Exploding watermelon stunt

The exploding watermelon stunt or exploding watermelon challenge involves wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until the pressure of the rubber bands causes the watermelon to explode in a dramatic or spectacular fashion.

On April 8, 2016, the website BuzzFeed streamed the stunt live on Facebook. ^[1] During the 45-minute stream, the event peaked at over 800,000 live watchers, and the resulting video of the event garnered millions of views.^[2] The event was parodied a few days later on The Tonight Show.^[3] The show had attempted the stunt in September 2015 with Olivia Wilde, but cut the segment short as it was taking too long.^[4]

The event generated discussion of the future of journalism where trivial events can garner significant attention.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

The concept of putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it explodes first became popular on the internet as early as at least July 2012, when the stunt was filmed by The Slow Mo Guys with a very high frame-rate camera, but earlier videos date back at least to 2008.^[10]

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