pump.fun's new feature brings *Black Mirror* into reality

Season 7, Episode 1 of *Black Mirror*, titled "Common People," tells the following story:

Mike, a welder, and Amanda, a teacher, are a loving couple trying to start a family. Unfortunately, Amanda is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

Tech company Rivermind proposes a solution: replace the damaged part with synthetic brain tissue. The surgery is free, but Amanda's life will henceforth depend on the company's servers, costing a monthly subscription fee of $300. With no other options, Mike signs the agreement.

However, the subscription fee keeps rising, and when Amanda is conscious, she involuntarily plays advertisements. To secretly raise money, Mike starts live-streaming on "Dum Dummies"—a platform where viewers pay to command the streamer to complete humiliating tasks.

After a coworker exposes this, Mike loses his job, and the couple finds themselves in a desperate situation.

A year later, Mike can no longer afford the premium tier subscription needed to keep his wife alive. Amanda sleeps 16 hours a day, and her rare moments of consciousness are only for broadcasting ads. Using his last savings, Mike buys a 30-minute premium package, allowing Amanda to leave her final words in brief peace.

When the time expires, Mike ends Amanda's life with his own hands. The final shot lingers on the laptop screen—still live-streaming—as Mike walks into the darkness holding a utility knife.

Having to trade one's dignity to earn the right to survive—this is what makes the episode feel so cold and oppressive. So when pump.fun launched a new feature called "Pump.fun Go" earlier this month, many people couldn't help but draw parallels to this episode.

The story of *Black Mirror* is not far removed from our lives; in fact, it has entered our lives.

$2,600: The Price of a Forehead Tattoo

pump.fun's new feature, Pump Fun GO, allows anyone to post paid bounty tasks on pump.fun.

It certainly attracted attention from mainstream media, but unfortunately, it reached the public in a negative light once again.

$Bountywork, a token that once peaked at a market cap of nearly $2.5 million. Its dev, @ayushquantt, focused on continuously posting new tasks on pump.fun to generate hype for the token.

And he succeeded—by offering a bounty of 40 SOL (approximately $2,600) for someone to tattoo $bountywork on their forehead.

An Indian man actually went through with the tattoo:

When submitting the full video of his tattoo process, he wrote:

"Getting a permanent tattoo on my forehead is something that will stay with me for life. It wasn't an easy decision, and the process itself was painful. I bled during the tattooing and had to endure the discomfort to get it done."

But his submission was rejected by the bounty poster due to a slip-of-the-finger mistake in the description—they missed an 'n' and wrote the ticker as $boutywork. And this Indian man had tattooed exactly what the description demanded.

So, the next day, he went back and got an additional 'n' tattooed:

This time, he successfully claimed the bounty. $2,600—the price of a forehead tattoo—he said, changed his life.

But he earned far more than just that $2,600. After his initial submission was rejected, someone sent him a token called $boutywork, using the misspelled tattoo as the token's name.

Because this story had enough viral traction, the token's cumulative trading volume exceeded $5 million, and the creator's earnings (trading fees) were all given to him. In total, he made around $48,000.

And this wasn't even the highest single bounty for a tattoo on pump.fun. Another bounty posted by @Perporseful also required a forehead tattoo, this time reading "bounty.fun." Someone completed the task on the day it was posted and ultimately received a bounty of 200 SOL (approximately $14,000).

When submitting his tattoo proof to pass the bounty review, his caption was simple:

"We need the money."

The Freedom to Set a Price Can Easily Amplify Darkness

The hype around the Indian man's forehead tattoo has faded, and $boutywork has essentially gone to zero. But the dev of $Bountywork continues to post new bounties in an attempt to replicate this "success"—for example, offering a bounty for someone to wear a $Bountywork shirt and eat three bugs on camera.

Although the bounty is only 2.5 SOL (approximately $178), which isn't much, when "we need the money" is the reality, this is hardly a difficult task:

To continuously generate buzz for the $Bountywork token, @ayushquantt has already spent $4,500 on various bounties. Besides the bug-eating challenge, there was also a task to wear $Bountywork clothing and drink a bottle of chili sauce, with a bounty of 1.4 SOL (approximately $100):

He has also posted some more normal, even heartwarming bounties, such as giving a $50 gift card to someone in need in the name of $Bountywork, with a bounty of 1.5 SOL (approximately $107):

It's hard to judge such actions, or even pump.fun's new feature itself, as good or bad. What is clear is that giving a $50 gift card to someone in need barely makes a ripple in terms of traffic, whereas eating bugs or drinking a bottle of chili sauce on camera is far more likely to attract attention.

I don't think this means "in an era where traffic is money, we have all become slaves to traffic." Freedom often reveals a certain rawness, and we are simply too "sheltered." The reason we wouldn't tattoo our foreheads for $2,600 is that we can still tolerate a monthly salary of a few thousand dollars, venting our frustrations about work and overtime in group chats or by scrolling through short videos.

The *Black Mirror* episode mentioned at the start has long since entered our lives. In the "wild west era" of live streaming, a platform called Liaoliao Voice once boomed. On December 31, 2018, a streamer known as "Dafei," persuaded by the chatroom owner and egged on by viewers, drank heavily again and died suddenly after going outside. In the three months before the incident, Dafei had been live-streaming drinking every day, earning tips by drinking alcohol, soybean oil, and performing similar stunts.

"Dafei" drinking soybean oil

In one of Dafei's previous streams, he said he couldn't go on after drinking and started convulsing. The audience in the chatroom continued to goad him, saying, "Pour the vomit on your head, I'll add another $300."

Others taunted, "Liaoliao is finally going to have a death on its hands." No one thought it would become a prophecy.

Even in 2023-2024, with increasingly mature live-streaming regulations, we can still find cases of deaths from excessive drinking during PK battles or binge eating on food streams.

"Desperate for fame," "Why go that far for money"—these are the last legacies these streamers leave for the internet, topics for idle gossip that gradually fade into the vast daily influx of data. While regulations can curb the excessive commodification of people by money, they ultimately cannot stop those on pump.fun willing to tattoo their faces for a few thousand dollars.

Because they genuinely need the money.

Lights in the Darkness

Although many bounties on pump.fun feel like something out of *Black Mirror* or the dark web, you can still find things that are interesting and heartwarming.

Organizing a rally in New York for people who refuse to work, promoting the idea that "work is a scam," with a bounty of $15,865. As someone who feels like a cog in the machine, this is an inspiring activity:

Earlier, the $neet community had already organized two in-person "Anti-Work Rallies" in the US. If this bounty is completed, it will be the third.

Showing kindness to 10 strangers to make their day better. The bounty poster didn't specify how—buy them a meal, give them flowers, a book, or a coffee is fine. Tell them to have a great day. The best 5 videos will each win a $1,000 prize:

Organizing a charity food drive in your local community, providing food for at least 20 people in need, with a bounty of $1,161:

There's even a bounty for helping an elderly person cross the street, worth $145:

It's a big, strange world. We cannot escape the darkness; we can only hope for more light.