The Dangers of a Wildlife YouTube Trend

I first became aware of sting challenges through the YouTube channel Brave Wilderness, led by Coyote Peterson, a sort of Americanized version of Steve Irwin. Coyote is most notorious for his gauntlet of sting videos from various insects, primarily wasps, where he filmed the effects of those stings and rated their pain levels. His quest was to discover the most painful stinging insect.

The videos Brave Wilderness produces are informative and interesting but are more suited for a younger audience which is where the problem begins. Brave Wilderness styles itself as educational, and no doubt the majority of videos produced have little to nothing to do with pain and are just that. However, the primary draw to the channel is the pain. The stings and bites are the main selling point and aren’t up for debate. If you go to the channel and sort the videos by popularity, you’ll see the sting videos litter the top results. Brave Wilderness has effectively monetized pain.

Coyote worked his way up to more painful stings and bites from various creatures as a sort of ‘pain gauntlet’. I suppose he was never in much danger unless allergic to the stings, but he carried an epinephrine pen just in case he experienced a reaction. More recently, I’ve found other YouTubers picking up the same shtick too, but their approach is slightly different. They take a sort of anti-Coyote Peterson approach. Coyote uses the same tactic reality shows take with their manufactured drama. He knows if he dramatizes the pain, viewers will stick around. Some YouTubers have caught on and have jumped into the same challenges to demonstrate that Coyote is embellishing the pain he experiences. In fairness to the newer YouTubers picking up this trend, they are right about Coyote. He is clearly over-acting and not doing the best job, leading to comical moments in his Brave Wilderness videos.

The goal of these newer YouTubers, like Danny Berk and Jack’s World of Wildlife, aims to show what it’s really like to get bit or stung by these creatures. Often they demonstrate that the experience is painful, but not one that will leave you hunched over, writhing in pain, screaming until the veins in your forehead burst. Coyote’s performance in some of his sting videos is more akin to what you might expect if he’d amputated his arm. It’s absurd and over the top. The newer YouTubers show that the stings are far more subtle than Coyote chooses to depict. My problem isn’t with the demonstration of these bites and stings that YouTubers subject themselves to. My problem is with the ‘pain react’ genre itself and the potentially dangerous trend it’s setting.

Monetization

Humans are intrigued by pain. Bites and stings fit the bill. There’s a fear factor involved with the pain as well as the creepy, crawly creatures involved. People also have a general curiosity about the injury from the perspective of “What if this happened to me?”. The content is entertaining and informative, but the resulting trend of videos seeking to answer this question poses a significant problem.

How long until one of these YouTubers engages in a bite or sting challenge and dies? What about the viewers witnessing the subtle effect of these bites and stings, concluding that they are mostly harmless? What if they experience a bite from one of the insects or arachnids, either deliberately or accidentally, but fail to seek proper medical attention? These videos can set false expectations in the viewer, which could prove harmful or deadly. A warning at the beginning of a video might protect YouTubers legally, but it does not protect the viewer from harm.

The truth is, YouTubers are doing it for the money. They give out accurate and valuable information, but how much of that information is landing with the audience when so many are watching for the pain reaction itself? These YouTubers often begin their videos with a preview of what’s to come. The bite or sting is a way to hook the audience and retain their attention. I wonder if the statistics on those videos show a large portion of the audience skipping most of the lead-up after that preview, including the important warnings and factoids given, just so they can see the bite or sting? I suspect the number of viewers who skip the informative portions of their videos is quite large, especially in the days of TikTok and short attention spans.

I’m not saying that all of their content is geared towards bites and stings. There’s a wealth of content on these channels dedicated to wildlife without the selling point of pain, but that content tends to receive the least amount of views. It’s the content with the pain that is bringing in the most views and therefore the most $$$.

Where are the limits?

The most recent channel I watched, Jack’s World of Wildlife, features the YouTuber getting bit by several notoriously dangerous spiders, like the Black Widow and Brown Recluse. In fact, the Black Widow bite was a painful experience for Jack that lasted longer than he anticipated. Jack chalks this up to experiencing a longer-than-usual bite, which resulted in more envenomation, suggesting that the viewer wouldn’t experience symptoms as severe as he did if encountering them elsewhere. I wonder if that bite is more reflective of scenarios that one might actually experience with these creatures, such as encountering a Widow hiding in your shoe while getting dressed for work. Would that be a simple bite and release?

Because of high audience ratings and retention for these videos, YouTubers are encouraged to keep making them. They can’t keep making the same video repeatedly and expect to retain viewership. People want NEW challenges. NEW insects. NEW animals. NEW bites and stings. They want to see boundaries pushed. They want to see stakes increased. More danger! This is the way of the film industry, whether it be reality television or the latest Hollywood action spectacle. It’s also the same here on YouTube, albeit on a much smaller scale.

How long will it be before somebody, wishing to put out something original that nobody else has done, acquires a spider easily capable of killing humans, like the Australian Funnel-Web spider? Why even stop there? At what point will it become the norm for YouTubers in this genre to react to the bites of progressively more venomous snakes? How can we be sure that YouTubers aren’t going to abuse this genre in the future with the magic of editing? I can conceive of shady YouTubers milking the creatures beforehand to remove any personal health risk from their experience, but without telling their audience that they’ve done so. That way they get a clickbait title, they “defeat” the odds, and receive endless praise from their audience who don’t know any better than to question their antics. In this scenario, the YouTuber would give the impression that the bites aren’t that dangerous! Imagine the implications for anybody watching that content who might get the wrong idea. I’m not suggesting Coyote, Danny or Jack have done this, but as this wildlife pain gauntlet genre catches on, there will be those who take advantage.

Death will happen. It’s only a matter of time. People do stupid things to get views, especially zoomers on YouTube and TikTok. In fairness to them, my generation is no different. We were raised on this sort of content too. We called it Jackass and had a lot of fun with the genre, but at least for Jackass, there was an entire team, including medics behind the camera most of the time, just in case one of their mind-numbingly dumb stunts went horribly wrong. YouTubers lack this. They don’t have medical personnel on-scene to react timely to the dangerous stunts performed. They are taking health risks to seek fame and fortune and the consequences aren’t limited to their own body. Their videos are influencing others.

If you like these videos, I’m not trying to ruin your fun. I’m not trying to hurt these YouTubers financially. I enjoy these videos too, I’ve watched them for years now. However, the more I watch them, the more I see this “safe” boundary challenged and I believe the longer it continues, the more dangerous it will get.

Jack’s World of Wildlife swore off spider bite videos after his dreadful Black Widow experience, but the video turned out very popular. Inevitably, as the views piled up, he returned two years later to film a Brown Recluse bite for the second time. More recently, he graduated to filming a Brown Widow bite, which features more toxic venom than the Black Widow that initially scared him off. His negative experience with the Black Widow wasn’t enough to ignore the popularity he received from making the video. Even during his off period, he continued to explore wasp stings and other biting insects, capitalizing on the pain gauntlet genre.

Coyote Peterson started a trend that other YouTubers picked up and have expanded on. Is it reasonable to expect this genre to stop with them? No. It will evolve. More enthusiasts seeking to capitalize on the wildlife pain gauntlet genre will start making videos too. They will continue to one-up the last challenge and eventually, a YouTuber will draw the short straw. Then what? Will the genre be banned? Will these sorts of videos be demonetized and removed from the platform?

The fact of the matter is, the people engaging in this content are playing with fire and are rewarded for it, which facilitates a trend to ramp up the dangerous stakes of the stings and bites they subject themselves to. It’s worth considering that if they can’t exploit this genre for money, they’d be less likely to push those boundaries into truly dangerous territory. I’m not sure what action should or needs to be taken for this content, but I can at least ask these YouTubers not to push the envelope further than they already have.

Article originally published by me on Medium.