A Twitch streamer went viral after letting his followers pay to subject him to Chinese water torture in scenes disturbingly reminiscent of a recent episode of Black Mirror.
The streamer, who goes by the name IZIDORE, recently put himself on camera and challenged his viewers to donate a certain amount of bits, virtual currency on Twitch which is worth about one US cent for each bit, to his channel and if they did more water would be poured on his head.
In essence, his viewers would pay three cents per drop of cold water on his head, with other rates available to dump more water on his head.
He made a machine which would drop water depending on people's donations and lay beneath it for a whopping 16 hours to rack up a long list of donations.
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Plenty of people who learned about the stream have compared it to the recent and harrowing Black Mirror episode 'Common People', which we're about to discuss in case you haven't seen it.
Everyone who doesn't want spoilers skedaddled? Good.
In the episode, Amanda (Rashida Jones) has her life saved by a new piece of technology after a brain tumour almost kills her, but with a bit of tech in her head she and husband Mike (Chris O'Dowd) have to pay a subscription to keep it working.
Over time the subscription gets worse as Amanda sleeps for more of the day and has her mind taken over during conversations so she can read adverts to people, with the couple forced to pay for a higher tier subscription to avoid the worst of it.
In order to pay for the higher subscription costs Mike starts working overtime, and when that isn't enough he signs up to a website called Dum Dummies where people torture themselves on camera for money.
Plenty compared IZIDORE's stream to Black Mirror, saying 'it genuinely made me feel so uncomfortable' and that 'bro bringing Dum Dummies to life'.
"Black mirror is going to run out of dystopian futures to imagine at this rate," was someone else's reaction, while another said that the show was more like a 'documentary' than anything else now.
With the moment dubbed 'Common People coded', one said that seeing people 'literally torturing themselves for money' was a sign things had got really bad.
Almost half a million people watched IZIDORE's stream.
Fortunately for the man beneath the drops of water it didn't seem to be too terrible an ordeal in the end.
At the end of the stream he said: "That was so fun, chat. The outcome was way better than expected."
Despite the name, Chinese water torture did not originate in China and there are doubts over its effectiveness as a method of torture, though torture in general is a largely ineffective practice.
The MythBusters tried it out during one of their episodes and found it could be distressing, but that largely came from the subject being restrained.
When done on a relaxed and unrestrained person they found that the water had almost no effect.
Other Twitch streamers have undertaken stunts which have left their viewers worried that they're putting themselves in danger for views.
Topics: Twitch, Black Mirror
Joe Harker