Meet the 15-year-old YouTuber eating a picture of PewDiePie’s face for 100 days

When Billy Krankavitch started eating a printed picture of Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg’s face, he had one goal: to get Kjellberg to eat a picture of his face in return.

Krankavitch, a 15-year-old high school student from Illinois who goes by FaZe Lampshade on YouTube (no affiliation to FaZe Clan), started eating photos of Kjellberg’s face earlier this year.

After months of ingesting both paper and printer ink in the hopes of getting Kjellberg’s attention, Krankavitch finally got the famous YouTuber to agree to do it in a recent video — but not without some serious hardships along the way.

“The hardest part of this is getting reported,” Krankavitch told Polygon. “I ate pictures for 46 days on my first channel, and then it got posted on Reddit and it blew the fuck up. I kept going, rather happy with my views and subs, until day 50, when one of my videos got [struck] down. I tried repealing the strike, but before YouTube could respond, two more of my videos got [struck] down in the same day. When you get three strikes on youtube, your channel gets terminated.”

Krankavitch didn’t know what to do, but a few days later, he finally caught Kjellberg’s eye. Securing Kjellberg’s attention left him feeling ecstatic, Krankavitch told Polygon, but everything came crumbling down just a few seconds later. Kjellberg told Krankavitch to stop participating in the challenge on his 46th day — the first time he appeared in one of Kjellberg’s videos.

Krankavitch did, but when someone erroneously mentioned to Kjellberg on Reddit that Krankavitch was still going, Kjellberg decided to make Krankavitch the offer: eat 100 pieces of paper, and Kjellberg would eat one piece in return.

“How about 100,” Kjellberg proposed to Krankavitch in the video below. “If you make it to 100” photos of Kjellberg consumed, he said, the YouTuber would eat a single, printed-out photo of the 15-year-old.

“So I made a comeback video, resuming where I had left off, and kept on going until day 66. On day 67, two of my video got striked, which renders you unable to upload. So I privated all of the paper videos out of fear of getting striked again, and I moved to reddit, which is where I am now.”

With a promise from Kjellberg to eat a piece of paper in return, Krankavitch set out on his 100-day task — one photo per day — health concerns be damned. Krankavitch goes into more detail in the video below.

“I’m honestly not very worried about my health,” Krankavitch told Polygon when asked about the effects of all those inedible substances he’s been feeding himself. “I think that if this could kill me, it already would’ve.”

The self-imposed challenge has created a whirlwind of attention for Krankavitch. Most of the responses are positive, he said, but there have been some nasty comments from people online accusing him of faking the challenge.

It’s also bled into his personal life. Parents, friends and even guidance counselors have all expressed concern over what he’s doing, reaching out to him for an explanation.

“People at school weren’t aware of this happening until I blew up,” Krankavitch said. “I just got approached a lot more in the hallways, which I hated honestly, because they would all ask the exact same questions.

“My parents reacted better than I thought [she would]. My mom is completely fine with it. My dad is a bit more concerned about it, but still fine with it. Once at school, I got called down to my guidance counselor and she talked to me about it, but that’s the worst it got. I’ve also noticed that the Reddit comments are a lot more negative than the YouTube ones.”

YouTubers seem to be cheering Krankavitch on thus far. He jumped from less than 50 subscribers to over 17,000 after Kjellberg called him out. But Krankavitch told Polygon he has to give credit where credit is due — and not just to Kjellberg. Instead, Krankavitch named a different YouTuber as the inspiration for his stunt.

Dog Shirt, a YouTube channel that gained notoriety last year for eating a picture of actor Jason Segel everyday until the actor ate a picture of him, gave Krankavitch the motivation he needed to do the same thing but with famous YouTubers. (Sadly for Dog Shirt, Jason Segel never participated in the photo challenge.)

“I had a little channel with less than 50 subscribers to its name, so obviously i was desperate for ideas,” Krankavitch said. “I thought that Jason Segel seemed a bit out of the realm of possibility, so I thought of any possible candidates to be eaten. I thought that YouTubers would be the best targets, and I eventually decided upon PewDiePie, because everybody knows him — and if it works, then I’ll get quite the shoutout.

“The only difference between me and Dog Shirt was that I wasn’t going to quit.”

Krankavitch is now on his 71st day of eating a picture of Kjellberg’s face, meaning there are only 29 days left before Kjellberg has to deliver on his promise. Krankavitch said he isn’t concerned about Kjellberg backing down from the challenge, but he does have one request.

“It honestly still hasn’t really sunk in to me that I’ve been in three of pewdiepie’s videos,” Krankavitch said. “I’m pretty sure that he will eat a picture at 100, but theres no way to know for sure. I just wish that he would contact me and like confirm it with me.”

Update: Billy Krankavitch completed his task on Oct. 1. The final video can be seen below.

Update 2 (Oct. 12): PewDiePie finally ate a picture of Krankavitch’s face, bringing this entire ordeal to a close.