Seattle.
I was living in Seattle at the time.
And I just walked around the streets.
I just walked around and just planked in front of all these people.
And the whole point for me was to just get these, like, to get people to look at me like, what the fuck's going on with this guy?
You know, just get reactions.
This is all I did it for.
I didn't even take pictures of it.
See, before social media, people just did it for the sheer love of scrolling with people's heads.
Exactly. I was like, this is going to be hilarious.
I always used to do just random weird crap just to confuse people.
If anything, social media trends made me trend away from it because then I was afraid other people would record that shit.
Dude, for real.
That's the shitty thing about it, man.
People ruin the fun.
People ruin the fucking fun.
Look at social media.
All because social media.
So, the most well-known account of someone falling victim to planking occurred in 2011, when the planking trend claimed the life of 20-year-old Acton Beale of Queensland, Australia, after he fell from the seventh floor of a high-rise balcony in Brisbane in a brazen attempt to plank on the railing of said balcony after a night of drinking with his buddies.
What could go wrong?
Well, I do have to say that...
That kid from Ed, Ed, and Eddie would certainly approve of this trend.
Ed, Ed, and Eddie!
Ed, Ed, and Eddie!
I can't think of the kid's name now.
Ed? The one with the imaginary...
No, the one with the...
Eddie? The other Ed?
No, I think it's Jimmy.
Oh. The one who had the imaginary friend named Plank.
Oh my god.
You're bringing back some lost memories here.
It was just a wooden board with a smiley face painted on it.
Oh, that's creative.
Yeah, man.
Yeah. That was Nickelodeon, wasn't it?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, wait, no.
Oh, wait, no.
I think that was Cartoon Network.
Was it Cartoon Network?
I think so.
That was from their, like, What a Cartoon era.
Oh, yeah.
Back when Cartoon Network had all those amazing original shows that people remember them for now, but that they, like, almost never air anymore and they don't make any art.
Hey, was it you that told me that they stopped doing Adult Swim?
I heard they had.
I haven't had TV in a long time, though, so I never actually...
Maybe it was my girlfriend.
That might have been it.
I heard it said, but I never bothered to confirm it or nothing, because, yeah, no TV.
But, I mean, Adult Swim used to be fucking cool as fuck!
Yeah, back in the heights of Aqua Teen Hunger Force days, Sea Lab 2021.
Sea Lab 2021 is my favorite.
Captain Murphy.
Captain Murphy!
I just love that motherfucker.
Just so stupid.
I love it.
I might go on a binge.
It was never quite as good when they replaced him with tornado shanks.
Hell no.
Hell no, dude.
So, other than Acton Beale, another man, a 20-year-old from New South Wales...
He didn't die, but he was attempting to plank on the closed boot, or a trunk, of a moving car when out of nowhere his planking went really sour.
And as the car sped down the road, the unfortunate man fell off the boot and landed headfirst on the concrete.
And he was put into a medically induced coma, but was far luckier than acting bail.
I mean, that's a crazy one.
Planking on the boot of a car.
I mean, doing anything on the back of a moving car is probably...
Automatically to be considered unsafe.
I don't really feel like planking was really even too relevant in the accident there.
That was more just you weren't restrained and you're outside the car and it's moving.
Going pretty fast too.
I mean, he fucking fell head first on the concrete.
Should have been wearing a helmet.
At least he made it.
I think he made it.
I mean, he was put into a coma.
He lived.
I don't know how he's doing now.
I don't know.
He might not even know he's alive.
You know what I mean?
As they say, what doesn't kill you, you probably shouldn't do that again.
It doesn't really make you stronger.
It doesn't really make you stronger.
It just makes you a little more prepared for the next time.
Yeah, that whole, like, could result in permanent disability part needs to be added to that.
What doesn't kill you could result in permanent disability.
You get a paycheck from the government.
Uh-oh, now people are going to run out to go get brain dead so they get checks from the government.
Yeah, I would just like to say, and hopefully not provoke, that I recommend that you not start the go out and get a disability challenge.
No, we don't have retards listening to our show, though.
Retards don't listen to this show.
They're like, you heard him, he said he wants us to.
No, don't.
Don't do it.
I said no.
We need our fans to live.
So I was dating my cousin and I heard about this great idea.
Don't date your cousins.
God damn it.
God damn it.
No, our listeners are not cousin fuckers and they're not retarded.
Alright? I hope.
Well, maybe we'll be really popular someday and we'll expand outwards.
Yeah. Oh, man.
Alright, number five here.
Now, we've all heard stories about bear attacks.
Right, Cricket?
I mean, they're pretty much a dime a dozen.
I technically came close to experiencing one once.
Really? Yeah, my folks wouldn't believe me.
But there was one that shook our camper one night, and then I found out from the ranger the next day, yeah, there was a bear that was in the loop, wandering around looking for food.
Probably realized there was people inside, so they just came up and pushed on it.
Bears are scary.
Yeah, they folks are like, oh, we just rolled over.
And I'm like, that was not you just rolling over.
Jesus Christ!
You just rolled over in bed and shook the whole damn camper.
We just rolled over and we're suddenly 900 pounds and outside the vehicle.
Right. Yeah, I mean, I guess...
So number five is called Mauled by a Bear for a Selfie.
I just want to throw that out there really quick.
So I have a...
I don't know if I've said this before, but it was like, I think, sophomore or junior year in high school, we were having a keg around the woods, and we show up.
There's already a bunch of people there.
There were already a bunch of people there, mostly girls.
And they're like, oh my god, there's a bear over there!
And I'm like, what a bear?
Hell yeah!
So I grabbed my camera, and I ran to the area, and there was a little black bear chilling, like, maybe 10 yards away from our little...
Kager site.
And it was just chilling behind this, like, downed tree just watching us.
And I'm like, I'm gonna get as close as I possibly can to get a picture.
And that was retarded.
And in hindsight, I was a fucking idiot for doing it.
But, you know, I didn't get attacked.
And I didn't get closer than I knew I shouldn't.
And I didn't try to get a selfie, for God's sakes.
I just took a picture of the bear.
Anyways, now people are gonna think, oh, look, he's a fucking hypocrite.
Whatever, dude.
I've made some mistakes in life.
Get off of me.
Well, I mean, mistakes allow you to know that's a dumb idea.
Exactly. Take it from me.
Don't repeat my mistakes.
So let's take a quick look over some statistics here.
Between 2000 and 2015, there were a total of 664 brown bear attacks worldwide, which includes the grizzly bear and are said to be the most aggressive.
And per WorldAnimalFoundation.org, humans are responsible for 71% of grizzly bear deaths.
Humans are responsible for the bears attacking them.
The majority of attacks occur because bears feel threatened or they are protecting their young.
And people have almost a 1 in a 2.1 million chance of being attacked by a bear.
Those odds are pretty high.
That's actually decent.
Yeah, not too bad.
Not too bad.
And most attacks by polar bears happen in July and December.
And there are said to be roughly 40 polar bear attacks each year.
Which would be absolutely terrifying.
I mean, what do you think is more terrifying?
Like a grizzly bear, a black bear, or a polar bear?
I mean, polar bears are the strictly carnivorous ones, aren't they?
Probably, by far, the most likely one to attack you.
Like, the other two, you mostly just have to stay away from, don't get in between them and their cubs, and don't wander into their territory, stuff like that.
Things that are potentially avoidable, whereas, you know, just don't be in the Arctic.
That's also probably pretty avoidable.
Yeah, I just couldn't avoid being there.
I slipped and fell and landed in the Arctic Circle, what can I say?
Alright, well let's leave the Arctic and let's leave New South Wales and head over to India to see what they're up to.
In India, there have been around 50 documented bear attacks between the years of 2006 and 2013.
Well, I mean, if the bear attack ends in you just getting eaten in the woods and nobody finds you, that bear attack didn't happen.
If a bear shits in the woods and no one's around to smell it, does it actually shit in the woods?
Yeah, but bear eats you in the woods and no one's there to take a selfie in front of them.
Did they really eat the person?
Did they really eat you?
Statistics. Alright, so after attending a sweet-ass wedding in Nabaragpur.
Alright, say that word.
Nabaragpur. Nabaragpur?
In Odisha?
In that area, after this sweet-ass wedding, a man named Prabhu Bhattara was driving back to his house when he decided to stop to urinate in the woods.
And we've all been there, nothing crazy so far.
But while he was watering the weeds, he did a stupendous double-take as he spotted an injured sloth bear, which naturally prompted him to attempt to take a selfie, as most idiots do.
And it was broad daylight.
And there happen to be a few bystanders around who watch it all unfold.
In fact, one of them actually started to film the incident with his phone right after the bear began its attack on poor, poor Prabhu.
As poor Prabhu approached the cute and cuddly animal, the bear freaked its shit and attacked poor Prabhu.
And the video itself, it goes on for at least one and a half minutes up until it just abruptly stopped.
So he didn't even get the...
The ending of this.
Like, why would you stop it midway through?
He wanted to be first to upload.
Yeah, I gotta go upload this.
First. Because he wasn't trying to help the guy.
Like, he was pretty far away, and he's just like...
I mean, really, I feel like Prabhu would approve, really.
I mean, he's all about those clicks.
He's just like, did you guys get all that?
Oh my god, you cut it off and out a minute and a half in?
You suck.
Yeah, the bear just like ripping him to pieces.
Like, are you getting this, bro?
Be like, it cost me an arm and a leg to get this shot.
Don't forget the rule of thirds!
So, the video stops, right?
But in the footage, we see a stray dog that comes into view and did what nobody else would.
It intervened.
But it failed to deter the bear, unfortunately.
Some of the other bystanders then, after the dog tried, then they try to yell at the bear to stop attacking the helpless man.
Oh, poor Prabhu.
But these attempts were all in vain.
Sadly. And in the end, the injured sloth bear ended up killing poor Prabhu before Forest Service Rangers were able to arrive.
But once they did get there, they shot the bear with tranquilizer darts and retrieved Prabhu's body.
I thought they were just going to escalate it up to management first.
Yeah, right?
We're going to file a complaint with your manager bear.
You better stop that.
That's really crazy, like yelling at the bear to stop.
Yeah. And I mean, it's an injured bear attacking a person.
Now, this is actually potentially a useful bit of advice.
Injured animals will not behave.
According to their norms.
Yeah, an injured animal, dude, they are going to be aggressive.
Yeah, way more motivated than that sloth would connotate.
There's nothing slothful of a sloth bear, alright?
So, to no surprise, the attack was the third fatality linked to selfies with wild animals in that region in that year alone.
But, I mean, granted, what's the population in India?
Like, three billion or something?
No, it's like one billion, I think.
So, yeah.
0.00001% of the population getting killed making selfies is just inevitable, really.
It really is.
Because you're just going to die of something, and some of those somethings at some point is going to be doing something incredibly bad for you, like taking a selfie as you die.
I wonder what the other two were.
Like, someone found an anaconda or a python or something.
I gotta get a picture of it wrapping around me.
They're like, here, help me up.
I'm gonna livestream from the top of this elephant.
In another bear attack in India that just happened on January 19th, 2025, a father and son died after the duo had ventured into an area to gather wood when they were viciously attacked by an enraged sloth bear in the canker area of Chattisgarh.
The victims, Suklal Daro, 45, and his son, Aju Kureti, 22, were ruthlessly shredded like pulled pork and died as a result of the attack.
And despite efforts to save them, Daro succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital while Kureti passed away on the spot.
Reports indicate that a forest officer also sustained injuries while attempting to rescue Daro and Kureti from the bear's clutches.
Can you picture that?
Like, this guy just runs up, starts, like, punching this bear or something?
Like, how did this, like, play out?
You know, like, a forest officer who knows damn well how dangerous a bear can be, like, he's trying to rescue Daro and Coretti from the bear's clutches, and the bear attacks him?
Well, you know.
Just punching it square in the fucking nose.
That's another thing.
If you're going to get attacked by a bear, go for the eyes, go for the nose, go for sensitive areas, grab it by the balls if you can, and just bite the balls, dude.
Just get those balls in your mouth and just bite.
Alright? Bite hard.
The bear, in a fit of rage, held the officer in its arms and tried to crush him exactly like when in the film Tango and Cash, remember this?
When Sylvester Stallone is picked up by Brian James and then given a massive bear hug in an attempt to kill him.
Great movie.
So, there is a terrifying clip of this attack that shows the cute and cuddly bear assaulting a forest ranger, pinning him down and making it impossible for him to escape.
But luckily for him, he survived, but was in critical condition.
Well, you know, I mean, he didn't have the sufficient level of counter bonus to deflect the bear's attacks.
I really feel like this is like an RPG view of...
Man versus nature when you start fighting the bear.
You need to be thinking about the human approach should be what kind of pointy thing can I stick through this thing?
Let's use that whole reason why humans are the smallest, weakest thing in the animal kingdom to our advantage.
As in, we realize we can just poke stuff.
I don't need claws if I can just pick up a claw.
My advice, just don't fight a bear.
Unless you have to.
Unless you find yourself in the ring with the bear.
Providing valuable...
Bear versus player tips here.
BVP. For some hardcore BVP.
Like I said, go for the soft spots.
Get those balls in your mouth and bite down hard.
Clench and don't let go.
And don't forget, you don't respawn.
Yeah, you don't get a second chance, buddy.
So, the bear here had enough and was able to escape, man, because the Force Ranger was really letting this bear have it, apparently.
Like, really just going to town left and right to the fucking jawline.
So the bear, I mean, it caused a real fear in the community, because it escaped, and it left everyone on edge wondering who would be next.
Well, that's inspirational.
I don't think they found the bear, either.
I think it's still that large.
But listen to this.
Back in Russia in 2023, a raging brown bear mauled another father and son to death after gaining entry into their home just hours after killing 35 dogs in a neighboring dog shelter.
35 dogs couldn't take down a bear.
That's crazy.
The really crazy thing is you'd think at least some of those dogs would take advantage of the door being open to get away.
Yeah. Like fleas in a jar.
They don't know where to go.
The man-eating beast broke into their house in the Primorsky region before killing and devouring the father and son, aged 87 and 56.
That is just frightening, dude.
You're just in bed, chilling, sleeping, having a good old dream, and like a...
Bear just starts eating you?
Yeah, well hopefully you've got a random safety officer to come beat the crap out of that bear.
You better fucking hope so, dude.
You better hope so.
And man, I just feel so shitty for like old people, elderly people who live a long life and then die in the most unfortunate ways like a bear attack or like being murdered by somebody, dude.
I just hate that thought.
I hate it.
Yeah, it's rough.
This is so disheartening.
I mean, I already feel old.
Man, I feel so sorry for elderly people.
It's probably worse as you get older, so...
Probably is.
Hunting inspectors were immediately ordered to track down and kill the bear after it was feared it would strike again.
And hours later, they did find this bear, and they shot it.
They shot it good.
Bear expert Sergei Aramelev said the animal's behavior was not typical for that species of brown bear, and it is likely that the savage beast had been wounded by hunters, or was simply deranged and aggressive from rabies, or perhaps just from life itself.
Well yeah, otherwise the proper procedure would have been the next person would have had to have challenged the bear to a melee match.
Exactly, dude.
As is appropriate.
No shooting the bear.
That's not fair.
That's not fair, dude.
You have to challenge it in single combat.
You take out your glove, you slap it in the face, and say, I challenge you to a duel.
And then you put it into the octagon.
So, speaking of punching things.
Oh, yeah.
Speaking of punching things.
Number six on our list.
Old punch for punch game.
You've played this, right?
Old punch for punch.
I'll be honest, I did this long before it was a trend along with many stupid things that hurt me.
I don't think there's a lot of dudes who haven't at some point participated in Punch for Punch.
Yeah, yeah.
Punch for Punch.
It's usually you get drunk at a party and you're like, bravado, slap me, I'll slap you.
And then you just go and go and each slap gets harder and harder until you're like, alright, I've had enough, that hurts.
Yeah, and then they invented the dead arm where they realized that the more you punch the same spot, the more it hurts even if it's not very hard.
Yeah. So if you're all wasted and can't really throw a punch, you can still constantly chip away at that bruise.
I mean, that is a great way in UFC, dude, because people aren't really expecting leg kicks.
I've watched matches where leg kick wins the challenge, right?
Because you kick in the leg in the same place, it's no bueno.
You can't even put pressure on your leg to stand back.
You get kicked in the fucking thigh.
20 times in the same spot, that's a dead leg.
That's a dead leg.
Yeah, well, and eventually you're going to trigger an automatic forced pain response at some point.
No matter how much you can resist pain, at some point your body's going to force some resistance to it.
Yeah, the body will give up.
So back in 2014, Tommy Main, a 23-year-old father, tragically died after playing one of the most popular games worldwide, Punch for Punch.
The entire point of the brutal pastime is quite simple.
Two players take turns hitting each other, testing their pain thresholds until one of them gives up, cementing their place on the loser's podium.
Traditionally, the blows were aimed at arms and shoulders, but the boundaries quickly blurred as participants grew bolder, striking each other in the face and stomach, like real girls do.
Yeah, that's a...
That's why you usually stick with, you know, the arm and shoulders is because, you know, the worst thing that happens is you mess up the arm.
Yeah, there's nothing like too...
The injury is not going to get too bad.
It'll get punched in the arm.
Yeah, you know, dead arm as opposed to like, you know, dead heart.
Yeah, or like a lost eye or a broken nose or a severed ear or like anything.
Missing teeth.
Repeatedly punched in the liver or kidneys.
Yeah, dude.
I was going to say one punch to a liver.
That's enough.
That's enough.
That will put you down.
Yeah, imagine the dead kidney.
Yeah, that would be a few weeks of bloody urine.
I mean, on the plus side, you'd probably think twice about going out with the buddies again if that happened.
I'm not going out with you guys again.
Oh, come on, man.
Come on.
Don't be a pussy.
No, dude.
It always ends up with us playing punch for punch.
I'm over it.
Like, you're not cool unless you've been medically escorted from the bar.
God. Oh, yeah.
Don't play this.
And, like, what's...
Now there's, like, a sport.
They turn this into a sport.
The old slapping game.
You've seen that, right?
Yep, and you can still do some damage with that.
Oh, fuck yeah!
It minimizes it, but yeah, like, you can't create welts and then tell me that that don't hurt.
No. No, dude.
Slapping hurts.
I don't care who you are.
Slapping hurts.
Yeah, just because punching does more internal damage.
Yeah, dude, no fun.
No fun, man.
And a lot of these players, they even raise the stakes by tying one arm behind their back, shifting the dynamics of strength and skill into a perilous endeavor.
But other players go a step further and tie both their arms behind their back.
Just for the experience.
Yay. And how do you think that plays out?
I don't know.
I feel like this is the part where one of them reveals they're a martial arts master and doesn't need a punch and just open palm strikes their chest out or something.
What is it?
Four-fingered death punch or some shit?
Well, yeah.
Because, I mean, technically...
Like, punches are just the easiest way to do damage.
Like, somebody who actually knows what they're doing could do a lot more with an open palm strike or something like that.
Absolutely. Or for that matter, with a finger poke.
Right to the eyeball.
Yeah, I was about to say, there's places where you can apply a finger poke that'll do a lot more damage than any punch.
Yeah, dude.
Up the butthole.
Like, a good old finger up the butt when you're not expecting it.
I mean, it's one thing when you're expecting it, right?
But when you're not expecting it, it can put you down.
Maybe people can start calling that the Diddy.
The Diddy.
The Diddy game.
Uh-oh.
Speaking of Diddy, what the fuck's going on with Diddy?
Oh, you know what?
Good thing you mentioned that, because I just saw that he was transported to a hospital.
Hmm. From prison.
And I don't have any details because I literally just saw it before we started recording.
I didn't look into it.
But apparently he was escorted from the prison to a hospital.
So what could that be about?
Delaying his testimony.
Yep. Some sort of shady shit for sure.
They probably wanted to delay it forever, but they'll settle for him being stuck laid up for a while.
Well, I guess the talk is that they're just going to Epstein him, right?
I think going to a hospital kind of sounds like they tried, doesn't it?
Yeah. And so what began as a display of brute masculinity for many?
Say that again.
Masculinity? But what began as a display of brute masculinity for many?
Ended in tragedy for our boy, Tommy.
Our old Tommy boy.
After receiving a quick punch to the chest, he just as quickly collapsed.
Tommy was rushed to the hospital, unresponsive.
And in critical condition.
Within hours, he was pronounced dead.
The police, some of them possibly being veterans of Punch for Punch, treated the incident as unexplained and passed it off as an act of unprovoked violence in a moment of poor judgment among friends with poor judgment.
You should seriously just blame it on what it is.
That's worse.
Exactly. Dude, your fucking friends killed them.
Like, no, we didn't murder each other.
We were playing a stupid game.
My god, I would definitely object to that one if I was these people.
100%. Who was the...
Dude, why can't I think of his name?
The old magician guy.
He died from being punched.
Oh, Houdini.
Houdini, yeah.
Yeah, because...
Because the guy basically asked him, like, so you're able to take any punch, right?
And he said, yeah, and then he sucker punched him before he was ready.
And his being unprepared did a lot more damage than it would have otherwise.
Also, apparently the dude was like a legendary punch, like legendary at punching.
I did hear that that was just like a, and who knows if it's true or not, but that's just like a cover story of his death.
I mean, that goes to show you that if you're not good enough at punch for punch, you don't even get to hit the other person.
Yeah, dude, what fun is that?
So in the melee, a 20-year-old man was arrested, yet the implications of Tommy's death stretched far beyond the confines of culpability.
His older brother, Roy, spoke of the tragedy, lamenting how they had chosen to document the event on their phones instead of intervening.
Sounds about right.
Sounds about right.
It's an accidental death.
What do you intervene for until you're suddenly like, oh, crap.
Yeah, it happened so fast, right?
So, like, what can you do?
Yeah, from what I'm hearing here, he just kind of went down and it wasn't like, you know, the dude, like, got on the ground or got him when he was on the ground and started beating him some more.
It was like he just went down from a punch and they were all like, what the hell?
Yeah, so there's not much he could have done.
I mean...
Everyone's going to record something like that, right?
Like, oh, we're going to play Punch for Punch, get the phones out, we better record this, because who knows what's going to happen.
I mean, that's the thing, is that you're recording it specifically because you're hoping somebody gets really hurt.
Right. You just don't really want somebody to get to die.
No, that's not the expectation, hopefully, for most people.
No, the expectation is hopefully to get some good footage of making fun of your friend crying about how bad they are.
And then going viral, getting all the likes and shares and subscriptions.
Yeah, because they're sitting there whining about their arm being sore.
Oh, my arm!
Yep, and in light of the playful name of the game, right?
Punch for Punch.
Very playful.
One doctor described the scenario well.
He said, This phenomenon echoes a primal urge to assert masculinity.
To embody strength and courage in a world that often demands such displays.
Yeah, I mean, the world doesn't really demand it, dude.
Just kind of still do it.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm like, literally nobody else watching.
Four guys will just be like, you know what we should do?
Let's go get a bunch of ice skates and go slam full speed into each other and joust.
That sounds fun.
It's like, why ice joust?
I don't know.
It's probably going to hurt like hell.
And that's pretty much the thought process right there.
And it's what the world demands, apparently.
Yeah. Well, you know, it develops courage.
Because if you can do stupid things without fear, then maybe you can do courageous things without fear.
I don't know.
Where's the fine line between, like, courage and stupidity?
I mean, the point where you go from just taking punches in the arm to, like, punching each other full-on in the face and killing each other with punches.
I feel like there was a certain line that was crossed in this one.
Yeah. Shit, we should have added Russian Roulette to this.
I mean, Russian Roulette, like...
Maybe next time.
Technically, you don't want to be the winner.
Oh, man.
Well, alright, number seven here.
This one, it's a drinking game.
It's called Nick Nominate.
The essence of NeckNominate is excessive drinking combined with reckless stunts.
The main point of the game is to challenge your friends to outdo your own shenanigans, to outshine your efforts, and it's crucial to film the process.
So, Cricket, you've partaken in NeckNominate.
What was your experience like?
I mean, the filming part, not really.
But, uh...
I think the best one was the legendary...
Back when I used to drink a lot.
It's called the Strikeout.
A Strikeout?
Yeah, it's a hit of weed combined with a shot.
Okay, so you take a hit of weed, you hold it in, take a shot.
And then you have another thing that's called the Cannonball, which is a hit of weed and you drink a beer.
And then you combine those two.
And then you make the hit the size of an eighth of weed all at once.
And you hold that, and while holding that, you take the first shot, drink a 24-ounce can of Twisted Tea, and then drink a second shot before blowing all of it out.
That's horrible.
You did this?
Oh yeah, that was probably my most heroic party in days feat.
And at the time, I was so hardcore about it.
I literally did this as I was talking to people.
And I stopped, did it, and then as I'm blowing it out, I finished my sentence.
Horrible. And everyone was just in shock.
Like, how the hell did you just do that?
Like, how are you even standing right now?
It's a fun party trick, huh?
I used to get a lot of free weed just by daring people I could do it all at once.
No, I've never gone that hard with it, but I have taken a hit and taken a shot.
That's nuts, man.
That's not good.
That's not good, bro.
I hope you're done doing that.
Oh, I don't drink at all no more.
Yeah, that's good.
I actually had someone tell me the other day, you should start drinking again.
Like, why would I do that?
Why would I waste the last nine years of my life of sobriety to just start drinking again?
I don't know, man.
Drinking again doesn't sound very enticing to me.
I'd probably do stupid crap like I just described.
I don't want to do this shit.
I don't want to be on a list of top ten stupid shit people do.
Well, I will say I survived all of it, so there you go.
You are here with us today, and that's good.
Let's keep it that way.
So from the mundane act of chugging a pint of light beer and stripping in a crowded supermarket to guzzling alcohol mixed with other chemicals...
The bar is raised higher with each nomination.
The sheer absurdity of concocting cocktails mixed with everything from dead mice to engine oil showcases a morbid creativity driven by social validation.
There's nothing like saying hello with a dead mouse.
Hey. Yeah, I feel like that went well past anything I ever did.
That's disgusting, dude.
Engine oil, dead mice, no thanks.
With every view and like, the thrill amplifies, dissolving common sense into a frenzy of, what will they think of next?
That's crazy, dude.
I look back, like you, we both used to drink a lot back in the day and did a lot of stupid shit.
And this was all before social media was a big thing.
And we were doing all this stupid shit before all this stupid shit.
You know what I mean?
It still got you street cred.
It did.
It did.
My friend and I, we used to do jackass stuff far before jackass was even a TV show.
And then when it became a thing, we were like, what the fuck?
We could have made money off this all along?
Yeah, I got some comparisons to Steve-O when that show came out.
Well, me, I was like, well, dang.
Somebody want to give me more than five bucks to do this stupid crap?
Drink like month-old bong water?
I mean, hey, you know, you make a salary at $1.5 million a year.
Hell yeah, lacrosse ball me in the butt with a frickin' orange.
I don't give a shit.
Yeah, dude.
If I was getting paid that sort of money, I would probably do most of the shit that they do.
I mean, I was doing most of it for like five bucks a pop, so yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah, and plus when that happens, other people are like, dude, I'll give you another $5.
And you're like, alright, keep it coming.
Otherwise, you just do stupid shit.
Half the people don't even pay attention.
But if somebody's going to do something for $5, suddenly everybody's paying attention.
It's weird how that works.
Pass around the plate.
Oh, that's so stupid, man.
Let's all watch.
So, neck nominate.
So, neck nominate can and has come at a gravely cost.
In 2014, 22-year-old Ross Cummins was found unconscious in a Dublin home after reportedly binging on alcohol and cocaine.
It was said that after being nominated, Ross then downed a pint of whiskey with an undisclosed amount of cocaine mixed in.
Ladies and gentlemen, don't eat cocaine.
Don't drink cocaine.
That's the most retarded thing you could probably do in terms of cocaine use.
The four words that just guarantee it's going to be deadly is undisclosed amount of cocaine.
I know.
How much is that?
An eight ball?
Maybe an eight ball would do it.
Probably not a pinch is all I'm saying.
No, definitely more.
They're probably not talking about a small amount if they say it's an undisclosed amount.
Like a little bump?
No. That insinuates that it's an amount to the point where you can't tell by looking at it.
God, and that's just like, also, cocaine in Dublin, so you can only imagine how much it's been stomped on and mixed with other shit by the time it got to Dublin.
Well, that just adds flavor.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. The sorrow deepens with the account of 19-year-old Johnny Byrne.
Whose life ended after drowning in River Barrow after chugging a pint of alcohol in 2014.
Or 20-year-old Isaac Richardson who collapsed mere minutes after downing a lethal mix of an entire bottle of white wine mixed with a quarter bottle of whiskey, a small bottle of vodka, and a can of lager.
Exceptional taste.
Ugh. I feel like I knew some people that could have actually survived that back then.
First of all, an entire bottle of white wine?
Like, chugging that alone?
I know people who could survive that amount of alcohol intake, but no way would it be in the form of white wine.
So, let's move on to number eight here.
YouTuber dies in a paragliding accident while filming a YouTube video.
Ladies and gentlemen, if your goal is to be a famous YouTuber...
Then you're going to have to be fairly creative and willing to do insane, death-defying stunts here and there, which is exactly what Grant Thompson did.
In June of 2019, a caller told officials that a paraglider named Grant Thompson should have landed an hour earlier and that he was unable to be reached on his cell phone, which prompted a massive search by local officials.
The authorities would confirm.
That Grant went off the radar system near a place called Sand Hollow State Park.
After using GPS data to determine the man's approximate location, a helicopter search located his body later that evening, along with his paragliding equipment and a video camera.
Glant's brother, Mark, also confirmed the incident and said that the YouTube star recently picked up an interest in paragliding, and therefore wasn't very experienced in the very dangerous activity.
Grant first joined YouTube in 2010 as the King of Random and quickly accumulated a large following with his videos about life hacks, experiments, and random weekend projects.
His content, which came out almost every day, covered everything from DIY projects to debunking myths, or attempting to.
And that had me thinking that Grant might have built his own paraglider.
And so, Cricket, I looked into it.
And what do you think?
I'm going to go ahead and guess he didn't just simply because he's a YouTuber and probably had lots of money.
Well, yeah, he didn't.
He didn't build his own.
I figured he would have just because.
And I was hoping he would have because that would have just made everything just that much better, right?
I just figured you'd have another page past that if you did.
Yeah. Yep.
And so, no, he literally just bought his own paraglider and went up in the sky.
And filmed his own death.
Somehow. Nobody knows how it exactly happened, but his paraglider failed.
And he plummeted to the earth.
I mean, I really feel like this is just a case of really extreme one-upsmanship gone terribly wrong.
Like, what I'm reading from the other ones, you know, most of them didn't involve actually risking dying.
Like, maybe risking ruining some food or looking like an idiot and having to delete the video.
Yeah, or, like, losing a limb from a bear or something.
I mean, this is straight up, like, death-defying stunt, for sure.
Yeah, like, this one was...
There was no questioning.
I mean, even selfie-ing with a bear, you could technically do without too much danger, as long as the bear was, you know, 7,000 feet away and down a cliff.
Yeah. That's a great selfie.
Look, the bear's right there.
You don't see it.
You see him?
He's next to those other two dots that are a forest down there.
Right on the tree line.
You see it right there.
So yeah, poor Grant Thompson.
Rest in peace.
But it's like you look back at his previous projects and it doesn't really even scream minor risk.
And then suddenly he's like, you know...
Let's do this thing involve the power of flight.
Anytime you involve humans and not being on the ground, you could die.
There's just a non-zero percent chance of that.
That's why I have a very real fear.
I don't have a fear theory, but I don't like oceans.
I don't like being up in airplanes, and I don't like being underwater.
Now, I will do all those things, But I don't like it.
Like, especially oceans and diving in the ocean.
That's probably the most freaky thing for me.
Yeah, well, you know, it's a very unpleasant thing because even when you're really far down, there's still things underneath you.
Exactly. And, you know, as a human, you get accustomed to having to deal with threats mostly in each direction around you.
Maybe once in a while something could be above you.
But you really don't have, like...
To deal with stuff underneath for the most part.
Right. I mean, what's going to be underneath your feet on the concrete?
Yeah, like most things underneath you, unless people are laying traps for you or something, are going to be creatures that aren't really a big threat to you.
Which is the whole reason traps are effective, because you don't look there as much.
Your only real risk is, like you said, a trap or a sinkhole opens up.
Yep. So, not a whole lot of natural options for danger.
And just in general, nature throws most of your dangers at you from other directions.
But yeah, you go out in the ocean and it's a whole different level of terrifying.
Because now you can 360 degrees and a sphere all around you get attacked.
Not a fan.
So what's this next one here?
I think you know this one.
I actually read up on it back when it first was occurring because an alert went out warning people about this.
Really? Yeah, warning people to watch their little ones' internet consumption and make sure they aren't following certain recommendations.
Right. I remember hearing about this back in the day, but I was like, that's stupid.
That just sounds retarded.
Never really paid attention to it.
But coming in at number nine, people, is Momo.
Momo is a game that is reported to have originated in Mexico.
But the game has also been reported in South America, Asia, Mexico, France, Germany, and the United States, and probably at a lot more places by now.
Players are challenged to communicate on WhatsApp with an unknown person known as Momo.
Momo is said to then give the person a challenge to complete, and upon completing the challenge, a second challenge is given, and the cycle continues until the player either stops playing the game or dies.
The challenges include self-harm, watching horror films, which that just sounds retarded, and waking up at unusual hours, which also sounds pretty retarded.
Well, the idea is a lot of times what they're doing is they're manipulating young kids with this.
That's true.
I always forget that it's kids that are the aim here.
So, you know, like, oh, I gotta watch a horror film?
And then it's like, well, yeah, but if you're like...
Seven or something and being forced to watch a horror film by this creepy thing that says it's going to do bad stuff to your folks or something otherwise.
Alright, that makes sense.
Because in my mind, I'm just thinking like my disposition.
Watching horror films?
Waking up at unusual hours?
What the fuck?
Scrolling Twitter is a crueler punishment.
It is, dude.
And I torture myself doing that.
So, players are intimidated by the threat that their personal information will be leaked to their Facebook fans?
And the public at large, if they do not participate and complete the challenges.
With the final challenge being to commit suicide.
And just knowing that, why would you play the game?
I mean, well, I mean, at first it was, well, a lot of it came down to, they would isolate the person away from stuff.
That's why they'd always want you to get onto a side app for it.
To hide the influence as they're doing these things to you.
And so then it would be like almost a double life as they're manipulating these young kids with these devices around to do these escalating more and more things.
And the trick is the suicide one at the end is realistically just a finisher because an awful lot of them could result in you dying anyways.
That's true.
Like a lot of them are just like, cut yourself and stuff.
And I'm like, well, that could kill you too.
Like, the other one that they did was they would threaten to harm your parents and stuff.
Yeah, it's equally fake, but what they do is they manipulate little kids and stuff that are easily manipulated into believing these things, and then they get them to do it.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, because these sorts of people, they reach out to probably hundreds of children, you know, and one of them will bite.
Well, that's the trick.
Think the Indian scammers.
99% of people are not going to actually fall for any of that junk and just kind of laugh at them and hang up.
But then there's that 1% of people who are like, oh, you have a wonderful business opportunity for me and can barely speak English and have no website and no return address and this seems dodgy, but you seem very convincing.
Yeah. But that happens more with old people.
Part of it's cognition as your mind goes or as your mind's developing.
That's the points when you're most vulnerable to being fooled.
And then the other part is the isolation part where with really young kids or very old people, it's much easier to get them alone and away from people without anyone around to glance at their device and be like, what the hell is that weird picture you got on there?
Because that's the trick.
A lot of this stuff, these challenges...
The way this challenge falls apart is anyone else discovers it and goes, you're hurting yourself.
This person's a scumbag.
Report them and move on.
Yeah, and children just don't have the capacity to really...
They don't have resources to do investigations.
They don't really have the smarts to do their own little investigations to make sure this shit's legit.
Just think like Johnny Five when he smashes the bug and says, I reassemble.
And she says, you can't do that.
That's the level of reasoning that you're dealing with with kids.
They have to be taught every concept.
Very few things are instinctively passed on.
In July of 2018, it was reported that a 12-year-old girl was found hanged in the backyard of her family's home near Buenos Aires.
She is thought to be the first victim of this senseless game.
In another disturbing case, a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy in Colombia, South America, We're reported to have killed themselves after playing the game.
Local media reported that the body of the 16-year-old boy was found first and that it is believed that he knew the 12-year-old girl.
He reportedly passed the game on to her before he took his own life.
There was also a 14-year-old boy in France whose dad filed formal complaints against YouTube and WhatsApp in November of 2018 after the boy had hanged himself in his room.
So I'm glad that this dad actually took some action.
I don't know the outcome of that action.
I doubt anything really happened.
They got their fingers wagged so hard.
Yeah. We wagged our fingers so hard at them, and we said, don't you ever do that again repeatedly and get caught.
Oh, man.
Why YouTube?
What does YouTube have to do?
I thought it was like a WhatsApp thing.
YouTube was the portal.
There was videos telling people to connect to other WhatsApp accounts.
Oh. And that's what would get people into the Momo challenge.
And then they would direct message back and forth these messed up things.
YouTube was the fishing ground, so to speak.
Dude, YouTube's horrible with that.
All these weird Disney movies and stuff that are taken.
By these types of momo types of people and just like get children sucked in and it's not even the actual movie.
It's a bunch of other shit.
It's like YouTube, they have a huge problem and they're not fixing it.
Oh god no.
And it really makes you wonder, why aren't you fixing it YouTube?
What are you really up to?
Well, let's go back to India.
In India, an 18-year-old boy was found hanging in a shed near his home in August of 2018.
The walls of the shed were covered.
Just covered in graffiti related to the Momo game.
And so, yeah, like, whoever did that was, like, manipulating these people for quite a while.
That's messed up.
Sad, dude.
For the last in our list of 10 deaths connected to social media, it's your favorite.
It's the Benadryl Challenge.
One of the most dangerous challenges ever witnessed on platforms like TikTok is the Benojo challenge.
Now, Benojo is a cold medicine, a cough suppressant, a sinus suppressant.
What is it exactly?
Antihistamine? Well, it's an antihistamine, but it's also an extremely hardcore deliriant that's derived from atropine.
At high doses can result in, well, delirium effects, which is waking dreams.
When people think of, like, hallucinogens, that is not at all what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about actual dream states.
A rather unpleasant thing.
That's scary, dude.
I would never try that.
Well, you know, it reminds me of the old...
The old quote from the Dawn Treader where he says, you know, it's an island where dreams come true and they say, oh, that'd be great.
I'm there with my girl, right?
And the guy says, no, not like daydreams.
I mean actual dreams, like the ones you're terrified of and wish that you could never think about again and that were afraid you'd never wake up from.
Those kind of dreams.
Now think that.
That's not good.
That's not good.
So yeah, that's like living a living nightmare.
So yeah, it sticks you effectively in a waking dream where you cannot distinguish between dream and reality.
Everything blurs together.
And it's very unpleasant to both the psyche and the overall sense of well-being one has.
Also, you feel like you need to stretch out all the time, but then when you stretch, it doesn't help.
Oh, that would be annoying.
Yeah. Ooh, fuck all that.
So, introduced in 2020.
Participants of this reckless endangerment actually film themselves consuming excessive doses of Benadryl in search of the euphoria triggered by hallucinations.
But the way you're describing it, I don't see any euphoria.
I just see just pure horror here.
Yeah, see, they're thinking like, you know, like happy hallucinogens.
That's what people have in their head.
This is not that.
Oh, God, dude.
So the thrill of sensation, right?
A.k.a.
feeling something, combined with the viral allure of social media, has drawn many unsuspecting teens and adults alike into this deadly game.
If you can call it a game.
People up to this challenge will typically document their journeys through altered states of consciousness, misunderstanding the thin line between fun and fatality.
As the videos circulate, excitement replaces caution, luring individuals into a false sense of security.
Yet, the consequences of this game are no less severe.
Tragically, stories of hospitalization and death have surfaced as stark reminders of what can go wrong.
Several people, usually teenagers, have suffered life-threatening conditions after consuming large amounts of Benadryl.
I can't imagine that's good on the liver.
One chilling case was when three teenagers were rushed to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, after ingesting at least 14 tablets, each craving the thrill promised by the unending schoolyard gossip and the desperate potential to be internet famous.
A particularly heart-wrenching episode unfolded in 2023 when 13-year-old Jacob Stevens from Ohio succumbed to the temptation of the Benigil challenge.
Filmed by friends, Jacob consumed more than a dozen pills, leading to horrifying convulsions.
This is where OTC is truly dangerous.
If you don't know what you're doing, there's a reason why the Benadryl challenge is specifically the deadly one.
It's not the dipenhydramine that's necessarily killing people.
Whatever that extra ingredient is that is added in with Benadryl is very toxifying to the liver.
And so, it's not the deliriant that's necessarily killing people.
Although, you know, if they go insane, they could have circumstances that get them killed.
Doesn't look like...
I thought there was an extra ingredient.
No, I'm thinking of coffin colds.
That's what it was when it comes to DXM.
Coffin colds.
They had an extra ingredient in them that was...
Not talks fine to your liver, but talks fine to your heart, actually.
Whoa. Thought it was this one.
Well, dude, look at this.
Children's Benadryl ingredients.
Anhydrous citric acid.
Oh, yeah.
Anhydrous citric acid is a...
Anhydrous? It's what they use to make things into pills, usually.
So, Jacob Stevens, who succumbed in 2023 to this Benadryl challenge, after eating over a dozen pills...
Despite being rushed to the hospital, he, along with his family, battled for six grueling days in the intensive care unit before the worsening brain damage claimed his young life.
Unfortunate. But, uh, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, that's gonna be the end.
The end.
The end of this list of ten deaths connected to social media.
Cricket, of those ten, which was your favorite?
Um, well...
Boy, that's a tough one.
I've participated in so many.
Let's see.
All of them, right?
The Choking Challenge, Parents Kill Daughters Frenemies.
I never quite shot to the Robin Williams myself, so I didn't try the choking challenge.
Most of the rest of them, kind of, a little bit.
I'd say probably of all of them, as much fun as making yourself crazy, I'd have to go with punch for punch.
Yeah? Why not?
You take punch for punch.
It sucks that somebody died doing it, but at the same time, they died going against the rules.
You're supposed to stick with the arms.
Because, again, it's supposed to be a dead arm, not a dead skull.
I'm going to go because we got the choking challenge, whatever, the freaking, what's the other one?
Oh, parents kill daughters frenemies, unfriending on Facebook.
We got, yeah, the dry ice in the pool, carbon dioxide poisoning.
Yeah, it's like most of them, even done properly, people could still die.
Right. The punch for punch, if done properly, you just get hurt.
Well, planking.
So planking is my favorite out of all of them because it's the less risky one.
I don't know, maybe.
Well, I mean, honestly, all of the ones that you were talking about, if you remove the term planking, they were already dangerous.
Hanging on the edge of a balcony?
Riding on the back of a moving car?
Right. Like, you take planking out of that, that's still something that could get you killed and is dumb.
That's true.
Am I planking just on flat ground or in the grass?
Yeah, so in that case, it's like, planking doesn't even really hurt anyone.
Unless, you know, you actually are planking over somebody and then hurt them.
Right. And then you got, like, selfies getting mauled by bears and shit.
Punch for Punch, your favorite.
Neck Nominate, which...
Well, they're drinking games.
The paraglide in an accident, which could happen to anybody.
Could happen to anybody.
If you're not even trying to do any challenge or anything.
I mean, heck, we've already upgraded that one.
They got the newer one, which was the, you know, wreck your McLaren and film it on social media challenge.
Was that that Jack, dude?
That fucking idiot?
Yeah, Jack Doherty.
Yeah. Yeah, was it Jack Doherty?
So it's like, you know, they've already gone more extreme on that one.
Oh, yeah, and to add to what you just said, you also have the Black Hawk and the commercial airliner challenge.
Yeah, the Blackhawk into commercial airliner.
Then we withhold the name while we scrub social media challenge.
Not a sire.
That's the best one.
And then the Momo challenge, which, whatever, Momo.
Ben and Joe challenge, yeah.
I'm going to go with planking.
I mean, it was really great.
It was great seeing him be concerned about hurting someone's feelings.
I'm like, yeah, you guys really care.
And what's the deal with that?
Because there were three pilots on board the Blackhawk.
One was allegedly a tranny, and then at least one other was a regular female, and then the third I don't know anything about.
I haven't heard anything about the third pilot.
I have no idea, honestly.
Supposedly they debunked it being Joe Ellis being the first pilot.
I don't know if that's even true at this point, because I don't know the name of the first two.
Because now everybody's just obsessed with this.
Last pilot whose name was initially withheld.
So then everybody was all suspicious about that.
So then sure enough, she doesn't appear.
Or sure enough, they don't want to release her name.
But then when they do, all their social media is gone.
She was flying a continuity of government mission of some kind.
Which already is just...
Yeah, well, the COG part is the suspicious part of the whole deal.
Very suspicious.
Why... Did you cry?
Like, that said to me that it was not an accident, really, and that, you know, the blame is misplaced.
It definitely was not an accident.
You look at the flight path, I mean, I've seen some really good footage, very clear footage of this wreck.
I mean, the Blackhawk banks, purposely banks into the path of the airliner.
No ifs, signs, or buts about it.
And we don't even know.
If these three pilots are even on board.
Because there's a video of Joe Ellis on Twitter going around where she's like, or he, he's like, no, I am a pilot for the government and no, that wasn't me.
So what's real?
You know, what's really going on with that?
It's so confusing because there's other people claiming it's totally autonomous and just it was an unmanned one.
And then there's supposedly a video of the crash where somebody's on fire walking away from it.
I've seen it.
Yeah, but that's after it hit the ground.
You don't know if that person was on the ground already or not.
Yeah, they could have been caught up in the impact, somebody already standing on the ground.
And I highly doubt that if you were in the helicopter or the airliner or whatever.
That was a different one.
That was the other one, wasn't it?
That was just the plane that...
Not an airliner.
It was like a regular, just a little plane.
It was like, oh, the other crash.
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, because there was a Black Hawk in the commercial airliner, which happened, whatever, like a week ago.
And then the next day, there was that second crash.
Oh, dude, that whole thing is conspiracy catnip.
It's actually a Shriners medical flight.
Yeah. Flying some VIP, like...
Some VIP, like, his little girl or something.
And then out of nowhere, they, you know, free-fall into the ground with seemingly no effort at all made to, like, recover.
Yeah. There's something very suspicious about that.
And, ladies and gentlemen, you can't be a Shriner unless you're a Mason.
High-ranking Mason.
Definitely Conspiracy Catnab, dude.
And everyone's saying it was a missile, it wasn't even a plane, just based on the impact.
It's a Shriners missile.
It's a Shriners missile, dude.
But I think that helicopter, I think it was autonomous.
I don't think there were any live people on that plane.
I think it was remotely flown into the airliner.
That's just what I have concluded by looking at the flight tracking data and everything else that people are talking about.
I mean, there's no scenario that isn't ridiculous.
I know.
Because the entire scenario is ridiculous from the jump.
From the jump.
66 people died or something, which is quite a number for numerologists.
It's just everything.
It's just wacky.
Everything about it.
Nothing good.
Nothing good.
Yeah, I'm just waiting for a whole series.
It was a settlement of $33 million.
Yeah. Six million people were notified of their next of kin.
It's surprising they didn't say there were 33 people on it.
Or it took like 33 seconds from impact to hit the ground.
Or, yeah, the 33 should be in there somewhere, right?
Yeah. They doubled it.
They thought they'd be really subtle this time.
There you go.
Just double it.
Yeah. Yep.
All right.
Well, let's call it good.
That's going to be it for today's episode.
I'm sorry.
I'm eating honey-roasted peanuts, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm sorry.
I won't do that.
I said at the beginning of this show, not this show, but the podcast, I said I wouldn't eat on air, but I'm eating on air.
I failed you.
I'm sorry.
I tried to mostly eat on mute.
Yeah, I'm just like nibbling on individual peanuts right now.
But then sometimes I end up talking on mute.
Anyway, that's gonna be it for today's episode.
We hope you all enjoyed The List, and we hope that you come back next week for another butt-clencher of an episode.
Yeah. The easiest way to do that would be to not try any of those ten things.
Yep. Do not try any risky...
Misadventures. But what you can do is check us out on Twitter and follow us there under at Paranautica.
Avoid Facebook.
Fuck Facebook.
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg.
Fuck the Deep State.
You can email us at paranautica at gmail.com.
That is P-A-R-A-N-A-U-G-H-T-I-C-A at gmail.com.
Let us know a story that you would like us to cover or you can send us a story that you'd like us to read on air.
We'll do it.
And please give us a five-star review, click the like button, the share button, and don't forget to subscribe.
Because you matter to us.
If you encounter any wild beasts or aliens, send us your selfies with them.
Yep. Don't get a selfie.
But if you get a selfie, send it to me.
Dude, I don't know.
I don't think you should try to get a selfie.
But if you get hurt doing it, I did not recommend it.
But if you want to.
Definitely send it to us if you do get that selfie.
We strongly advocate that you not injure yourself obtaining selfies in dangerous situations.
Cricket did not recommend it.
The Paranautica Podcast is not complicit in your choices.
I'm just saying that if you do anyway, it's because you can't be talked out of it.
Just share it with us, damn it.
Exactly, dude.
If it's already been done, just send it our way.
But we do not want you to go injure yourselves, purposely or unpurposely.
Not for us, just for Momo.
Momo. So until next time, hopefully you survive this week and come back to listen again next week.
Take care of yourselves and take care of one another.
