Black Mirror Season 7, Episode 1, "Common People," tells this story:
Mike, a welder, and Amanda, a teacher, are a loving couple trying to conceive. Unfortunately, Amanda is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.
Tech company Rivermind offers a solution: replace the damaged parts with synthetic brain tissue. The surgery is free, but Amanda's life thereafter will depend on the company's servers, with a monthly subscription fee of $300. With no other choice, Mike signs the agreement.
However, the subscription fees keep rising, and when Amanda is conscious, advertisements are involuntarily inserted. To secretly raise money, Mike starts live-streaming on the "Dum Dummies" platform—a website where viewers pay to instruct streamers to perform various humiliating tasks.
When exposed by a colleague, Mike loses his job, and the couple is plunged into despair.
A year later, Mike can no longer afford the premium service that maintains his wife's life. Amanda sleeps 16 hours a day, and her occasional awakenings are only to broadcast ads. Mike uses his last savings to buy 30 minutes of the premium package, allowing Amanda to leave her final words in brief peace.
When the time expires, Mike personally ends Amanda's life. The final shot freezes on the still-live laptop screen, with Mike holding a box cutter, walking into the darkness.
Being forced to sell one's dignity for the right to survive is the aspect that feels most chilling and oppressive in this episode. Therefore, when pump.fun launched a new feature called "Pump.fun Go" earlier this month, many couldn't help but think of this episode.
The story of Black Mirror is not far from our lives; it has even entered them.
$2,600 Is the Price of a Forehead Tattoo
The new pump.fun GO feature allows anyone to post paid bounty tasks on pump.fun.
This did attract the attention of mainstream media, but unfortunately, it touched the public in a negative light yet again.
$Bountywork, a token whose market cap once approached $2.5 million at its peak. Its developer, @ayushquantt, focused on continuously posting new tasks on pump.fun to generate hype for this token.
He succeeded—by offering a bounty of 40 SOL (approximately $2,600) for someone to tattoo $bountywork on their forehead.
An Indian man actually got the tattoo:
When submitting the full video of his tattooing process for bounty approval, he wrote in his remarks:
"Getting a permanent tattoo on the forehead, which will last a lifetime, is not an easy decision. The process itself was painful. It bled, and I had to endure the discomfort to complete it."
But his submission was rejected by the bounty poster due to a typo in the description—missing an 'n', writing the ticker as $boutywork. And this Indian man had precisely followed the requirements as described.
So, the next day, he went back to add a tattoo of the letter 'n':
This time, he successfully received the bounty. $2,600 is the price of a forehead tattoo. He said this money changed his life.
But he earned far more than just that $2,600. After his initial bounty approval request was rejected, someone sent him a token called $boutywork, using the incorrect tattoo as the new token's name.
Because the incident had enough traction, this token accumulated over $5 million in trading volume. The creator's revenue from transaction fees was given to him, so he ended up earning about $48,000 in total.
And this wasn't even the highest single bounty earned for completing a tattoo task on pump.fun. Another bounty task posted by @Perporseful, also requiring a forehead tattoo with "bounty.fun," was completed on the same day it was posted. The person eventually received a bounty of 200 SOL (approximately $14,000).
When submitting his tattoo proof for bounty approval, his remark was simple:
"We need money."
Priced Freedom Easily Amplifies Darkness
The hype around the Indian man's forehead tattoo has faded, and $boutywork has basically gone to zero. But the $Bountywork developer is still posting new bounties, trying to replicate this "success." For example, making someone wear a $Bountywork shirt and eat 3 bugs on camera.
Even though the bounty is only 2.5 SOL (about $178), not particularly generous, in the face of "We need money," this is hardly a challenge:
To continuously generate traffic for the $Bountywork token, @ayushquantt has spent $4,500 on various bounties. Besides the bug-eating challenge, there's also one like wearing a $Bountywork shirt and drinking a bottle of hot sauce for a bounty of 1.4 SOL (about $100):
But he has also posted some relatively normal or even heartwarming bounty tasks. For example, gifting a $50 gift card in the name of $Bountywork to someone in need, with a bounty of 1.5 SOL (about $107):
It's difficult to judge the morality of such actions or even the new pump.fun feature. What's very obvious is that gifting a $50 gift card to someone in need barely creates a ripple in terms of traffic, but eating bugs or drinking hot sauce on camera is much more likely to gain attention.
I don't think this means "in an era where traffic equals money, we have all become slaves to traffic." Freedom often reveals itself in a raw, naked form; it's just that you and I have been 'protected' too well. We wouldn't get a forehead tattoo for $2,600 simply because we can still endure monthly salaries of a few thousand, venting our dissatisfaction with work and overtime in group chats and short video apps.
The Black Mirror episode mentioned at the beginning has long entered real life. During the 'wild west' era of live streaming, LiaoLiao Voice was once a popular platform. On December 31, 2018, a streamer with the online name "Da Fei," persuaded by the chat room host Wang and egged on by viewers, consumed a large amount of alcohol again and died of sudden cardiac arrest while out after drinking. In the three months before the incident, "Da Fei" had been live-streaming drinking every day, often drinking alcohol or soybean oil to earn tips.
In one of "Da Fei's" past live streams, he once said after drinking that he couldn't take it anymore and started convulsing. At that time, viewers in the chat room were still egging him on, "Pour what you vomited on your head, add another $300."
Others shouted, "LiaoLiao is finally going to have a death." Unexpectedly, it eventually came true.
Even in 2023-2024, with live streaming regulations becoming more mature, we can still find many cases of deaths due to excessive drinking during PK battles or binge-eating in mukbang streams.
"Desperate for fame," "Why go to such lengths for money?"—these are the final legacies these streamers leave for the internet, topics for after-dinner chatter, gradually disappearing into the massive daily data updates of the internet. Regulatory norms can indeed curb the excessive commodification of people by money, but ultimately cannot stop those on pump.fun who are willing to tattoo their faces for a few thousand dollars.
Because they really need the money.
Light in the Darkness
Although many bounties on pump.fun resemble Black Mirror or the dark web, you can also find some interesting and heartwarming things.
Organize a gathering in New York for people resisting work, promoting "Work is a scam," bounty $15,865. This is the kind of event that energizes a wage slave like me:
The $neet community has previously self-organized two offline "No Work Gatherings" in the US. If this bounty is completed, it will be the third.
Show kindness to 10 strangers to make their day better. The bounty poster did not specify the method—treat them to a meal, give them flowers, books, buy them coffee, tell them to have a good day. The five best videos each receive a $1,000 bounty:
Organize a charity food donation in your local community, providing food to at least 20 people in need, bounty $1,161:
There's even one for helping an old lady cross the street, bounty $145:
The world is vast and full of wonders. We cannot escape the darkness; we can only hope for more light.
