There once was a time when a man named Shoenice ruled the dark underbelly of Youtube. A mysterious figure, he gave off conflicting feelings of menace and heroism. The first video of his that I saw had him eating an entire tube of caulking. Although he would often be eating strange and allegedly inedible substances, it became clear that his forte was drinking large quantities of liquor very quickly. I remember him downing a fifth of honey jack in one go. Thankfully Youtube noticed my fascination and was kind enough to reveal to me another related genre: obese men drinking large beers fast.
I think it was the belching that really hooked me. Hearing a 350 pounder burp after drinking 40oz of OE is a religious experience.
MexicanXConnection was really the king of the form. His chug speed: unrivaled. His drinks variety: unmatched. His technique: unimpeachable. After some recent digging, I found his Instagram page and it appears that he has quite drinking. I suppose the malt caught up with him eventually. We wish him well.
There was always a darkness to these videos. Unhealthy people doing unhealthy things alone in oddly-lit rooms for an unconcerned audience is obviously sad, but who are we to argue if they do it to themselves? Besides, I was raised in the internet era of shock sites and LiveLeak (may she rest in peace), so the level of harm on display here doesn’t quite rise to the level of true disturbance.
Speaking of LiveLeak I believe its shutdown was a death knell for an era of the internet. There was a time when all sorts of horrible things were easily viewable on Youtube, but now they have clamped down on certain ugly aspects of the human condition — such as Shoenice slowly killing himself for our amusement. I remember videos of fifteen year-olds smoking bongs of salvia. I remember the Lungbuster (30 Inches of Doom). Much of the more heinous content has moved to places like Twitter, Instagram Reels, and TikTok, their removal from Youtube was still an indication of the general sanitization of the web.
Lately all the horrible and offensive videos I see are on Instagram Reels (they’re probably on TikTok too if I cared to look). They’re still hideous, but something about having them just scroll by as opposed to seeking them out and sitting through them for 4 minutes robs them of a certain power. I am glad to see that the spirit of sending videos of death and dismemberment to your friends still thrives, but the eyes of our internet overlords are boring into the back of our necks as we watch, ever ready to delete our beloved content. I look through my list of “Liked Videos” on Youtube and see too many fallen soldiers. What were these videos? Were they deleted by the creator? Were they deemed to be beyond the pale? When I started using the internet everything seemed like it would be accessible forever. Now content of all types is slowly disappearing. Official streaming services delete movies as they simultaneously disappear from torrent sites, never to be seen again. We are being forced back to physical media. My DVD collection becomes more precious as time goes on.
It used to seem that you could get away with pretty much anything on the internet. We used to use language on Facebook that now would get you banned on Reddit, and with our actual names attached. I salute now, as I did then, the strange people who sit in their rooms and post videos of themselves, hurting themselves or no. The spirit of self-destructive posting for its own sake must be maintained, without fear of external retribution.
Great one. Never knew about these guys.