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Eaten Alive new contender for moron of the year

Spoiler. PETA blasts TV stunt that leads to all kinds of bullsh*t responses.

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2014-12-12_0111SPOILER:

Discovery will tonight air its publicity stunt Eaten Alive in which Paul Rosolie will attempt to get eaten by an anaconda snake.

By now there has been so much publicity for this, you would have to have been living in the rainforest not to have heard what went down -or, more to the point, what didn’t go down.

Rosolie abandoned the stunt when he reported numbness in his limbs, and concern that one of his arms was close to breaking point.

So the title for the show is false advertising.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals blasted him for his stunt.

“Under natural conditions, anacondas go weeks and even months between meals, eating only when necessary for survival and expending the tremendous amount of energy required to attack, constrict and consume large prey only when the payoff outweighs the risk,” a PETA spokesperson said.

“Paul Rosolie and his crew put this snake through undeniable stress and robbed her of essential bodily resources. She was forced to constrict and then not allowed to eat.”

Discovery responded with a corporate bullshit response:

“Paul created this challenge to get maximum attention for one of the most beautiful and threatened parts of the world, the Amazon Rainforest and its wildlife. He went to great lengths to send this message and it was his absolute intention to be eaten alive. Ultimately, after the snake constricted Paul for over an hour and went for his head, the experiment had to be called when it became clear that Paul would be very seriously injured if he continued on.  The safety of Paul, as well as the anaconda, was always our No. 1 priority.”

So the snake misses out, the audience misses out and the guy is worried he might be injured. What did he think would happen?

And this was all for the rainforest? Sting once did a lot for rainforests too but it never involved injuring animals nor ending with an anti-climax.

Rosolie later joked with Jimmy Kimmel that he probably owed it to “the people of the planet Earth to get eaten by something.”

No, you owe it to the people of planet Earth not to be a moron who wastes our time.

Eaten Alive airs 8:30pm tonight on Discovery

11 Responses

  1. @david @dayum – in the US market at least – it absolutely worth it

    the ratings were massive.

    discovery has been going downmarket for years – and every time they take a notch down they go up in ratings

    the next stunt will be even stupider – and viewers will not care

  5. When I heard about this a month or so back. It was, ‘that is so unbelievable, i may have to watch.’

    Thank god I read about it first on reddit. The worst part, it’s two hours!!!

    You would only watch it because it is so insane, but the fact it doesn’t happen and it’s two hours. Wow, for shame Discovery.

  6. Thanks for putting this up, David. I called this animal abuse when I first heard about it. We can only have our doubts about how serious this idiot was about going through with the stunt but to promote it the way Discovery did when they knew the end result is a ‘bait and switch’ in the most literal sense (except the snake didn’t get anything for its efforts).

    Discovery used to be a half-decent pop-sci documentary channel but is now full of pseudo-science and sensationalist junk. I’d like to think that nobody will watch this now but unfortunately I know, as Discovery’s executives know, that there are a lot of kids and uncritical adults who will scoff this tripe down and ask for more.

  8. THIS:

    “No, you owe it to the people of planet Earth not to be a moron who wastes our time.”

    Nail on head!

    I followed this on twitter. the #EatenAlive tag was in full force and the anger was palpable. Discovery Channel are guilty of pulling a monumental switcharoo. “We were all about the rainforest, which is so important.” That wasn’t how they promoted it.

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