Teen Nearly Dies Doing Duct Tape Challenge, So Maybe Don’t Do the Duct Tape Challenge

The guy is alive, but his eye socket is really uncool right now.

by Joel Golby

January 28, 2016, 11:53am

The duct tape challenge (nobody nearly died doing this one) (via)

A teenager has suffered a number of brutal injuries and flirted briefly with death after a failed viral challenge went wrong, which – yep, I'm just checking against the board – which is the most teenager thing to ever happen. Look, here are the most teenager things to ever happen:

1. (NE) Teenager suffers a number of brutal injuries and flirts briefly with death after a failed viral challenge went wrong

2. (1) That video of all those German cybergoths dancing under a tunnel

3. (2) That video of that kid practicing his Star Wars lightsaber tricks alone in a garage on a VHS camcorder borrowed from school

4. (3) That kid at my school who had to move schools and also towns after he went up to a girl at a party and said popular-at-the-time American Pie quote "suck me beautiful" and she said "no" and people laughed at him so much he started crying

5. (4) Justin Bieber years 2010–2014

So what happened to oust the cybergoth video from the top of the "Teen Things" leaderboard? Well, human teenager – and, judging by the name, lead character in a series of deeply unpopular JRPGs – Skylar Fish, 14, was attempting the "duct tape challenge", a new one of those fun viral challenges everyone likes so much. So much fun, the challenges, just the same thing over and over again, a condom on the head or a Coke bottle full of Mentos or a bucket of ice and water, always a video shot in the wrong aspect ratio, footage always cut off one to two seconds before anything decent actually happens, always shot by mums, the videos, their hands wobbly, their glasses on their heads, counting in "3… 2… 1…" a good six seconds after recording has already started.

The duct tape challenge is: your mates bind you up in duct tape and you try to break out. That is the challenge. It's mostly done when you're sat in an office chair, but sometimes you can do it standing up.

Only: only, Skylar fell from his bound standing position, clonked his head eye socket-first on the corner of a coffee table, crushing his eye socket and suffering a brain aneurysm, requiring emergency surgery and resulting in 48 stitches to his head and pinched nerves in his eye. "When I think about it, it seems like I was hit by a car," he told KIRO7. Which: yeah! Sort of sounds like it!

Anyway, he'll be mostly fine after a few weeks of rehab, and they've started a GoFundMe page to cover his medical costs because America is broken. But the moral of the story is this: don't wrap yourself in duct tape and try to force your way out in a doomed effort to go mildly viral, or if you must, don't do it near a coffee table, or you might end up choking on your own blood and needing to have your skull cut open in an emergency way with a saw.

Yeah: who needs you, Aesop, with your fables! We don't need a story about a dog looking at his own reflection or something about a tortoise and the hare! We get all our modern lessons in life from teens giving themselves brain injuries!

@joelgolby

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