Youtube celebrities – Lee Duigon

So there was this Chinese guy who wanted to be a YouTube celebrity (I never heard of him until last night), so he filmed himself doing wacko crazy stunts way up high on skyscrapers. And it worked for a while, his videos were going viral; but of course, he wound up getting stuck with having to make his stunts increasingly dangerous in order to keep his audience.

And eventually he got halfway through a stunt he couldn’t do, and that was the end of him.

Now what was all this for? Well, for no other reason than to increase his own personal fame. He became his own human sacrifice to his own idol–himself.

Just one of God knows how many nooze stories a day pointing to the piecemeal destruction and collapse of our global civilization. Largely due to worshiping all kinds of false gods and ignoring the only real One.

Do you want to be saved? YouTube numbers won’t save you. Viral videos of yourself swallowing Tide pods won’t save you.

Jesus saves. And I doubt He watches YouTube stunts.

Davy Crockett was our country’s first international celebrity, famous mostly for things he didn’t do; but young Sam Patch, a mill hand from New Jersey, had him beat by over a decade.

Sam became famous by jumping off the Passaic Falls and not getting killed. He soon went on tour, performing death-defying jumps off ships’ masts, buildings, and other waterfalls. It gave rise to a popular slogan: “There’s No Mistake in Sam Patch.” I am unable to explain that slogan.

In 1829 Sam became the first insane human being to jump off the top of Niagara Falls. He survived, but the money he earned was insufficient for his needs… so he did it again. Jumped off Niagara Falls twice.

Later that year, jumping off a cliff into the Genessee River, something went wrong. He hit the water badly with a loud crack and never emerged, his frozen body being found a few days later. It’s possible he suffered a heart attack half the way down, which ruined his entry into the water.

He was 22 years old.

He’s been largely forgotten; but “The Wonderful Leaps of Sam Patch,” illustrated above, was published in 1870.

He would’ve been a mega-celebrity on Youtube, these days.

Why did he do it? Fame and money, perhaps: and jumping off waterfalls had to be more thrilling than working as a mill hand. And after jumping off Niagara Falls twice, maybe he felt there was nothing he couldn’t do.

If you’ve ever been to Niagara Falls and seen it with your own eyes, you’ll find Sam’s feat exceedingly hard to imagine. Maybe even impossible.

To risk one’s life for entertainment seems a deeply pagan thing to do.