Chinese vlogger dies after eating poisonous insects and geckos in live-stream video
PUBLISHED ONJuly 25, 2019 5:45 AMByWong Xue Min
For some Chinese live-streamers, the path to online fame begins with consuming dangerous animals.
Unfortunately, such endeavours may end with tragic outcomes.
A Chinese vlogger identified only by his surname, Sun, recently died during a live-streaming session in which he ate live geckos and poisonous insects.
His body was discovered in his flat in Hefei, China, on July 20 when his girlfriend went to check in on him.
Xinan Evening News reported the 35-year-old was a regular vlogger who hosted live-streams on DouYu - a state-approved Chinese live-streaming website - and had 15,000 followers.
In an attempt to attract more followers, Sun played a dangerous game -- he spun a wheel marked with things such as centipedes, geckos, mealworms, beer, and a clear-distilled liquor called baijiu, and consume the item that the wheel landed on.
This concoction of unappetising items may have resulted in his quick death, with police arriving to find his laptop still in live-streaming mode.
His last session was on July 18 at 7.53pm while he was filming himself eating poisonous centipedes and geckos.
Most of Sun's videos on DouYu have since been removed from the website.
The police said the cause of death was suffocation but did not say whether the deceased had consumed the insects.
LIVE-STREAMING IN CHINA
According to South China Morning Post, there are at least 900 live-streaming platforms and over 10 million active vloggers in China.
A 2018 report published by the Chinese social media platform Momo revealed that many Chinese youth are keen on pursuing live-streaming as a career, especially for females. Of the 5,000 hosts surveyed in the report, over 60 per cent of the participants were in their 20s and 78.8 per cent of them are female.
With increasingly fickle fans and intense competition, many live-streamers are resorting to risky methods to secure their popularity.
RISING TREND OF EATING DANGEROUS ANIMALS
Sun is not the only live-streamer who has thought of eating dangerous animals in a desperate attempt to garner more attention, views, and followers.
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In May, a viral video clip on Weibo showed a Chinese live-streamer who had her face nearly ripped off by a live octopus that she was trying to eat.
Live octopus is typically consumed in South Korea as a raw dish called san-nakji (산낙지), sprinkled with sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds.
To prevent people from choking on wriggling pieces of octopus arms, the animal is usually chopped into pieces before consumption.
In this live-streamer's case, the choice to consume the octopus whole was a deliberate one, as she wanted her video to go viral.
Would you take a chance and dine with death in exchange for (most likely temporary) fame?