The Internet is full of bizarre, frankly gross corners. Take, for example, the popular YouTube channel devoted to popping giant whiteheads, blackheads and cysts. These videos – which star pus in all its various consistencies– are hard to stomach, but they make for easy viewing compared to another, growing category: do-it-yourself fecal transplants.
In one such video, a man cheerfully whirrs a banana dipped in chocolate (his homemade feces stand-in) in a blender. In another, a woman films herself preparing a fecal transplant enema made with her own poop. And then there is the story of Josiah Zayner, as told by the Verge, who sequestered himself in a hotel room to ingest homemade pills of his friends’ excrement.
The through line here is poop’s perceived ability to transfer beneficial qualities from one individual to another. If you’re able to choke down a healthy person’s stool, this line of thinking goes, you can harness their gut bacteria to achieve cures for everything from irritable bowel syndrome to weight gain. “Until fecal pills are widely available, a blender and an enema bag may be the next best thing,” declares a 2014 Vice article.
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