Gee, I don't know. I had a friend who used to like to eat hot things. After having watched him do so several times, I can honestly say he reacted in much the same way to several of the peppers that he tried.
Looks like this fella bit off a bit more than he could chew!

The (obviously jokey) ending is brilliant!

The guy is Gavin Mcinnes, one of the founders of VICE magazine (it's his site that gets plugged at the end). I assume this is just viral (self) marketing - though I suppose that doesn't automatically preclude the possibility that the stunt itself was real.

YouTube certainly has a lot of folks claiming to be eating this pepper. Some are obviously fake, but all? Maybe, but I'm not convinced that there are more people who want to fake doing so than there are idiots who'll really try it for macho's sake.

Glad to see Les Stroud has gotten more work; I love that show. The ending was cheesy, oh well.

In all seriousness, maybe the pepper isn't what he thinks it is. Maybe it's a look alike pepper - hot, but not a Bhut Jolokia...

Well, most of the hotness in peppers is in the seeds, and he bit off the tip of the pepper where there would be less seeds.

Or the seeds could have been removed beforehand.

Or it could be just a plain ordinary jalape

Alex,

The hotness of peppers (scoville units) is not a measure of physical heat, it is a measure of the proportion of the chemical that stimulates our nerves. The chemical does not cause any actual burning, only the sensation of burning. Thus the idea that his tongue (or anything else) would be blistered is silly. Whether he actually ate the pepper is irrelevant, in fact he probably ate something hot to get the intermediate reactions. But the end is an obvious put-on.

No sweat. A good hot pepper (well under 1,000,000 Scoville Units) will make sweat run from your scalp.

And oh yeah--capsaicin "hot" isn't really temperature heat. It won't melt ice-cream any quicker than your normal body heat would.

Plus you get a coyote with Johnny Cash's voice whenever you eat a pepper above 500,000 Scoville Units.

It may be worth observing that the scoville unit rating of any kind of pepper can be highly variable (according to wikipedia, a 50% variance in scoville rating has been recorded for the Bhut Jolokia - caused by different growing conditions).

Re blistering: When I was a kid in Papua New Guinea I foolishly ate a pepper straight from the bush and got a badly blistered lip...

I used to be a capsaicin wimp, but my neighbor has addicted me in the last few years to his low-salt high-spice cuisine.

I'm now up to small doses Red Savina sauce, around 400,000 SHU in dishes, and I sometimes eat the seeds (the hottest part) of a wimpier Habanero cultivar at probably around 300,000 SHU, while making a bit of a face.

My cousin, the more gastrically adventurous one, once ate a whole teaspoon full of the abovementioned Red Savina sauce, which is labelled at 400,000 and has very little salt and vinegar content. He was able to talk and was able to keep a calm composure and not sweat for several minutes of observation, and did not need a beverage for several more minutes. But he won't do it again (mostly due to the gastric effects later).

Capsaicin causes no actual heat. What it does is stimulate the heat sensory nerves of mammals. This is slightly different than a burning sensation, which also stimulates the tissue destruction nerves. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin

I'm still looking for a nice 2-10 million plus sauce (necessarily chemically processed), but most are limited to wax-sealed limited-edition Blair reserve type sauces. Bah

The acidity of peppers CAN burn and blister ur tongue
The increase of blood flow to the tongue would cause a rise in actually temperature on the tongue
And arent these hot of peppers supposed to cause some hallucination?

Tim,

Can you cite any credible references? If you check the Wikipedia article linked by Splarka then you will see that there is absolutely no mention of blistering, though several other effects are mentioned, including death when the dose is high enough.

Splarka said: "I'm still looking for a nice 2-10 million plus sauce (necessarily chemically processed), but most are limited to wax-sealed limited-edition Blair reserve type sauces."

You could try pepper-spray.

By eating just the tip, he avoided the hottest part of the pepper. This is part of an old bar bet. He also drinks enough milk to wash most of teh capsaicin away. The redness and taering certainly indicate he ate a very hot pepper, if not an actual Jolokia.

From FOXNews.com:

An aspiring chef died after eating a super-hot chilli sauce as part of an endurance competition with a friend.

Andrew Lee, 33, challenged his girlfriend

ERRR ...
That in his hands, my friends, is a baby carrot.

I believe the video to be authentic, and quite honestly, Alex. How did you draw your inaccurate conclusion?

~With Love From Yoko Ono

Did anyone actually watch the video to the end? Obviously it is fake, and never intended to be passed off as real. lol, seriously, watch the whole thing before commenting...

"John Lennon"- John Lennon died on that awful December night of 1980. Please do not imitate him, as it is upsetting.

~Yoko Ono

I don't know why it has to be a total fake OR totally real.
It sure looks like he ate something hot, but the ending is just as obviously a bit of fun.

He may have eaten a hot pepper, but I doubt it was the hottest in the world. He's not swearing enough for that!

Dear Friends,

This video is authentic. It is from a reputable source, and we are denying the glory of this magnificent event.

YOKO ONO

The ending as fake as it was, for some reason his face really creeped me out with all that make up on haha i dont know why i dont typically scare but it was like a in depth long screamer to me

maybe, he was poking fun at those who are pretending to eat the pepper for real on youtube?

He's more of a man than I am if thats real, I ate some scotch bonnet peppers with my jerk chicken in jamaica a couple of years ago, wasnt quite expecting the result I got. After about 10secs I had realised my mistake and could hardly breath, let alone talk :D, and ofcourse as someone else mentioned I was sweating for quite a while after that . Im alot better with spicy food these days, love my chilli sauces and peppers, .. still, doubt anyone could handle bhut Jolokia without having atleast similar results as a mouthfull of scotch bonnet on an unseasoned tongue :D

I don't think, that this is a fake. I once ate a whole habanero chili and though I could hardly breathe, my ability of speaking wasn't the least reduced. I'm sure the effect of a bhut joloika is quite similar; a human can't make out the difference between those twos, in fact, everyhing above 100'000 Scoville feels the same, if I remember right.

Facts:
1)The heat is NOT in the seeds. It is in the "ribs" of the pepper.
2)The tip of a pepper is the weakest part. The heat increases the closer you get to the stem.
3)I just ate a piece of a Ghost Pepper on Saturday. Then I followed it up with a Trinidad Douglah and finished with a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.
4)The amount of heat can vary from pepper to pepper. A Bhut Jolokia could have 700,000 SHU or it could have 1.5 million SHU.

I'm not "tough" and I didn't blister up and die. So this is Definitely doable by someone with balls.

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