YouTube has updated its community guidelines to try and stop users uploading videos of themselves doing deliberately dumb, dangerous stuff, specifically name-checking the Tide Pod challenge, among others.
“YouTube is home to many beloved viral challenges and pranks, but we need to make sure what’s funny doesn’t cross the line into also being harmful or dangerous,” reads the company’s note about the update.
“We’ve updated our external guidelines to make it clear that challenges like the Tide pod challenge or the Fire challenge, that can cause death and/or have caused death in some instances, have no place on YouTube.”
The update also includes updated policy about pranks that could cause severe emotional distress in children or traumatise them for life, “the fake death of a parent or severe abandonment or shaming for mistakes”.
Let’s hope this was precautionary and not a response to people on YouTube actually doing that.
But then again, who knows? The internet is absolutely that dumb and terrible.
Remember when your mum would ask “If all your friends jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” Now we have a very definitive answer to that question: absofuckinglutely you would have.
Online challenges went from “Oh no, cold water! Brrr!” to “hey guys wanna see me watch me eat some poison fkfkfksskkaskfhjgfhdgfjdk”.
And that’s before you get to car-related stunts – from ghost riding the whip to #InMyFeelings, and now people are just straight-up driving blindfolded (for the Bird Box-inspired challenge).
People are getting into car accidents because of 'Bird Box'. Smh.
According to the Layton Police Department, a 17-year-old girl was driving with her eyes covered while participating in the ridiculous 'Bird Box' challenge … she crashed: https://t.co/DSZCo1OvrX pic.twitter.com/oFyd4DmDZa
— Complex (@Complex) January 11, 2019
The full FAQ on pranks is available here.
Don’t forget to like and survive.