After weeks of hype about the Discovery channel special Eaten Alive , thousands of viewers were disappointed to watch self-professed adventurer, Paul Rosolie, have his helmet briefly chomped on before calling the stunt off.
According to Inside TV , viewers who tuned in to Eaten Alive were led to believe that a man would actually be consumed whole by a massive anaconda. Before the stunt was broadcast, Discovery promoted Eaten Alive all over the internet, showing off the special snake-proof suit Rosolie had constructed. Some promotions for Eaten Alive even promised viewers they’d get to see a man “[enter] the belly of an anaconda.” But when the time came for Eaten Alive to actually show a man being eaten alive, what the viewers got was a 20-foot anaconda coiling around Paul Rosolie and putting its mouth on his helmet for a few minutes before he called for rescue because his arm was getting crushed.
“I started to feel the blood drain out of my hand and I felt the bone flex, and when I got to the point where I felt like it was going to snap I had to tap out,” said Rosolie.
A previous opinion post by the Inquisitr called the Eaten Alive stunt a snake-torturing hoax . And while the anaconda has been reported as alive and well by the people behind Eaten Alive , viewers are upset with both the animal cruelty and the lack of spectacle that Eaten Alive provided. Before Eaten Alive was broadcast, Discovery was asked how much Rosolie had been consumed by the snake. Discovery responded with the following statement:
“[The] story of this is an attempt. When you say Nik Wallenda is going to cross the Chicago skyline, they didn’t promise he was going to make it; they promised he would attempt it. So the show is called Eaten Alive and that’s what we worked as hard as we could to do. As for what happens, you’ll have to watch.”
But that wasn’t good enough for the vast majority of Eaten Alive viewers who wanted what they were promised. People took to Twitter to criticize Eaten Alive for not delivering.
The eaten alive guy didn’t get eaten alive… #Disappointed
— Joshua Derick Balli (@GoshJosh_12) December 8, 2014
‘Eaten Alive’ viewers angry after watching for 2 hours to see man not eaten alive: http://t.co/BOndCLneW3 pic.twitter.com/LH0phjp8ah
— ABC News (@ABC) December 8, 2014
Who has a right to be the most upset right now: Baylor fans, TCU fans, or anyone who watched Eaten Alive on @Discovery ?
— Ben Rogers (@BenRogers) December 8, 2014
Dear @Discovery Channel, you should have called #EatenAlive “Hugged Alive”.
— Scott Warner (@ScottWarner18) December 8, 2014
According to the New York Daily News , the point of Eaten Alive was to raise awareness about the endangerment of snakes and other large predators, but most viewers aren’t buying that either. It seems that Eaten Alive was, above all, a failed stunt that would probably have resulted in serious harm to the snake if it had gone successfully.
“I’m sick of watching forests burn,” Rosolie told the New York Post. “It’s being destroyed so fast and bringing attention and bringing more people and action is really difficult, so I wanted to do something that would … cause enough of a stir to say, ‘What’s going on here?’”
What do you think? Was Eaten Alive a sincere attempt to help the amazon, or a failed publicity stunt?