Exploding watermelon stunt
Act of breaking a watermelon with rubber bands
The exploding watermelon stunt or exploding watermelon challenge involves wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until the pressure of the rubber bands causes the watermelon to explode in a dramatic or spectacular fashion.
01BuzzFeed event
On April 8, 2016, the website BuzzFeed streamed the stunt live on Facebook. During the 45-minute stream, the event peaked at over 800,000 live watchers, and the resulting video of the event garnered millions of views. The event was parodied a few days later on The Tonight Show. The show had attempted the stunt in September 2015 with Olivia Wilde, but cut the segment short as it was taking too long.
The event generated discussion of the future of journalism where trivial events can garner significant attention.
02Challenge origin
The concept of putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it explodes first became popular on the internet as early as at least July 2012, when the stunt was filmed by The Slow Mo Guys with a very high frame-rate camera, but earlier videos date back at least to 2008.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Exploding watermelon stunt”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Rubber bands wrapped around a watermelon.png by JustMaiko, CC BY 3.0
- Exploding watermelon.jpg by Kids Fun Science, CC BY 3.0
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