Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
If there’s one thing that Philly sports fans are known for, it’s their overall obnoxiousness. There’s a reason that their old football stadium had a temporary court in it. If there’s another, it’s for their general stupidity, which I can say with pride, because I’m a Philly sports fan.
It’s not enough that poles have to be greased so fans won’t climb them during championship games. Some idiots have eaten horse manure after a win. And with the football season having just kicked off (wordplay!), one guy tried to do something that’s both obnoxious and stupid and also involved eating: 1,012 oysters in one sitting.
Wanna blend these together and chug 'em? Us neither. (Benoît Prieur/Creative Commons )
The guy in question calls himself The Hippie Meathead and looks like neither one of those. His Insta proudly proclaims “dumb ideas,” and so he decided on July 30th to eat an oyster. Then the next day, eat double that. Chowing down on three oysters in two days isn’t particularly a dumb idea, but he decided to double the amount each day, to the point where by the middle of August, he ate 512 of the slimy molluscs in one sitting – within shucking distance of the Guinness World Record for oyster consumption, 564.
It should be noted that Philly is no stranger to gluttonous food consumption. The Wing Bowl was an annual chicken wing-eating contest that took place on the Friday before the Super Bowl for many years. And if you’ll remember, during COVID, there was a dude who ate a whole rotisserie chicken every day for 40 days on an abandoned pier near a Walmart. So the 24-year-old Hippie Meathead is just the latest in a pantheon of people eating a lot of something that gets significantly grosser the more you consume.
What the shuck does he think he's doing? (thehippiemeathead/Instagram)
One might wonder how you’d go about eating so many oysters, especially since there’s plenty of bacteria in raw seafood and Mr. Meathead was essentially taking his life into his own hands every time he downed one. Not to mention, the recommended number suggested for consumption in one day is a meager 12. The answer is relatively gross, as you might imagine. Many times, he used a Vitamix to blend the oysters together, then ingested them in a beer bong. For one sitting, he ate oysters while submerged in an ice bath. For the world record attempt, he chose the parking lot of the season-opening tailgate party in Philly, with the Eagles taking on the Dallas Cowboys.
Along with family members, two women accompanied Hippie Meathead, one holding the oyster bong (named the Freedom Funnel, as it was shaped like an eagle) and another with a bottle of hot sauce. There were also lots and lots of oysters, this time taken care of by a sponsor. Things quickly got off course after the hot sauce woman accidentally got some sauce in his eye. He ate an underwhelming 200 oysters or so and gave up, instead offering the rest to passersby. Ultimately, he said, he wasn’t so concerned about breaking the record. He said he was initially going to stop at 128 before going viral, and his goal was to get people to eat oysters because they’re a superfood – just not as many as him.
If you’re thinking Meathead only did this for altruistic reasons, think again. Of course, he has a linktree with merch, a link to buy a Freedom Funnel (for beer use unless you want to blend oysters and chug them as well), and protein bars and supplements, which we guess is where the “meathead” part of his name comes from. But since he failed to break the record, any aspiring oyster slurpers can have at it. All they need is a catchy nickname, an iron stomach, and a whole lot of willpower.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
