- Streamer Norme has successfully stayed awake for 264 hours and 24 minutes.
- Trouble is, the actual record for staying awake was set in 1986 and is nearly twice as long as the streamer’s attempt.
- While live streaming his attempt, Norme was banned from YouTube and Kick.
Over the last two plus weeks, the Olympic Games have been on the go and one streamer decided emulate the games by testing their body in the worst way possible.
The streamer in question is somebody we know only as Norme and over the last 11 days they have deprived themselves of sleep in a bid to break a world record for consecutive days without sleeping.
That stream finally ended this morning after 264 hours and 24 minutes, but there are few if any people celebrating this feat. For one, throughout the stream Norme’s mental state exhibited a sharp decline as he went further into sleeplessness. The creator’s family was tasked with keeping him awake by slapping him, splashing water on him and even hitting him with a broom. At one point the streamer was Swatted and police arrived at his home.
We won’t be linking any clips from the stream here because we don’t want to encourage this sort of thing. The clips that are circulating on social media are tough to watch with Norme clearly hallucinating which some believe is the brain forcing a sort of faux REM sleep.
Originally streaming on YouTube, Norme was eventually kicked 12 hours before he reached his goal. VODs of the stream were also deleted by YouTube per a Dexerto report. The streamer then attempted to stream on Kick, before he was banned from that platform. The creator finally moved to Rumble to finish the stream.
So he beat the record right? Not exactly.
See, Norme only stayed awake for 264 hours 24 minutes while the official record is held by Robert McDonald who stayed awake for 453 hours and 40 minutes in 1986. McDonald was a stuntman who participated in a rocking chair marathon and said of the feat that it wasn’t easy and toward the end of the attempt said “I’m ready to collapse because I have had a hard time keeping any food down.”
McDonald was the last person to be recognised in this world record and Guinness stopped recognising it in 1997. The organisation says that it recognised that skipping sleep was harmful to both the human body and mind. While the effects of lack of sleep for previous record holders varied it was clear from these past attempts that some experienced health problems.
Norme seemingly doesn’t think McDonald’s record is legit and was trying to beat the record set by Randy Gardner in 1964. The man stayed awake for 264 hours drinking Coke, listening to loud music and taking showers. However, the sleeplessness did seem to have an effect on Gardner later on in life.
“I stopped sleeping. I could not sleep. I would lay in bed for five, six hours, sleep maybe 15 minutes and wake up again. I kept thinking, well, this’ll go – this will change because it seems to me that eventually, if you don’t get enough sleep, your body will just say, we’re going to sleep. But it never happened,” Gardner told Guinness. We should point out that Gardner attributed his insomnia to the death of his cat but also, he suffered from insomnia for a decade so make of that what you will.
Guinness also doesn’t recognise the feat because of the rare genetic disorder familial insomnia which presents as trouble sleeping before graduating to a full on inability to sleep. Those suffering from this disorder experience speech problems, hallucinations, dementia and ultimately, death.
How Norme will be affected by this lack of sleep is unclear at this stage but ultimately, this was a pointless and dangerous endeavour. Instead of a medical professional monitoring his health, the streamer had a family member torturing him to keep him awake. Besides that, as we mentioned, Guinness hasn’t recognised this record since 1997 and Norme came nowhere close to the most recent records recognised by the organisation.
There is a deeper conversation to be had here about internet popularity and the lengths people will go to be recognised among a sea of faces, even putting themselves in harm’s way.
It goes without saying, don’t attempt to go days without sleep, you could do irreparable damage to your body that you only notice once you get older.
