Lil Yachty challenged Concrete Boys signee Camo! to withstand waterboarding after he suggested that it wasn’t a real tactic of torture.
“He said that he don’t believe that… He thinks he could take it,” Yachty said in the clip, which can be seen below.
Camo appeared super confident that he could handle it in the moments leading up to the actual waterboarding, suggesting that he would easily win the $500 that Yachty offered him to take part. Joined by streamer Raud, the two burst into laughter after Camo lasted only a few seconds being waterboarded.
“So that shit real, huh?” someone behind the camera said to Camo as he walked off. Raud also participated in it, and while he fared slightly better, he had to tap out after only a few seconds, too.
As detailed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2007, waterboarding is a brutal form of torture that involves a person being strapped to a board, a rag placed over their face, and water poured over their face. “It is a paradigmatic torture technique that has long been considered a war crime; indeed, the United States has prosecuted enemy soldiers—and even U.S. troops—for engaging in the practice,” the ACLU detailed.
While waterboarding has been widely considered torture, the United States has frequently attempted to downplay its severity, perhaps most notably during the Bush administration. It was first documented in the 14th century, as reported by NPR, but it garnered renewed attention during the War on Terror. It was among the many examples of human rights violations and war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens subjected himself to waterboarding for Vanity Fair in 2018.
“You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it ‘simulates’ the feeling of drowning,” Hitchens wrote at the time. “This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.”
In 2013, per The Guardian, Yassin Bey subjected himself to some of the harsh human rights violations that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were subjected to, including force-feeding. The infamous detention camp, which opened amid the War on Terror, has had at least nine people die in custody.