pump.fun的新功能，把《黑镜》搬进了现实

Black Mirror's Season 7, Episode 1, "Common People," tells the story of a loving couple, welder Mike and teacher Amanda, who are preparing for a child. Unfortunately, Amanda is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

Tech company Rivermind proposes a solution: replace the damaged part with synthetic brain tissue, free of charge, 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 fees keep rising, and when Amanda is awake, she involuntarily plays advertisements. To secretly raise money, Mike starts streaming on "Dum Dummies"—a platform where viewers pay to command the streamer to perform various humiliating tasks.

After a colleague exposes this, Mike loses his job, and the couple falls into despair.

A year later, Mike can no longer afford the premium package that keeps his wife alive. Amanda sleeps 16 hours a day, and her rare moments of consciousness are spent broadcasting ads. Using his last savings, Mike buys 30 minutes of the premium package, allowing Amanda to leave her final words in a brief moment of peace.

As time runs out, Mike ends Amanda's life. The final shot lingers on his still-streaming laptop screen as Mike, holding a utility knife, walks into the darkness.

The chilling and oppressive core of this episode is humanity being forced to sell its dignity for the right to survive. So, when pump.fun launched a new feature called "Pump.fun Go" earlier this month, many instinctively drew a parallel to this episode.

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

$2,600: The Price of a Forehead Tattoo

Pump.fun's new feature, Pump.fun Go, allows anyone to post paid bounty tasks on the platform.

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

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

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

An Indian man actually did it:

When submitting his full tattoo video, he wrote:

"Getting a permanent design 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 tattoo and had to endure the discomfort to finish it."

However, the bounty poster rejected his submission due to a typo in the description—a missing 'n', turning the ticker into $boutywork. And the Indian man had tattooed precisely what was required in the description.

So, the next day, he went back to get the missing 'n' added:

This time, he successfully claimed the bounty. $2,600 was the price for a forehead tattoo, he said, a sum that changed his life.

But he earned far more than just the $2,600. After his initial submission was rejected, someone sent him a coin called $boutywork, named after the incorrect tattoo.

Because of the high traffic surrounding this event, the coin's cumulative trading volume exceeded $5 million, and the coin creator's revenue (from trading fees) was given to him. In total, he earned about $48,000.

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

In his submission accompanying the tattoo proof, his message was simple:

"We need the money."

Priced Freedom Can Easily Amplify Darkness

The hype over the Indian man's forehead tattoo has faded, and $boutywork has essentially gone to zero. But the dev behind $Bountywork keeps posting new bounties, trying to replicate that "success"—for example, asking someone to wear a $Bountywork t-shirt and eat three bugs on camera.

Although the bounty is only 2.5 SOL (about $178), not exactly generous, it was hardly a challenge for those in need:

To continuously generate traffic for the $Bountywork coin, @ayushquantt has spent $4,500 on various bounties. Besides the bug-eating challenge, there was one for drinking a bottle of hot sauce while wearing a $Bountywork shirt, with a bounty of 1.4 SOL (about $100):

However, he has also posted some more normal, even heartwarming bounties. For instance, donating a $50 gift card to someone in need in the name of $Bountywork, with a bounty of 1.5 SOL (about $107):

It's hard to judge these actions or pump.fun's new feature itself. Clearly, donating a $50 gift card barely creates a ripple in terms of traffic, but eating bugs or drinking a bottle of hot sauce on camera is far more likely to grab attention.

I don't think this means "in an era where traffic is money, we've all become slaves to traffic." Freedom often reveals a raw, naked truth, and we've just been too well "protected." We wouldn't tattoo our foreheads for $2,600, only because we can still tolerate a monthly salary of a few thousand dollars, venting our frustrations about work and overtime in group chats and scrolling through short videos.

The Black Mirror episode mentioned at the start has long since become a reality. In the "wild west" era of live streaming, a platform called Liaoliao Voice (聊聊语音网) was immensely popular. On December 31, 2018, a streamer nicknamed "Da Fei" (大飞), persuaded by the chat room owner Wang and encouraged by the audience, drank heavily again and died suddenly after going outside. In the three months before his death, Da Fei streamed himself drinking daily, earning tips by drinking alcohol, soy sauce, and other substances.

Da Fei drinking soy sauce

In one of Da Fei's old streams, he said he couldn't go on after a drinking session and began convulsing. The audience in the chat room egged him on, "Pour the vomit on your head, and I'll add another $300."

Others taunted, "Looks like Liaoliao is finally getting a death." No one expected it to become a prophecy.

Even in the more regulated streaming environment of 2023-2024, we can still find cases of deaths caused by excessive drinking during PK battles or binge eating during mukbang streams.

"Crazy for fame," "What's the point of making money like this?" These are the final legacies these streamers leave for the internet: some fodder for gossip, before they gradually disappear into the endless daily data deluge. Regulation can certainly curb the excessive commodification of people by money, but it can't stop those on pump.fun willing to tattoo their faces for a few thousand dollars.

Because they really need the money.

Glimmers of Light in the Darkness

While many bounties on pump.fun feel like Black Mirror or even the dark web, you can also find some interesting and heartwarming things.

Organize a rally in New York for people who resist work, promoting the idea that "work is a scam," with a bounty of $15,865. As someone who feels like a workhorse, I find this activity exhilarating:

Previously, the $neet community had already organized two offline "anti-work rallies" in the US. If this bounty is completed, it would be the third.

Show kindness to 10 strangers and make their day better. The bounty poster didn't specify a method—it could be buying them a meal, giving them flowers, a book, or buying them a coffee. Tell them to have a good day. The best 5 videos each earn a $1,000 bounty:

Organize a food donation 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 of $145 for helping an old lady cross the street:

The world is full of wonders. We cannot escape the darkness; we can only hope for a little more light.