The two elements of this piece of internet performance art seem completely unrelated. Why, after all, would one eat a spicy chili pepper just before delivering a video game review into a camera? And yet the result is so utterly compelling. It's like watching someone teeter on the lip of a volcano while wearing a clown suit. Or like watching someone pretend to play a joyful game of twister on a twister mat full of broken glass. Or like watching someone try to tell a joke while being burned alive.
None of these analogies does it justice. Just watch the truly harrowing, insane 3 minutes of it.
My favorite moments:
- The way reviewer Erin Schmalfeld responds to the experience of eating the pepper (not once but twice) by whispering fearfully, "No!"
- The way her increasingly pained voice and teary eyes suggest despair in the face of not only the absurdity of the game she's reviewing but the absurdity of existence itself.
- The way her pain hardens into anger, which she takes out on the game's cheesy Disney dialogue about following your heart: "Who cares? WHO CARES??"
- The truly heroic crawl to the end.