The drunk history of game reviews. Nice.
I hope this kind of thing becomes a trend - I’m waiting for Severe-Beating Celebrity Apprentice
I had to watch another one with a male host to make sure my reaction wasn’t due to some kind of deep seated misogyny. Turns out it is plain old schadenfreude.
Meh. Try to do this under the influence of the Bhut Jolokia.
Egoraptor did one and it did not go well for him.
I just… feel so bad for these hosts…
There’s a part of me, deep down in the darkest depths that would be interested in seeing international news read like this just once.
“And in Syria today, three hiccup thousand hiccuppeople were – aaghh! it fucking burns! – killed by government forces in clashes outside pant pant pant Damascus…give me the fucking milk.”
Only two comments before someone said “misogyny”. Some kind of new record, methinks.
She’s indeed a trooper. I like hot foods, but I can’t eat a habanero. They’d probably have to cart my ass off to the hospital if I did. I feel sorry for what will happen to her 12 hours later.
Like this guy, king of the Caucasian pepper eaters.
TIL that everything is a Thing. Everything.
This experimental multimedia performance piece juxtaposes the immediacy of physical pain and distress with the practice of bloodlessly reviewing video games. Through humorous contrast, it underscores the absurdity of such obsessive attention to the minutia of a wholly constructed game world in the face of unmediated experience in the flesh. Computer-rendered images of heroic deeds and flashy violence appear beside the head of a person struggling to overcome the discomfort of eating a pepper in order to deliver scripted commentary.
One is left to wonder how the host can think about video games in a situation like this, and as observers we realize that we too are focused much more on the suffering of a human being than the details of the latest mass market entertainment. In this way, the piece is simultaneously cynical about the triviality of media consumerism and sentimental about the core human condition.
I started reading your post assuming it was a parody of art criticism, but ended up feeling a weird mixture of enlightenment and meta-confusion.
It read like copy pasta to me, but google doesn’t find it anywhere else. a neat bit of criticism, @zikzak
whoa, the same thing happened to me while writing it!
Forget Bhut Jolokias, try doing it with Moruga Scorpions or Chocolate 7pots.
I’m supposed to enjoy watching another human being in real pain?
Ugh. I feel vaguely unclean for having watched that.
From my own experience, you do get a good endorphine kick from eating hot chillis, but I do understand that it would look bad to the inexperienced.
If the person has been forced or coerced into eating it, that would obviously be wrong, and probably be considered an assault in the UK (no idea about other countries).
Yeah, I’ve never understood shows like this that are supposed to encourage true shadenfraude, as if we should find it entertaining to watch the genuine suffering of another person.
Also, @anon73430903: while paying people or offering them the chance at a prize in exchange for them doing something they would find unpleasant isn’t coercion in the strict sense, it is still exploitative. It’s all a matter of degrees - hobo boxing is clearly unacceptable, and working a 12 hour shift at a boring job is usually fine. This is somewhere in the middle, and it was far enough for me that I didn’t want to watch it.
Maybe I’m just over-sensitive, but I’d even extend this to things like Jackass and to a show here called Total Wipeout, where one of the games involves spinning half a dozen people very quickly on a motorised merry-go-round and then getting them to do things while dizzy. The person I was with introduced it by saying “someone was sick once, and they’re strapped in so it went on everyone else!”. Ugh.
I agree about shadenfraude, but I don’t think this video fits the model you’re talking about. For one thing, although what this person is doing looks genuinely painful, it also looks fun. To me. (I wouldn’t enjoy eating the pepper in just any context, but I would in the context of making a video like this.) If the reviewer didn’t enjoy this and did it only for money – which could be the case – then I’d find it troubling. But that wouldn’t be my first guess about what’s going on.
I was assuming that paying someone to eat a hot chilli is coercive, but I do understand that not everyone has this opinion. I should have said so and will try and be more clear in future.
