pump.fun’s new feature brings “Black Mirror” into reality

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 offers a solution: replace the damaged brain tissue with synthetic tissue. The surgery is free, but Amanda’s life will thereafter 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 conscious, she involuntarily plays advertisements. To secretly raise money, Mike starts live streaming on “Dum Dummies,” a website where viewers pay to command the streamer to perform 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 package that keeps his wife alive. Amanda sleeps 16 hours a day, and when she briefly awakens, she only recites advertisements. Using his last savings, Mike buys 30 minutes of the premium package, allowing Amanda to leave her final words in a moment of fleeting peace.

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

The chilling and oppressive core of this episode lies in a person being forced to sell their dignity to earn the right to live. So, when pump.fun launched a new feature called “Pump.fun Go” earlier this month, many people couldn’t help but draw a parallel to this episode.

The story of *Black Mirror* is not far from our lives; in fact, it has already 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 pump.fun.

It certainly attracted mainstream media attention, but unfortunately, it did so in a negative light.

The token $Bountywork briefly reached a market cap close to $2.5 million at its peak. The developer behind it, @ayushquantt, focused on continuously posting new tasks on pump.fun to generate hype for the token.

And he succeeded. He offered 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 video of the entire 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.”

However, the bounty poster rejected his submission due to a typo in the task description — a missing ‘n’, which resulted in the ticker being written as $boutywork. The Indian man had strictly followed the description as written.

So, the next day, he went back to get the letter ‘n’ added:

This time, he successfully claimed the bounty. $2,600 for a forehead tattoo—he said this money 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 new coin’s name.

Because the story was viral enough, the cumulative trading volume for this token exceeded $5 million. The creator earned the trading fees, which were given to him. In total, he made approximately $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 proof of tattoo to pass the bounty review, his note was simple:

“We need the money.”

Priced Freedom Easily Magnifies Darkness

The hype around the Indian man’s forehead tattoo has faded, and $boutywork has essentially gone to zero. But the developer of $Bountywork continues to post new bounties, trying to replicate that “success,” such as offering a reward for someone to eat three bugs on camera while wearing a $Bountywork shirt.

Although the bounty was only 2.5 SOL (about $178), not a huge sum, it was hardly an obstacle in the face of “We need the money”:

To keep generating buzz for the $Bountywork token, @ayushquantt has spent $4,500 on various bounties. Besides the bug-eating challenge, there’s also a task to drink 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 relatively normal, even heartwarming bounties. For instance, gifting a $50 gift card to someone in need in the name of $Bountywork, with a bounty of 1.5 SOL (about $107):

It’s difficult to judge these actions, or even pump.fun’s new feature itself, as simply good or bad. It’s quite clear that giving a $50 gift card to someone in need generates almost no buzz in terms of traffic, but eating bugs on camera or drinking a bottle of hot sauce has a much higher likelihood of getting 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 raw nature, and we are simply too “protected.” We wouldn’t tattoo our foreheads for $2,600, likely because we can still tolerate a monthly salary of a few thousand, venting our dissatisfaction with 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 reality. During the “Wild West” days of live streaming, the voice chat platform “Liao Liao” was once a hotbed. On December 31, 2018, a streamer known as “Da Fei,” persuaded by the chatroom host named Wang and egged on by the audience, drank heavily again and died of sudden cardiac arrest shortly after going outside. In the three months prior to the incident, Da Fei had been drinking live daily and earning tips by streaming acts like drinking alcohol and soy sauce.

Da Fei drinking soy sauce

In one of Da Fei’s past streams, after a bout of drinking, he said he couldn’t go on and began convulsing. The audience in the chatroom jeered, “Pour the vomit on your head, I’ll add another 300 bucks.”

Others taunted, “Liao Liao is finally going to see a death.” No one expected that this would become a tragic prophecy.

Even in the more regulated live-streaming environment of 2023-2024, we can still find many cases of death due to excessive drinking during PK battles or binge eating during mukbang streams.

“Crazy for fame,” “Why go that far for money”—these are the final legacies these streamers leave behind for the internet, topics for idle chatter that gradually disappear into the vast daily data updates. Regulatory norms can curb the extreme objectification of people by money, but they ultimately cannot stop those on pump.fun willing to tattoo their faces for a few thousand dollars.

Because they truly 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 also find some things that are interesting and heartwarming.

Organizing 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 uplifting:

Previously, the $neet community has already organized two “anti-work rallies” offline in the US. If this bounty is completed, it will be the third.

Show kindness to 10 strangers to brighten their day. The bounty poster didn’t specify how; you can buy them a meal, give them flowers, books, or coffee. Tell them to have a great day. The best 5 videos will each receive a $1,000 bounty:

Organize 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 lady cross the street, worth $145:

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

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