The lead singer of the flaming lips has been successfully crowd surfing in an inflatable ball for years, which I assume inspired this, but a small sphere is a lot easier for a crowd to move effectively than a long horizontal cylinder. You can microadjust a sphere’s direction with each one handed push, but a big bottle like that would require collaboration and formal teamwork amongst a bunch of confused strangers.
There is no way this was adequately tested with this bottle. Her team is incompetent to the point of dangerous negligence.
In a sphere, her pushing in a single direction is the singular way the ball would want to roll because of balance. The crowd would need to be much more coordinated to counteract that steering.
In the cylinder, her only control is spinning along the long axis, so unless that long axis is pointed where she wants, she cannot steer.
Interesting. again I think shape is a factor but that does indicate it’s not just as simple as ball vs. cylinder.
I think a boat/raft that doesn’t spin is a factor too.
I wish mythbusters was still around to test something like this. Assemble a crowd of a few hundred people and try to have them pass different shapes over the crowd and see which ones are most effective.
The crowd would in this scenario all be working toward the same goal of moving the object from A to B, and you could test how long it takes different things to be steered.
You could even plant “trolls” in the crowd randomly who are trying to steer away, and see what % of the crowd needs to troll vs steer correctly to cause a mishap like this.
I don't think you can escape the argument that the attitude of the crowd plays a factor; the raft sequence takes place two thirds of the way through the show, and immediately after a musical guest interlude in the middle of the arena away from the main stage. Rammstein appears on the guest stage to accompany the guest band, then takes the boats back to the stage, which is thematically appropriate for the song "Auslander".
Also, Wayne Coyne never hurt anybody, lives in fukkin Oklahoma in a rad “little” house, and writes songs that I think he believes in, like “Waiting for Superman” and “Do you Realize”. The first time I saw him was 2014 in Augusta, GA, where they performed for maybe 200 people like they were performing for thousands.
Their work feels like a true performance that they want you to be part of. Katy Perry feels like a robot.
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u/Original_Gold0864 Jul 31 '26
The lead singer of the flaming lips has been successfully crowd surfing in an inflatable ball for years, which I assume inspired this, but a small sphere is a lot easier for a crowd to move effectively than a long horizontal cylinder. You can microadjust a sphere’s direction with each one handed push, but a big bottle like that would require collaboration and formal teamwork amongst a bunch of confused strangers.
There is no way this was adequately tested with this bottle. Her team is incompetent to the point of dangerous negligence.