Take that one friend who always overdoes it at the party, double the amount of alcohol that they consume, and you get Liu Shichao.

He’s a ‘stunt drinker’ from China, who went viral for filming himself consuming large quantities of alcohol in a very short space of time.

(Don’t try this at home, kids.)

He started out sharing his videos on a Chinese social media site called Kuaishou, reports BBC.

Liu filmed his first video – seven bottles of lager in 50 seconds – three years ago.

“One day I saw a video of people drinking beer,” he tells the BBC from China. “I thought, I can do that too.”

He started posting to the Chinese video-sharing site Kuaishou and gained fans quickly.

“The reason my videos are so short is that Kuaishou only allowed one-minute videos,” he says. “We needed to drink very fast to finish them within the time limit.”

He’s definitely going to qualify as a heavy drinker, then.

At his peak, Liu had 470 000 followers before Kuaishou shut down his account because of the “unhealthy content”.

Like all things on the internet, the videos didn’t go away entirely.

People all over social media have been sharing clips like this one:

how do I become as cool as this guy, The Coolest Guy pic.twitter.com/USIBAKp2Mz

— hunnaban trenchboss (@GILA_____) March 5, 2019

And one more to really drive the point home:

Dear friends, missing you all day! pic.twitter.com/r1qOlSnkyM

— 河北胖仔 (@hebeipangzai) October 18, 2019

I think the music is my favourite part.

Liu was amazed to find out that he still had a following on Twitter.

People were telling me I was popular on Twitter,” he says. “I replied: ‘What’s Twitter?’ I had no idea.”

Liu is 33, lives in Hebei (a province near Beijing) and calls himself a “peasant”. He doesn’t speak English and uses translation software to post online.

“At first, I didn’t know any social media platforms,” he says. “I’m from a rural area.”

While that’s great in terms of exposure, this isn’t really a sustainable career.

His videos still earn him money – his Twitter links to his PayPal account – but they are not (yet) his main income. He earns a living selling meat online, and used to run a restaurant.

Most of Liu’s supporters are men – “I guess they also love drinking, maybe there is a little sense of jealousy” – but his wife does not share their admiration.

“She is annoyed and is worried about my health,” he says. “We often argue about this.”

Liu says he is not an alcoholic, and that he never drinks when he’s alone.

Hey, you do you, but I’d recommend that viewers don’t try it at home.

[source:bbc]