Mandatory Tweets: Man Lives-Tweets Through Dysentery in Shittiest Twitter Thread Ever

Threads is probably one of Twitter’s shittiest features. If you have so many things to say you need a thread, go get yourself a full-sized blog on which to spew your thoughts (that no one will ever read) like the rest of us. But a man named Jake Eberts has changed our minds about the potential entertainment value of threads forever after using his live tweets to document dysentery.

If you’re one of the people lucky enough to never have had dysentery, much less know what it is, allow us to enlighten you. It’s an intestinal infection that causes bloody or mucus-y diarrhea. Sounds like fun, right? So it’s no wonder that Eberts voluntarily signed on to be part of a clinical trial to test vaccines for shigella (the bacteria that causes dysentery).

“Tomorrow I am going to be deliberately infected with dysentery and kept in a quarantine facility for 11 days as part of a Phase IIc vaccine clinical trial,” he informed his followers on April 3. “That sounds dark but I assure you I am extremely excited to overshare this journey with everyone.”

What would make someone choose to let researches given them the runs? Well, for Eberts, it was an Oregon Trail themed ad. (Only Gen Xers will understand.)

He had other reasons, too: “1, to help the less fortunate and advance modern medicine (read: to be smarmy and self-righteous); 2, I get paid enough money to basically cover rent for the rest of the year; 3, I get paid even if I don’t get dysentery.” He also added: “oh and 4, because this is an excellent way to get attention on social media, which, as you may be aware, is of paramount importance to me. I love to be popular online.”

And then he was off to the races…or at least racing to the toilet. Ebers predicted that “based on my general luck in life and the complete lack of any soreness or reaction when I got my 2 injections, I think I probably got the placebo fml,” and he did indeed get very ill.

But the disease could not kill his sense of humor! Check out these hilarious tweets from the crappiest staycation ever:

Fortunately for Eberts (but unfortunately for the rest of us), he was administered a course of antibiotics and is now on the mend, and back to tweeting about “Chinese foreign policy and Wikipedia and dumb gay things” (as he told Buzzfeed).

So. What did we learn, kids? The next time you want to get the internet’s attention, all you need is diarrhea!

Cover Photo: Twitter