From the Cinnamon Challenge to the Bean Boozled Challenge, YouTube is full of videos of people attempting various strange feats.
Now, one YouTuber has faced a huge backlash for his challenge, titled ‘Can 1,000,000 Paper Towels Absorb A Swimming Pool?’
As the name suggests, the bizarre challenge saw YouTuber Tyler Oliveira throw 100,000 rolls of paper towel into his swimming pool, in a strange attempt to soak up all the water.
In his video, which has received almost 300,000 views, he said: “We’re destroying these paper towel rolls right now. We’re still barely making a dent into this moist swimming pool.”
Unsurprisingly, the paper towels failed to absorb the entire pool, and instead the water levels went down by a measly inch.
While the video was likely made in good spirit, many viewers took issue with the waste accumulated in Mr Oliveira’s video.
One user commented: “Talk about pollution and waste”, while another added: “The amount of paper towels that was wasted is terrible.”
Meanwhile others pointed out the juxtaposition between his video and YouTuber Mr Beast’s ambitious attempt to plant 20 million trees.
One user said: “MrBeast: plants 20 million trees. You: wastes 100,145 ‘paper towels.’”
In response to the backlash, Mr Oliveira tried to defend himself by claiming that the paper towels ‘existed independently of whether or not I would have used them.’
He wrote: “These paper towels existed and would have been used at some point in the foreseeable future. But yes, perhaps, I had a micro impact on the demand of paper towels throughout the entire paper towel industry. Who knows.”
However, in a subsequent comment, he agreed that the video was a ‘really bad idea.’
He added: “Given that this video is receiving so much attention, albeit negative, I wanted to see if we could turn this big negative into a big positive! I've donated $1000 to the Australian Red Cross organisation.”
