bartholen said:
Two words: Youtube views. Considering it's supposed to be laced with the most bitter substance on earth, people aren't tasting it to see if it tastes bad, but how bad it tastes. Not that it makes those people any less moronic and/or desperate.
Honestly I don't think it has very much at all to do with youtube views, perhaps a tiny amount but not to any great extent. Instead its simple human curiosity.
Humans have advanced due to an innate and inescapable curiosity that at least some of our species has. The curiosity to try things out and see. As a scientist, science is absolutely full of these kinds of people.
Let me use an example: if you're in a restaurant and they say they have a dish made with one of the hottest chillis in the world on the menu there is a sizable portion of people who would want to have a nibble. Sure there'll be some people who think that entire idea is absolutely idiotic because "why would you do that to yourself? Its stupidly hot", but there is a decent number who will just want to try. Just to see exactly how hot it is.
Exactly the same thing here. You make it taste bad so people won't eat it. But there's a sizable amount of people that now want to taste it specifically so they can find out just how bad it tastes. I must admit to being curious myself.
Curiosity is a powerful thing. To paraphrase something I read somewhere once: if you put a big red button in a cave somewhere and painted a sign above it saying "End of the World button do not press" then the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
