People have time and again come up with unique social media challenges that sometimes make us go, “But why?” From attempting the dangerous ‘bin bag vacuum challenge’ to trying ‘the triangle dance’, people have done all this and more to attract eyeballs and increase their social media following.
This time, it’s this curious YouTuber who decided to attempt a challenge, but later regretted his decision. YouTuber Tyler Oliveira came up with the challenge titled ‘Can 1,000,000 Paper Towels Absorb A Swimming Pool?’ In the bizarre attempt to dry his swimming pool with 25,000 gallons of water, Tyler decided to dump 1 Million paper towels in it, reported Mirror Online.
He shared a video in which he was seen performing the ‘not so sensible’ stunt. In his YouTube video, Tyler clarified the reason why he decided to attempt the strange challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjGF7HMJSjQ
“A couple of days ago I decided to go viral on TikTok. The video idea was simple, I tripped, spilt my water into the swimming pool and joking displayed my inability to clean up the mess, running out of paper towels in the process.” And surprisingly, his TikTok video was able to garner over 11 MILLION VIEWS!
That’s when he ‘sparked a question to the nation’ i.e. how many paper towels would it take to absorb an entire swimming pool. He then ordered 1 Million rolls of ‘the most absorbent’ paper towels, online. He first started with ‘one paper towel at a time’ method. Since that proved to be inefficient, he started shoving and retrieving the entire roll from the pool.
And after two days of dropping all the paper towels in and then retrieving them, the water level in the pool was just an inch lower. But by this time, there was a hill of used paper towels by the pool. And this wastage triggered people’s reaction online.
The video that was viewed more than 3 lakh times also attracted a lot of backlash.
In his defence, Tyler said that he was able to dispose of his mess efficiently. He further added 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 for paper towels throughout the entire paper towel industry. Who knows?”
He even said that he ‘deserves the criticism on this one.’ He added that to make amends he has made some generous donations to the Australian Red Cross organisation.
Here’s what he posted on his YouTube channel:
I’ve donated $1000 to the Australian Red Cross organization, and have created a link below via Facebook Fundraiser where you can donate as well!. All proceeds go directly to the Australian Red Cross organization which helps their emergency teams to fight the bushfires we’re currently seeing across NSW, Qld and SA, and disasters yet to come. Once again, my bad gang. This video was a big fat L.”
Since Tyler was unable to soak up his swimming pool with the 1,000,000 paper towels, he decided to do the math to come to a conclusion. And according to him, it will take 3.625 million paper towels to soak up the 25,000 gallons of water in his pool. We are so glad he didn’t test out this theory. What do you think of this? Tell us.