Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Golem (@web3_golem)
If I give you 4000 yuan, would you be willing to lick the floor of a toilet?
At first glance, most people would feel offended, as if their dignity were trampled. But upon calming down, one's heart inevitably begins to waver—"Just this once, selling a bit of dignity seems worth it."
This is not some plot from a psychological experiment movie, nor a fictional moral dilemma, but an actual bounty task appearing on the bounty task platform Pumpfun Go. If you have seriously wrestled with the idea for 3000 yuan, then I must tell you that someone else has already gotten down on their knees, and the actual reward is not 4000 yuan, but about 40 yuan (5.63 USD).
A Black man submitted a video of licking the floor of a gas station toilet
Licking toilets is just an ordinary bounty task on Pumpfun Go, while even more thrilling tasks include: eating live worms, resigning in front of a boss, forehead tattoos… and the ultimate task of suicide (1000 SOL, worth about 700,000 USD).
(Suicide bounty)
Here, the rich buy curiosity and humiliation with money, the poor exchange their bodies and dignity for survival, while onlookers eagerly consume all of it in front of their screens. When "we need money" becomes the hardest passport, where else can the bottom line of human morality retreat to?
Pumpfun Go: Pay to Make Anyone Do Anything
Pumpfun Go is a new product launched by the overseas meme coin launch platform Pump.fun in early June, with a simple and blunt slogan: Pay to make anyone 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, paid in cryptocurrency. To prevent creators from backing out after the fact, the platform requires that the full reward be escrowed in a third-party account at the time of task creation. Ultimately, the official reviews all submitted evidence according to the judging criteria provided by the creator and determines the distribution of the bounty.
According to official data, within less than a month of its launch, a total of 238 bounty tasks have been published on Pumpfun Go, with bounties already claimed by task completers amounting to 605,000 USD, and pending task bounties reaching 225,000 USD, averaging 3487 USD per task.
Currently, the task with the highest bounty (around 56,000 USD) was released by an online gambling platform, requiring challengers to reach the summit of Mount Everest and place a bet on the platform; the second highest bounty (around 28,000 USD) was released by a meme project, requiring challengers to run a marathon dressed in “memecoin” mascot attire and break the world record of 3 minutes 14 seconds 46; the third highest bounty (around 26,000 USD) requires challengers to personally go to the match locations of each participating team in the World Cup, film videos, and shout “$WORLDCUP2026 COIN TO THE MOON.”
The highest bounty task on Pumpfun
In fact, most of the bounty tasks published on Pumpfun Go are related to promoting meme coins, and the initial purpose of launching this product by Pump.fun was to incentivize players to build meme coins and unlock more gameplay.
For example, the NEET community bounty themed around "decadent culture" has a 14,000 USD requirement for challengers to organize a NEET parade in New York, a 3000 USD bounty for challengers to resign in front of their boss; the FITNESS community has a 150 USD bounty requiring challengers to do 100 push-ups in 60 seconds; the CHANCE community, themed around charity, has a 1500 USD bounty requiring challengers to organize a litter cleanup event, etc.
Five challengers shared the 1500 USD bounty released by the CHANCE community
But all of the above might just be the last vestige of “warmth” from Pumpfun Go; the majority of the remaining tasks are filled with insult, bad taste, and harm.
Thus, as soon as Pumpfun Go was launched, many viewed it as a real-life version of the first episode "Common People" from the seventh season of "Black Mirror." However, another film released a decade ago, "Nerve," had already predicted the flow trap, online violence, and collective madness of anonymous groups that would inevitably accompany the popularity of Pumpfun Go.
The female lead in the movie, Vee, is a shy high school student who, by chance, downloaded a wildly popular live streaming game called Nerve, in which viewers can pay to design challenges for players. Initially, the challenges were harmless tasks, such as kissing strangers or wearing bizarre outfits in public, but as the viewership skyrocketed, the bounties increased, and the challenges became more dangerous and bizarre, such as undressing or blindfolded motorcycle racing.
In the film, the male and female leads are asked to undress in an elevator
The core of meme coin hype is attention-grabbing, and from a human nature perspective, curiosity, insult, exaggeration, and stimulation always attract more attention than warmth and positive energy; in order to generate topics for meme coins, players are doomed to release controversial bounty tasks, and Pumpfun Go heads into absurdity and chaos.
Heading Towards Absurdity and Chaos: Earning 14,000 USD for a Forehead Tattoo
The platform rules of Pumpfun Go explicitly prohibit the publication of bounty tasks related to violence, defamation, threats, discrimination, and obscenity. These tasks with substantial harm are easy to identify, but those with curious undertones and insulting elements cannot be banned. Human tolerance for morality and dignity does not have a universal bottom line, and the relationship that exists between task publishers and challengers is one of "one is willing to fight, the other is willing to be beaten," because the rewards are just too appealing.
Currently, the highest bounty earned on Pumpfun Go is by a user named "riri_z1”, who completed a task and earned about 14,000 USD (about 95,000 yuan)—his task was to tattoo "bounty.fun" on his forehead.
The reason the task publisher requires challengers to tattoo "bounty.fun" on their foreheads is that he released a meme of the same name, which can garner significant attention in a short amount of time. The task was completed by an elderly man from the Philippines, who only stated "we need money" in his submission.
But how would a sixty-year-old man know about this obscure bounty platform? The likely truth behind this story is that a challenger who saw the task wanted to earn the bounty but did not want to tattoo words on their own forehead, so they found a local old man to complete it; as for how much bounty this old man ultimately received, no one cares.
"riri_z1" was not the first person to complete a forehead tattoo task on Pumpfun Go; the challenger "arivu" was the first in this domain, and his experience is even more dramatic. On June 6, he tattooed the meme coin "$boutywork" on his forehead, with a bounty of about 3000 USD. However, the task publisher ayushquant made a typo by missing an “n”, incorrectly writing "$bountywork" as "$boutywork", and thus, he reposted a new forehead tattoo task and does not recognize “arivu’s” tattoo.
arivu completed the tattoo with "$boutywork"
Six days later, "arivu" completed the new task, tattooing the "n" above and in between the "u" and "t". Perhaps moved by "arivu's" sincerity, the official ultimately ruled that he would receive the bounties from both forehead tattoo tasks, totaling about 6000 USD (about 40,000 yuan).
When submitting the task, arivu not only did not resent the task publisher ayushquant for the misspelling but also expressed gratitude in a postscript: "Thanks @ayushquant for this opportunity again, also thanks pump.fun, thank you for creating an opportunity that can truly change people's lives."
All of the high-bounty tasks completed on Pumpfun Go are similar in nature to forehead tattoos, filled with curiosity, absurdity, and pranks. Ayushquant is the task publisher on Pumpfun Go who has paid out the most bounties, having given around 10,000 USD to challengers, with tasks including drinking a bottle of hot sauce, eating three live worms in front of the camera, and jumping from a roof into a pool, etc.—ayushquant had also released some bounties for aiding the homeless, but they did not attract nearly as much attention as the “hardcore” challenge tasks.
A Black man ate three live worms in front of the camera to win a bounty of 174 USD (about 1200 yuan)
What Are We Really Wistful About?
Although all challenges are voluntarily completed by participants, and even after receiving their rewards, they express gratitude to the publishers, various sectors of society still criticize that Pumpfun Go essentially induces lower-class people to engage in humiliating behaviors that damage their dignity in public, amplifying the darker side of humanity.
In a post discussing arivu's forehead tattoo on the overseas social platform X, an X product manager commented saying: “It’s sad, when all the rich have left the crypto sector, now the entire industry is just American teenagers forcing the poor to do embarrassing things.”
Current New York Governor Kathy Hochul directly quoted the post from Pump.fun launching Pumpfun Go to say, “The first thing should be to reward a bill aimed at banning this dystopian nightmare.” (Odaily Note: The parent company behind Pump.fun, Baton Corporation, is based in New York)
New York Governor criticizes Pumpfun Go
However, Kathy Hochul's remarks were quickly rebutted by supporters of Pump.fun, with the Meme coin Chill House account sarcastically accusing, “Your Excellency, the governor! This new product (Pumpfun Go) is as serious as the increasingly severe homelessness problem in New York since the pandemic; how do you plan to address the insufficient housing construction issue so that people don't have to sleep on the streets?”
To supporters, Pumpfun Go has not amplified the gap and inequality between the rich and the poor; rather, it offers struggling individuals a chance to improve their lives, even creating a new "wealth distribution method." A challenger named xavz, who completed the "resign in front of a mirror" task for a bounty of 3000 USD, even shared his personal account.
The challenger xavz stated in his submission, “I did this because neetcoin (the task publisher) offered me an opportunity much better than my company; I can earn 3000 USD in a day by completing this task, whereas I only earn 200 USD in a month at the company. Plus, I can work from home and be with my family.”
xavz resigned to earn a bounty of 3000 USD
Meanwhile, Pump.fun itself has not responded to the overwhelming criticism on social media; its only action was announcing on June 25 that it is hiring a Chief Legal Officer (CLO) with a salary ranging from 1 million to 5 million USD.
This debate about the bottom line of morality and dignity may never come to a conclusion. Within the entire mechanism of Pumpfun Go, the rich gain pleasure, and the poor gain money, which seems like a mutually beneficial arrangement that is absolutely fair; yet why do we, the witnesses of it all, still feel an uncontainable sense of deep sadness and wistfulness?
Pumpfun Go reflects the actual power structure of this society, where the greatest asset owned by the rich is not money, but the poor. When a person is desperate enough, dignity, body, and reputation can all become commodities that can be priced. How much can a simple phrase “we need money” lead people to give up? And leveraging economic inequality to make the poor or desperate engage in permanent or high-risk acts for bounties is a sin that Pumpfun can never wash away.
We do not weep for the struggling individuals, for we know that if we were in their position, we might not make different choices. What makes us truly sorrowful is that in this era that claims technological advancement and civilizational progress, why does society still operate this way, still converting the suffering, embarrassment, and loss of dignity of the weak into content for spectators to consume and like at will.
If one gazes into the abyss of history, one may find that this matter has likely not changed in essence over thousands of years. From the blood-soaked slaves in the Roman gladiatorial arena entertaining the nobles in the 3rd century BC, to the freak shows in circuses, and then to short video curiosities and live stream PKs, the mediums change, but the bad taste of witnessing others’ danger, suffering, and embarrassment has never disappeared.
In endless sadness, we may only place our faint hopes on the future.
AI is enhancing the productivity of society at an unprecedented rate. When AI truly takes over human menial survival jobs, if one day the wealth created by technology is sufficient to cover the basic needs of every ordinary person, allowing them no longer to lick toilet floors for a few dozen yuan, no longer tattoo letters on their foreheads for a few thousand dollars, no longer accept any humiliating mock challenges for survival, but rather live with dignity, humanity may finally have stepped out of this long-standing barbarism.
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