Game show contestant's $100,000 fail

If you watch any sort of game show on television, you know that at any given moment the stakes are incredibly high. You watch as contestants answer questions and complete challenges (sometimes with great difficulty) and worry about whether your favourite will win. 

Sometimes you might find yourself thinking: "that one was so easy! I could have done that." Well, next time you catch yourself being an armchair participant, spare a thought for Evan Kaufman.

Evan, sitting across from his famous team-mate Tim Meadows, certainly felt the pressure as he was asked a question that could potentially win him $50,000. He reads the prompt, "People whose last name is Obama", takes a breath to consider his answer, clears his throat, and says, "Bin Laden".

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In a split second, Evan has managed to both give a wildly incorrect answer and lose a large sum of money for himself and his team-mate. How could he have thought that Bin Laden's last name was Obama? He corrected himself, but the damage was already done. 

His team-mate, having no idea what the prompt on the screen behind him was, keeps his cool and eventually answers "Barack" when Evan gives the correct clue. But at this point in the game the tension in the studio is thick, least of all because of the prize at stake. 

There is nowhere to hide when the cameras are trained on you and you have to think quickly, and poor Evan learned this the hard way. He had previously tried to put a disclaimer on any potential mishaps by saying he was tired from staying up with his newborn child, but not even a new father's scattered brain is an excuse for losing $50,000.

Naturally, Evan was ridiculed on social media for his mistake. 

He has since explained his actions in the moment, saying: "Here’s what my brain decided. Who is associated with Obama? Who did he kill? What sounds like Obama! And so you have this perfectly viral clip. A clip that is insanely funny. It would be so funny if it wasn’t me.”

Evan's story proves that no matter how easy things may look on television, there is no predicting how you will react in such a high-pressure situation.

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And it's also a cautionary tale for any future contestants: be wary of what live television could expose about you, because in the age of social media absolutely nothing is forgotten.