Tide Pod Challenge: YouTube Washes Its Hands Of Weird Video Fad

If you want your Tide Pod Challenge video fix, you'll no longer be able to turn to YouTube for your kicks and giggles, or whatever it is you get by vicariously participating in the bizarre craze. The video sharing channel said this week that it is pulling "dangerous" videos showing teens and young adults eating or pretending to eat laundry detergent pods because — well, no one really knows why they do it, except that someone dared them to. It's a facepalm-inducing craze for sure.

YouTube said in a statement the videos will be removed because they “encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm.”

Do you think? Laundry detergent pods contain a toxic cocktail of ethanol, hydrogen and polymers that become dangerous and even deadly when ingested. At least 10 deaths have been attributed to detergent packet ingestion. Retail stores are locking them up like expensive liquors.

In its statement, YouTube says it uses a “strike” system and that it works “quickly to remove flagged videos that violate our policies.” When a video gets too many strikes, the channel is removed. However, by early afternoon Thursday, at least one Tide Pod Challenge video remained.

Facebook and Instagram are also removing Tide Pod Challenge videos, CNN reported.

Some brands, like Tide, choose brightly colored packets, which children may mistake for candy. The nonprofit consumer organization Consumer Reports said the laundry detergent pods can be lethal to adults with dementia who may mistake them as edible. At least six people with dementia who ate the packets died between 2012 to early 2017, the Consumer Products Safety Commission disclosed after Consumer Reports filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

The craze seems to stem from a post on the satirical website The Onion picturing a little boy under the headline “So Help Me God, I’m Going To Eat One Of Those Multicolored Detergent Pods.” The tongue-in-cheek post followed a report from the American Association of Poison Control Centers that the laundry packets pose a serious risk to children.

The craze gained more traction last March with College Humor’s “Don’t Eat the Laundry Pods,” which shows a college student trying to resist the colorful packets, then gorging himself before ending up on an emergency backboard, where he proclaims “I don’t regret it.”

However, anyone who has lived to tell about gorging on laundry detergent pod surely does — or certainly should — regret it. Side effects include vomiting, abdominal pain, flatulence and diarrhea.

See Also: Tide Pod Challenge: 5 Things About Dangerous Fad

(AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)