You've heard the Mythbusters say it a thousand times: Do not try this at home. But such words to the wise are nowhere near as effective as actually showing what could go wrong.

A fellow by the name of Mehdi Sadaghdar demonstrates the concept in this YouTube video entitled: 'Don't worry, it's just ESD! (Electrostatic Discharge).' ... (Update: And don't miss his comments below.)

Reviews among YouTube's commenters are decidedly mixed:

"Up next, Mehdi shows you how to use﻿ a table saw." "I am waiting for his﻿ gun safety class." "I really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY, R-E-A-L-L-Y hope this is all staged for laughs and you didn't do that accidentally. If that was real, you're the stupidest (&*^%) imaginable and should not be in engineering or electronics."

Although a majority (to which I belong) seem to be of the opinion that the apparent shocks were all part of Sadaghdar's attempt to make his point ... and were just part of the script, in addition to being very funny.

"I'm pretty sure those﻿ were done on purpose so the lessons can have a more lasting impression along with adding a bit of humor," writes one YouTuber. So stop ripping on the guy please."

So real or staged? I say staged, but it's been my experience that the best way to answer a question like this is to ask. I'll let you know if Sadaghdar responds to my email.

(Update: Here is the man's reply: "Thanks for posting my video. I try to create a script for my videos and I shoot every scene like 20 times to get it right. This is mainly because my English is quite rusty and I can't speak continuously without language errors!

"In the case of the ESD video, I tried to avoid actually zapping myself, which didn't quite work and I ended up zapping myself with 25kV quite a number of times! The scene you see is one of those times I ended up hurting myself! I noticed when the hurt is real people like it more, of course, and I'm not that good to create a convincing fake scene!

"Regarding the (YouTube) comments, I see that most people like it which is encouraging. In any case I love that people are leaving comments and communicating to each other.")