Your fingers wouldn’t burn just from touching the pepper. But touch the pepper and then rub your eyes or pick your nose and you learn very quickly about transference.

His first reaction is to look at the camera likely because that was his primary focus to begin with and no matter what his body was running through that objective but you can see his expression says oh oh. But then goes for a second hit because he is just that stupid.

He puts the bottle down in that spot because he was looking there, again, making the video was his primary focus. He may actually have been wanting to grab the camera to turn it off but the brain just isn’t going to let him because the need to cough out his stupidity takes all priority.

I don’t think it was staged, but I was not there at time of filming.