Photo: Roman Samokhin/Getty Images

In a future that is rapidly approaching, if not already arrived, our children will be raised entirely by YouTube. Not just in the sense that we will be parking them in front of nightmarish procedurally generated approximations of educational content for countless hours a day, but also in the sense that YouTube will be directly responsible for teaching our children not to do things like scream racial slurs, shoot videos of dead bodies, and now not to drink laundry detergent.




Per CNN, YouTube has finally stepped in and decided to preemptively take down videos of teens (or anyone else, but let’s be honest: it’s teens) attempting the Tide Pod Challenge. The Tide Pod Challenge of course being a “challenge” in which one attempts to eat a Tide (or similar brand) laundry detergent pod, and then goes to the hospital, because you shouldn’t eat fucking Tide Pods.

Here’s the official ruling invoked by YouTube (beyond, y’know, Jesus Christ don’t eat and/or drink fucking laundry detergent): “YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm.” Considering how many not-taken-down videos a YouTube search for “guy hits self in nuts” yields, that should tell you just about all you need to know regarding how bad of an idea it is to drink laundry detergent.


Facebook has said it too will remove videos of the Tide Pod Challenge, so don’t think you’ll be able to post your mouth-foaming exploits for the enjoyment of your racist uncles, either. Thankfully for fans of dumb people doing very dumb things, good old Twitter Dot Com has never found a moral quandary it couldn’t completely fuck up. So in the interest of, eh, let’s say journalism, check this shit out:


Seems like a bad idea! Look, The A.V. Club is not entirely immune to the charms of Tide Pods. They kind of look like Gushers! They very well could come in a variety of fruit flavors! But here’s the thing: they are not and do not. If you simply must drink laundry detergent (and let’s be clear, there is absolutely no possible reason this is the case), why not try these fun recipes that won’t dissolve your gastrointestinal system. Or, even better, have you considered eating food?