They mostly weren’t eating them, just making staged videos of themselves doing something dumb the way teenagers have ever since they got access to cameras. The problem is that biting into one and spitting it out again can be enough to kill you as laundry detergent can corrode your tongue and throat in seconds and it’s very easy to inhale liquid throat. The media reported it as teens eating tide pods, which made staging fake eating tide pod videos using a real tide pod as a prop seem like a fun idea for even more teenagers. If the media had been a little more responsible, then they could have got the message across that something more dangerous than it seemed was dangerous instead of telling people something obviously dangerous that hadn’t happened was dangerous.
I appreciate the context, but I just want to point out that you’re blaming “the media” for people putting laundry detergent in their mouth. I did dumb teenage things, yet even I feel qualified to say how knowingly stupid that is, especially for the payoff of… online validation?
The average person can be surprisingly dumb. The average teenager can be ludicrously much dumber. Dumb teenagers can be even dumber still. If the warning on the packet says do not eat but not do not put in mouth and warnings on packets generally tell you not to do things everyone knows would be dangerous, it doesn’t take much dumbness to come to the conclusion that it’s fine as long as you don’t swallow any.
They mostly weren’t eating them, just making staged videos of themselves doing something dumb the way teenagers have ever since they got access to cameras. The problem is that biting into one and spitting it out again can be enough to kill you as laundry detergent can corrode your tongue and throat in seconds and it’s very easy to inhale liquid throat. The media reported it as teens eating tide pods, which made staging fake eating tide pod videos using a real tide pod as a prop seem like a fun idea for even more teenagers. If the media had been a little more responsible, then they could have got the message across that something more dangerous than it seemed was dangerous instead of telling people something obviously dangerous that hadn’t happened was dangerous.
I appreciate the context, but I just want to point out that you’re blaming “the media” for people putting laundry detergent in their mouth. I did dumb teenage things, yet even I feel qualified to say how knowingly stupid that is, especially for the payoff of… online validation?
The average person can be surprisingly dumb. The average teenager can be ludicrously much dumber. Dumb teenagers can be even dumber still. If the warning on the packet says do not eat but not do not put in mouth and warnings on packets generally tell you not to do things everyone knows would be dangerous, it doesn’t take much dumbness to come to the conclusion that it’s fine as long as you don’t swallow any.