The content creator Norme had set out to break an old world record, where he had to stay awake for several days. He had actually planned to celebrate his success on YouTube, but 12 hours before reaching his goal, the platform banned Norme.
What did Norme intend to do? The all-time world record for staying awake was set by Rober McDonald in 1986. He stayed awake for a total of 453 hours and 40 minutes, which is nearly 19 days.
However, Norme oriented himself to the previous record holder Randy Gardner, who managed to stay awake for 11 days and 24 minutes at the age of 17. YouTube itself is 19 years old, which is why he opted for the previous world record.
To enable viewers to follow his record live, he launched a “Stay Awake for 12 Days WORLD RECORD” stream. However, 12 hours before he reached his goal, the live stream was banned by YouTube.
Another well-known YouTuber from Germany is HandofBlood:
YouTube removes the live stream for good reason
Why was the stream removed? In an official message from YouTube, it states that the stream did not comply with community guidelines. To ensure viewer safety, the stream was removed from YouTube.
In a further message, they specified that the stream did not comply with guidelines for harmful and dangerous content.
This made Norme so sad that he was close to tears:
What YouTube means by this: Lack of sleep can be extremely dangerous for the human body over such a long period. That is also the reason why Guinness World Records officially removed the record for the longest time awake.
After his ban, Norme switched to Kick, but was banned there too. Therefore, he reportedly switched to Rumble (via Reddit) so that viewers could follow the finale live.
What can happen? In a video by Guinness World Records, Randy Gardner is seen as he set the world record at age 17. He did several things to ensure he didn’t fall asleep:
- He invited two friends to keep him awake at the time
- He had himself driven around and visited different places – with the radio turned up loud so he wouldn’t fall asleep
- He drank a lot of Coca-Cola to stay awake from the sugar and caffeine
- He alternated between cold and warm showers
His two friends tested Randy Gardner every six hours with 20 tests to check his mental state.
Towards the end, it became clear that the lack of sleep was becoming dangerous: Randy Gardner suffered from mood swings, memory loss, slurred speech, and hallucinations. He also had coordination problems.
After that, Randy Gardner slept for over 14 hours. He was monitored by a team of doctors at the hospital.
This shows how dangerous Norme’s attempt was and explains why YouTube does not want such behavior displayed on its platform.
There are other crazy world record attempts as well. A game has set a record for continuous gaming, which was even recorded by Guinness World Records. The world record was under different conditions that allowed the player to take short naps: WoW player sets world record for continuous gaming – breaks old record by over 23 hours
