Plenty of people dream up stunts to raise money for charity, but one man just took it to the next level.
Jesse Carey is voluntarily subjecting himself to 168 hours of listening to Nickelback. That's seven full days. Seven days of Nickelback.
Here's how my week is stacking up. http://t.co/UTIrNKLn7c #NickelbackChallenge
The contributing editor at Relevant magazine set up a campaign to raise $10,000 for charity: water, a nonprofit dedicated to providing safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
Carey, a 31-year-old from Virginia Beach, said he wanted to raise money for a charity by tackling a pop culture challenge of some sort. The Nickelback idea came from a Relevant podcast listener after Carey put out a call for suggestions, he told BuzzFeed News.
Women and children in Africa spend about 40 billion hours every year collecting water. Let's change that statistic.
He surpassed his initial goal in just a few days, and donations keep rolling in. He was at over $19,000 on Wednesday afternoon.
Carey is in the middle of his weeklong challenge, which ends Feb. 22. He doesn't ever stop listening, even while he's on a phone call. Or asleep.
If I end up in a tesseract of endless shelves of Nickelback CDs after slipping past the NBchallenge void, look for the signs to come save me
"We’re in uncharted territory," Carey told BuzzFeed News.
"It's just like the first guy who climbed Mount Everest. When you get that high into the atmosphere, you just have no idea what will happen," he said. "Humans have never been exposed to something like this before."
He's been posting frequent updates on Twitter, and things look rough so far.
The Nickelback onslaught is wearing me down ... I now know why no other human has attempted such a feat
Only two days in & I’m already feeling the effects of such huge quantities of Nickelback. We’re in unexplored psychological territory here
And they aren't going to get any easier.
Night 3 of the Nickelback Challenge done. It's almost like half of the songs were written with the intention of preventing you from sleeping
But Carey says he'll keep going for charity. He knows if he gives up, Nickelback wins.
When I want to giving up the NBchallenge, I think of living in a world where Nickelback is more powerful than the human spirit & I press on