A project of the Integrity InstituteOne of the unfortunate elements of how the internet is configured today is that it is optimized in many instances for shock, and that often inadvertently optimizes for content that is offensive, outlandish, or expressly made at someone else's expense.
Dangerous Pranks, drinking livestreams, the infamous tide pod challenge, all are instances of a media ecosystem that prizes traffic, and is ambivalent of the mechanism that influencers use to gain it. Additionally, online environments can easily foster cultures where the sensation of the events unfolding eclipses and abstracts away from the people generating the content, and users push for the absurd, dangerous outcomes because the distance of the internet allows them to dissociate the characters on the screen from the real people that get hurt.
“People knew what the outcome of buying [them] the strongest shot is, but they still did it, because they wanted to see a tragedy,” she added. “It was a whole audience of pushers.” - HuffPo, Deadly Drinking on TikTok
Just search "deadly prank" in the news to see story after story of people creating challenges or pranks as jokes, often using staged actors or deceptive editing, and then see others follow them blindly, harming themselves or others in the process.
While individual creators are certainly the originators of almost all of this content, it's critical to recognize the role that platforms play in incentivizing the creation of outrageous material, which by subset encourages the growth and creation of these explicitly dangerous sub-genres. A platform that optimizes for attention and engagement is unlikely to be able to ever fully grapple with wave after wave of "tide-pod challenge", because the patterns of attention, danger, and outrage are all deeply interwoven, and evoke similar responses.