A 60-year-old man has died while taking part in a drinking challenge live on Youtube.
Yuri Dushechkin took in one-and-half litres of vodka on a livestream feed and collapsed before 150 people who watched.
Police officers and paramedics rushed to his home in Smolensk, Russia, where they found his lifeless body on Thursday, according to local reports.
The 60-year-old man, who was affectionately known as ‘grandfather’, had been taking part in a controversial activity called “trash streaming” where people are paid to carry out dangerous stunts online.
He is claimed to have been a regular on ‘First Step to YouTube’, a channel that became well-known locally for broadcasting “trash streaming” activities.
Critics claim the channel targets vulnerable participants who are humiliated because they are desperate for the money.
The channel was first highlighted in 2017 when it offered to pay homeless people to drink alcohol or hot sauce on camera.
In October, blogger Andrey Burim was arrested after a 21-year-old model was beaten live on air.
He was banned from YouTube.
A month later Stas Reshetnikov, who is known as Reeflay Panini, made headlines when he streamed himself kicking out his girlfriend Valentina Grigoryeva, 28, in sub-zero temperatures.
Reshetnikov allegedly kept his camera rolling even as he realised Valentina was “half dead” after she was put on an exposed balcony.
He is then reported to have carried her back inside his rented house in Ivanovka village, near Moscow, and kept filming as he tries and fails to revive her.
The horrific broadcast is reported to have continued to his 10s of thousands of followers, even when he called an ambulance and it went on when paramedics arrived and pronounced her dead.
In a previous broadcast he is accused of showering her with pepper spray.
Reshetnikov faces up to two years in prison if forensic experts prove that his girlfriend died of hypothermia, say reports citing law enforcement.
In December 2020, Russian Senator, Alexey Pushkov, called for a ban on broadcasts that live stream violence.
Pushkov said to the Senate, “a criminal case has just been opened because a girl died as a result of a stream.
“We must introduce such amendments to the legislation that will prohibit trash streams.”