Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Golem (@web 3_golem)
If you were offered 4,000 yuan, would you be willing to lick a toilet floor?
At first hearing, most people would feel offended, as if their dignity had been trampled. But after calming down, it's hard not to feel a hint of internal conflict—"just this once, to sacrifice a bit of dignity for some money seems worthwhile."
This isn't a plot from some human experiment movie, nor a fictional moral dilemma. It's a real bounty that appeared on the task platform Pumpfun Go. If you just genuinely hesitated over that 4,000 yuan, then I have to tell you, someone was already faster to get down on the ground, and the actual reward wasn't 4,000 yuan, but about 40 yuan RMB (5.63 USD).
A young black man submitted a completion video of licking a gas station toilet floor
Licking a toilet is just an ordinary bounty task on Pumpfun Go. Even more extreme ones include: eating live insects, quitting in front of the boss, getting a forehead tattoo... and the ultimate task: suicide (1000 SOL, worth about $700,000).
(Suicide bounty)
Here, the rich use money to buy novelty and humiliation, the poor trade their bodies and dignity for survival, while spectators consume it all with relish from behind their screens. When "we need money" becomes the hardest currency, how far can the bottom line of human morality retreat?
Pumpfun Go: Pay Anyone to Do Anything
Pumpfun Go is a new product launched by the overseas meme coin launch platform Pump.fun in early June. Its slogan is simple and brutal: Pay anyone to do anything.
On Pumpfun Go, anyone can anonymously create bounty tasks and also anonymously complete tasks and submit evidence (mostly videos) to compete for the bounty, which is paid in cryptocurrency. To prevent issuers from backing out afterwards, the platform requires the full reward amount to be escrowed into a third-party account when the task is created. Ultimately, officials will review all submitted evidence based on the issuer's pre-set evaluation criteria and decide who gets the bounty.
According to official data, in less than a month since launch, a cumulative total of 238 bounty tasks have been posted on Pumpfun Go, bounties already claimed by task completers amount to $605,000, and pending task bounties amount to $225,000, with an average of $3,487 per task.
The currently available task with the highest bounty (about $56,000), posted by an online gambling platform, requires the challenger to reach the summit of Mount Everest and place a bet on that platform; the second highest bounty task (about $28,000), posted by a Meme project, requires the challenger to run a marathon dressed in the mascot costume of "memecoin" and break the world record of 3 minutes 14 seconds 46 set by a mascot running a marathon; the third highest bounty task (about $26,000), requires the challenger to personally attend the matches of every team in the World Cup, record videos and shout "$WORLDCUP2026 COIN TO THE MOON".
Highest bounty tasks on Pumpfun Go
In fact, most bounty tasks posted on Pumpfun Go are related to promoting meme coins. The initial purpose of Pump.fun launching this product was to incentivize players to build meme coins with compensation and unlock more gameplay.
For example, the NEET community themed on "decadent culture" offered a $14,000 bounty requiring challengers to organize a NEET parade in New York, and a $3,000 bounty requiring challengers to quit in front of their boss; the FITNESS community themed on health offered a $150 bounty requiring challengers to do 100 push-ups in 60 seconds; the CHANCE community themed on charity offered a $1,500 bounty requiring challengers to organize a trash cleanup activity, etc.
Five challengers shared the $1,500 bounty posted by the CHANCE community
But these above might be the only "heartwarming" aspects left on Pumpfun Go. Most of the remaining tasks are full of humiliation, bad taste, and harm.
Therefore, as soon as Pumpfun Go launched, many saw it as the real-life version of the seventh season premiere of *Black Mirror*, "Common People." However, another film released a decade ago, *Nerve*, had already predicted the inevitable flow traps, cyberbullying, and collective madness of anonymous crowds that would accompany Pumpfun Go's popularity.
In the movie, the heroine Vee is an introverted high school student. By chance, she downloads a live-streaming game called Nerve that has swept the internet. In this game, viewers can pay to design challenges for players. At first, the challenges are harmless things, like kissing a stranger or going out in weird clothes. But as viewership soars, the prizes get higher, and the challenges become more dangerous and bizarre, like stripping or blindfolded motorcycle racing at high speeds.
In the movie, the male and female leads are required to strip in an elevator
The core of meme coin hype is attracting attention. From a human nature perspective, bizarre, humiliating, exaggerated, and stimulating content is always easier to attract eyeballs than heartwarming, positive content. To create buzz for meme coins, players are destined to post controversial bounty tasks, leading Pumpfun Go into absurdity and chaos.
Descending into Absurdity and Chaos: Earning $14,000 by Tattooing a Forehead
In Pumpfun Go's platform rules, the posting of bounty tasks related to violence, defamation threats, discrimination, and pornography is explicitly prohibited. Content with substantive harm is easily identifiable, but tasks with bizarre, humiliating elements cannot be banned. There is no universal bottom line for human tolerance of morality and dignity. The relationship between task posters and challengers is simply one where "one is willing to hit, and the other is willing to get hit," because the payment offered is just too much.
Currently, the highest-paid user on Pumpfun Go is one named "riri_z1," who earned about $14,000 (approximately 95,000 yuan) from completing just one task—his task was to tattoo "bounty.fun" on his forehead.
The reason the task issuer required the challenger to tattoo "bounty.fun" on their head is because they launched a meme coin of the same name, and doing this would garner a lot of attention in a short time. The task was completed by an elderly Filipino man, who only said one thing in his submission: "we need money."
But how would a man in his sixties know about this obscure bounty platform? The truth of this story is most likely that a challenger who saw the task wanted to earn the bounty but didn't want to tattoo his own forehead, so he found a local elderly man to do it; as for how much of the bounty this old man received, no one cares.
"riri_z1" wasn't the first to complete a forehead tattoo task on Pumpfun Go; challenger "arivu" was the pioneer in this field, and his experience is even more dramatic. On June 6th, he tattooed the meme coin "$boutywork" onto his forehead for a bounty of about $3,000. However, the task issuer, ayushquant, made a typo when posting the task, mistakenly writing "$boutywork" instead of "$bountywork," so he reposted a new forehead tattoo task and did not recognize "arivu's" tattoo.
arivu tattooed "$boutywork"
Six days later, "arivu" completed the new task again. He tattooed an "n" above and between the "u" and "t." Perhaps moved by "arivu's" sincerity, the officials ultimately ruled that he won the bounties for both forehead tattoo tasks, totaling about $6,000 (approximately 40,000 yuan).
In his task submission, arivu not only held no grudge against the task issuer ayushquant for misspelling the word but also filled the note with gratitude: "Thanks @ayushquant for bringing this opportunity again, and also thanks pump.fun, for creating opportunities that can truly change people's lives."
Most of the high-bounty tasks completed on Pumpfun Go are similar in nature to forehead tattoos, filled with bizarre, absurd, and prank-like elements. ayushquant is the task issuer who has paid out the most bounties on Pumpfun Go, totaling about $10,000 to challengers. His posted tasks include drinking a bottle of hot sauce, eating three live insects on camera, doing a backflip off a roof into a swimming pool, etc.—ayushquant had also posted some bounties like helping the homeless, but they received far less attention than these "heavy-duty" challenge tasks.
A young black man ate three live insects on camera to earn a bounty, receiving $174 (approx. 1200 yuan RMB)
What Are We Ultimately Sighing About?
Although all challenges are completed voluntarily by participants, and they even thank the issuer after receiving payment, various sectors of society have criticized Pumpfun Go, arguing that it essentially induces people in lower socioeconomic strata to perform humiliating acts in public, amplifying the darker aspects of human nature.
Under posts discussing arivu's forehead tattoo on the overseas social platform X, an X product manager commented: "It's sad. After all the rich people left the crypto industry, now the whole industry is just American teenagers forcing poor people to do embarrassing things."
Current New York State Governor Kathy Hochul directly quoted the post announcing Pumpfun Go by Pump.fun, stating, "First order of business should be a bounty on the bill to ban this dystopian nightmare." (Odaily note: Pump.fun's parent company Baton Corporation is based in New York)
NY Governor criticizes Pumpfun Go
But Kathy Hochul's remarks were quickly countered by Pump.fun supporters. The meme coin Chill House account sarcastically retorted: "Good afternoon, Governor! This new product (Pumpfun Go) is as serious as the worsening homelessness problem in New York since the pandemic. How will you also address the inadequate housing construction so people don't have to sleep on the streets?"
In the eyes of supporters, Pumpfun Go does not amplify wealth disparity and inequality. On the contrary, it provides opportunities for those struggling to improve their lives, even creating a new form of "wealth distribution." A challenger named xavz, who completed the "quit in front of the mirror" task for a $3,000 bounty, even testified firsthand.
In his task submission, challenger xavz wrote: "I'm doing this because neetcoin (the task issuer) gave me a better opportunity than my company. I can earn $3,000 in one day (completing this task), whereas at my company I earn $200 a month. Plus I can work from home and be with my family."
xavz quits for a $3,000 bounty
Meanwhile, Pump.fun itself has not responded to the overwhelming criticism on social media. Its only action was announcing on June 25th that the company is hiring a Chief Legal Officer (CLO) with an annual salary of $1 million to $5 million.
This debate over the bottom line of morality and dignity likely won't have a resolution. In the entire mechanism of Pumpfun Go, the rich get entertainment, and the poor get money. This seems like a mutually beneficial, absolutely fair "win-win" situation. But why do we, witnessing all this, still feel an unfathomable sense of desolation and sorrow?
What Pumpfun Go reflects is actually this society's power structure. The greatest asset of the rich is not money, but the poor. When a person is desperate enough for money, dignity, body, and reputation all become commodities that can be priced. How much can a single "we need money" make people give up? And exploiting economic inequality to make impoverished or desperate individuals perform permanent or high-risk acts for a bounty is a culpability that Pump.fun cannot wash away, no matter what.
We are not sighing for those living in hardship, because we know that if we were in their position, we might not make different choices. What truly fills us with sorrow is why, in an era that boasts of technological leaps and civilizational progress, society still operates this way, still transforming the pain, embarrassment, and loss of dignity of the vulnerable into content for spectators to casually consume and like.
If we gaze into the abyss of history, we find this phenomenon hasn't fundamentally changed for thousands of years. From slaves spilling blood to entertain nobles in the ancient Roman Colosseum in the 3rd century BC, to freak shows in circuses, to bizarre short videos and live PK battles—the medium changes, but the voyeuristic fascination with others' danger, pain, and embarrassment never disappears.
After endless melancholy, perhaps we can only place our faint hope in the future.
AI is increasing societal productivity at an unprecedented rate. When AI truly replaces humans in heavy survival labor, if one day the wealth created by technology is sufficient to cover the basic lives of every ordinary person, so that no one has to lick a toilet floor for a few dozen yuan, tattoo letters on their forehead for a few thousand dollars, or accept any humiliating or mocking challenge just to survive, but can instead live with dignity—only then might humanity truly emerge from this millennia-long wilderness.
