There was an article this morning about a young guy dying trying to duplicate a YouTube stunt that some other young guys filmed pulling off in Utah.

It used to be that we never had the chance to call anything crazy or dangerous that we did a “YouTube stunt”.  It was just something goofy that stayed in the same small group…bragging rights on a small scale…”remember when Robert climbed the crane?  Good gosh…I was scared…”.

Now, you if do something crazy and film it there’s a chance that 17 million people will see it.

That’s a lot of potential peer pressure…it used to be bad with just a small group egging each other on…imagine what it would be like to have 17 million people saying “dooooo itttttt!!!! you go, boyeeeee”.

Here’s the original YouTube video….

Read the comments…there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of sympathy for the young kid who died.  Apparently, he misjudged the length of the rope he’d need and bottomed out when he jumped.

This video makes it look so fun…with the cool soundtrack and all….that it almost makes me want to do it with a good length of clothesline…and I’m afraid of heights.

Here’s a “making of” video of the stunt….

Watching this, it makes me wonder if the kid who tried it and wasn’t successful had a chance to watch this video?

The thing about something like this is that the ropes that climbers use are called “dynamic ropes” because they stretch.  The ropes stretch…they stretch so that in the event of a climbing fall, some of the shock is taken out of hitting the end of the rope length….and unless you’re planning for it, I could see where somebody could hit the ground on a long pendulum like this.

Listen to the comments at the end of the “making of video”…the guys are talking about people doing the stunt after seeing the YouTube video.

Thankfully, the folks that I hung out with didn’t have access to any videos of other people doing crazy things.

The fun hogs had enough imagination to get into as much trouble as they could handle without that kind of help.

(A short post script…did anyone else expect a soda can to ‘splode at some point?)