Reminder: needles *are* dangerous
Seeing a lot of needle and heart shocking content coming up again and I wanna speak on dark cardiophilia briefly.
I love dark cardio stuff. I've made no mystery of that. I'm not here to yell or shame folks for engaging in it; I do myself, up to limits I'm comfortable with. But anyone doing it, from mild breath play through sticking needles into your heart and shocking it, needs to remember that dark play is dangerous and can have serious consequences. It's not that people do it, but that people new to it may be naive and putting their hearts at serious risk without realizing. Back when I was a teenager someone put out excellent videos of what turned out to be fake heart shocking and I nearly electrocuted myself trying to recreate it, not knowing it was fake and with no idea that what I was trying would have literally cooked me. (I was trying to use an outlet. Yikes.)
Per needles in particular, here are a few big risks. An unsanitary needle can cause an infection. An overly thick needle can cause structural damage to the heart. But even if you're using a clean, thin needle, if you get it in the wrong place you can damage valves. I have seen this happen to folks.
The biggest risk though is inserting a needle into an artery on the outside of the heart and causing bleeding into the pericardium. This is a medical emergency that can only be treated with urgent open heart surgery. You have hours to minutes to get into the operating room if this happens or you will die. Folks *have died* at least twice that I know of.
This lives in tension with the fact that you actually aren't likely to hit an artery. They're small. However you can't be totally sure where they are either; the location of the heart in the chest is slightly different in everyone. It's like that game minesweeper, there aren't many mines but if you hit one it's game over. Again, a lot of people have done this tons of time and are perfectly fine.
With electricity, there's a similar level of risk for a different issue. This time it's instigating dangerous rhythms by shocking the heart in particular vulnerable windows. These windows are small, so again, plenty of people do this without issue. I know a guy who would go for a hard run, then stick needles into his heart and shock it. He did it for like a decade and then one time he got unlucky and went into a vfib arrest which he luckily recovered from pretty rapidly. I know another guy who arrested his heart at least 3 times, who has since removed his content and gone quiet, leaving me to wonder if he went too far.
To be clear I am NOT scolding anyone. If you know these risks and are willing to take them, I'm not going to lie, I like the content and want to see it. But I don't want anyone making uninformed decisions about the danger. You should certainly not try it just for attention. If it brings you joy, dark and twisted as that may be, and you know and accept the risk, it's your body. Just know what you're getting yourself into.