A YouTube creator is trying to livestream himself in solitary confinement for a month to test whether he’s “going insane.”
Norme is a content creator who has gone viral for his shocking stunts such as staying awake for 12 days without sleeping.
Now he has locked himself in a small storage room with nothing but a mattress on the floor, to see if his sanity can survive a month in total isolation.
And to make the challenge even more difficult, he plans to spend the entire time in total darkness. A ceiling-mounted camera provides viewers with 24/7 live footage of the stunt.
He also earns some income by asking viewers to pay him for completing various challenges.
For $5 he can do a handstand, $20 for 15 minutes of wearing a straitjacket and $50 for an hour of wearing mouth tape.
Just over 100 hours into the experiment, he’s already starting to exhibit strange behavior, worrying his more than one million subscribers.
A YouTube creator tries to livestream himself in solitary confinement for a month to test whether he ‘goes insane’
Norme started the livestream on October 16, marking day five of his isolation.
So far, he has been seen and heard rambling about ‘intergalactic aliens’, making ‘demonic’ noises and pressing his forehead against the wall in a dejected position.
“He needs help,” one viewer wrote in the chat as the clock passed 133 hours. Another viewer wrote: ‘STOP TORTING YOURSELF for views!’
Solitary confinement takes a significant toll on mental and physical health and can be as painful as physical torture.
That’s because humans are highly social animals who need stimulation and interaction with other people in order to thrive.
This practice is commonly used in US prisons and involves the physical isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22.5 hours or more per day.
At least 122,840 people are locked up in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons every day, according to a 2023 joint report by the watchdog group Solitary Watch and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box.
A large body of research has shown that solitary confinement can cause or worsen anxiety, depression, paranoia, panic attacks, hallucinations, psychosis, and self-harm or suicide.
And for people with pre-existing mental health conditions, prolonged periods of isolation can worsen their condition.
In terms of physical health impacts, people who undergo solitary confinement are known to develop chronic headaches, vision loss, sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, heart palpitations, and more.
So far, he has been seen and heard rambling about ‘intergalactic aliens’, making ‘demonic’ noises and pressing his forehead against the wall in a dejected position.
Experts say even a short period of time in total isolation can have a significant impact on a person’s mental and physical health.
These effects could explain some of Norme’s abnormal behavior. But some of his viewers are skeptical of the stunt’s authenticity and consider this abnormal behavior a performance.
“Give brother an Oscar for going crazy,” one viewer wrote.
Furthermore, Norme’s experiment does not perfectly replicate the conditions of real solitary confinement.
He occasionally leaves the room, probably to eat or go to the toilet.
Additionally, he has enabled text-to-speech messaging, which allows viewers to have their chat messages read out loud through a speaker for Norme and all other viewers to hear.
In true solitary confinement, prisoners are never allowed to leave their cells of their own accord. They all eat, sleep and go to the toilet in the same place.
Moreover, they never have access to any form of communication from the outside world.
Whether Norme will be able to spend an entire month in his makeshift cell remains to be seen. One of his previous challenges, in which he tried to break the world record for the longest time without sleep, ended in failure.
He stayed awake for 264 hours straight. But the official record is held by a man named Robert McDonald, who stayed awake for a total of 453 hours in 1986.
Norme also attempted to break the record for the longest time without blinking in an earlier video.