Awaiting the arrival of your baby should be a precious and celebratory time. So with all due respect, what the heck is going on? Listen, I may be the Grinch Who Stole Gender Reveal Parties, but this is getting out of hand. There was the guy who shot himself in the worst possible place with a gender-reveal smoke bomb (???), the couple that managed to burn down thousands of acres of east LA in an attempt to reveal the gender of their unborn child (and I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure that means your baby’s gender is Hellboy) – it’s enough. Put down the flare guns and anything with “pyrotechnic” in its name, we deserve an indefinite time-out to think about what we’ve done. Cut into your colorful cakes, pop a balloon, but for the love of all that is flammable – please calm down.

As with every rule, there are some exceptions. Any pre-baby party should be for the parents’ enjoyment of course, since they’re the ones celebrating. But the guests shouldn’t feel like their attendance was doing someone a favor – they should feel like their time was well-spent. Well, a Florida couple recently went above and beyond to (safely and hilariously) reveal the gender of their baby.

In a video posted to Instagram by Josh Hooper, the expectant parents come together with some of their closest family and friends for the big reveal. “Sorry future Adah that you have to see this,” Josh captioned the video. Why the apology? Well, just watch the video.

 

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@mrslilyhooper We’re having a girl!!!!! Sorry future Adah that you have to see this. @livingforthedash meant well and he’s a really nice guy. #AdahKennedyHooper

A post shared by Joshua Hooper (@superhooper) on Oct 12, 2020 at 7:14am PDT

Clearly, this is no ordinary gender reveal, which is exactly what the couple wanted. Josh Hooper told The Dad, “I just really wanted to see my friend (Andy) in a diaper. I have also never been a fan of gender reveals and thought if my wife and myself were going to do one we might as well make it funny.”

The couple’s relationship is rooted in comedy, so it only makes sense that their gender reveal would follow suit. “Me and my wife Lily met at Sunday Cool Tees where we both work,” Josh explained, “And Andy (the pink man) and myself make YouTube videos for Sunday Cool.”

For this comedy-loving couple, the gender reveal was a fun excuse to make their friends and family smile. And realistically, what better time to rope your friends into something so brilliantly absurd? You can’t say no to a friend celebrating the arrival of their first child (and if you can, someone forgot to tell Andy).

“We just love to make people laugh, and we think the world needs more things to laugh at and celebrate.”

We wholeheartedly agree. And Josh, let us be the first to say, welcome to the club.

 

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not gonna lie. The diaper was ✨ comfy ✨ 📷: @parksandruck

A post shared by Andy DeNoon (@livingforthedash) on Oct 12, 2020 at 1:55pm PDT

As humans, we have a tendency to – how do I put this lightly – ruin good things beyond repair. Not big things necessarily, but things like classic movies and TV shows frequently fall victim to our tendency to mess with things we love. A recent addition to the list of Things We Have Ruined is something that was never actually great, but we managed to turn gender reveal parties from hacky or relatively neutral to colorful atrocities. Heck, even the woman who decided to make gender reveal parties a “thing” has openly expressed regret about the monster she created.

Listen. I’m all for embracing your inner weirdo, but do it without burning down thousands of acres of forest like that expectant couple in LA who spent so much time reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting that they forgot to think about what to expect when you set off a pyrotechnic device in a forest full of dead grass (which is an increasingly necessary sequel).

To clarify, just because your gender reveal party isn’t dangerous doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Every day there seems to be a new example of this, parents using their unborn children as a means to achieve internet fame. One thing the vast majority of them have in common is that when they do go viral, it’s not exactly for the intended reason.

A Twitter user named TrishXCIII_ recently shared an alarming gender reveal that was posted on TikTok, a gender reveal I wouldn’t wish upon the spawn of my worst enemy. Here’s the gist: two giant inflatable babies beat the crap out of each other until the giant inflatable girl baby is knocked to the ground. John Cena’s entrance theme “The Time is Now” plays in the background. Actually, that’s pretty much it.

This is the craziest gender reveal I’ve seen 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/XZLHI0FhEN

— #portauprincess (@TrishXCIII_) October 13, 2020

The video was originally shared by TikTok user @bigrudie, and across all platforms, it has accumulated millions of views and thousands of comments. The Twitter community came to the consensus of, “what?” as users were baffled by both the premise itself and the fact that people would go to such lengths for something most deemed wildly unnecessary.

Ayyo what??? 😭 pic.twitter.com/qK3fCCGcdw

— 🦋 (@Simply_lay_) October 14, 2020

What in the absolute hell??

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 13, 2020

When we found out our baby was a girl, we just told everyone.

— Michelle Pearce (@PSBFAN1991) October 13, 2020

Extremely questionable taste, but great execution. And hey, at least they didn’t burn down any forests.

If you’re anything like me – and I wouldn’t wish that on you – you’re probably a little sick and tired of all the elaborate ways parents and people, in general, use social media to make a big deal out of things that really only matter to their own friends and family.

From pregnancy announcements that are clearly engineered to go viral, the college admissions announcements that often only serve to display gross levels of entitlement and privilege, social media has become a repository of videos of desperate people looking for attention. Gender reveal videos are perhaps the most egregious example of this trend.

We’ve all seen dozens of these videos by now, some of which are clever, most of which are not, and a few of which have caused actual disasters.

One couple just shared their gender reveal video, and though I’m as sick of these things as a person could possibly be, I did enjoy their version:

Okay, so it’s clearly not real. But kudos to this couple – if they even are a couple – for finding a clever way to both upend our gender reveal expectations and viciously mock everyone who has ever shared one of these kinds of videos online. Instead of revealing the gender of their forthcoming baby via an adorable tuft of blue or pink powder, their gimmick backfires, unleashing a deadly toxin that immediately afflicts everyone in the vicinity.

As the crowd screams in terror and agony and many of them collapse to the ground – DEAD – the dad can be heard yelling “I’m sorry, God! WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!”

The video was created on TikTok by @thismightbefunny, where it has more than 47,000 likes and a thousand comments, and on Twitter, it has over 70,000 retweets and almost 300,000 likes.

We as a society are in an abusive relationship with gender reveal parties.

As the bar for excitement and legitimacy continues to rise when it comes to the methodology for discovering a baby’s sex, soon-to-be parents have suffered injuries, started fires, and even set off an explosion that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage.

We shake our heads and scoff but there’s always another couple who wants their turn in the limelight, ready to do a bigger, better, and more inventive reveal than ever before.

However, now it’s official – we’ve done it. While desperately scraping the bottom of the gender revelatory barrel, we’ve discovered a new low.

 

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Gender Reveal 🍼👶🏻

A post shared by Paige Ginn (@paigeginn) on Nov 11, 2019 at 9:13pm PST

Yes, your eyes (may they rest in peace) do not deceive you. That is YouTuber Paige Ginn, bottomless on the floor, squeezing out a fart to propel blue powder out of her anus. The azure butt cloud sets her friends—two-thirds of whom are also pantsless—into a celebratory frenzy.

The video has garnered an astonishing 800k views on Instagram and over 400k views on YouTube.

Do we laugh at this? Cry? I just have so many emotions right now, none of which are a result of just learning a baby’s gender.

Interestingly enough, the alleged founder of gender reveal parties herself is ready for the tradition to end or, at the very least, evolve in some way.

“Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now – that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents”
-the inventor of the gender reveal party pic.twitter.com/yQIl5lMjb1

— Avery Alder (@lackingceremony) July 25, 2019

All this to say, be happy that you’re having a baby! Celebrate! Go nuts! It is truly a magical event and nothing in this world can compare.

But that doesn’t mean you or anyone else should fart colored powder out of your butt.

Love them or hate them, gender reveals are a fun way for any couple to embark further into the adventure of parenthood. Of course, with folks pulling more and more extreme stunts for their reveals in recent years, some are feeling pressure to do something noteworthy.

One such couple decided to ditch the novelty factor and go straight for what Nickelodeon’s Double-Dare fans would call “the physical challenge.”

It’s a simple premise: One big, opaque balloon filled with blue or pink confetti that has to be popped piñata-style. Unfortunately, like many pregnancies, things don’t always go to plan.

There’s a reason balloons don’t make very good piñatas.

Despite the dad-to-be’s best efforts to beat the stuffing out it, the big balloon proved sturdier than anyone expected. Clearly influenced by the cameraman’s ribbing, this dad goes full Barry Bonds on his helium-filled target, effectively freeing it out of its grounding.

He does his best to chase it down, hopping up on the fence for a better chance to grab it, but only adds insult to injury (or injury to insult?) by loses his footing and crashing back down to the ground, laughing.

Look on the bright side: Boy or girl, this kid is clearly destined to overcome adversity and shoot for the stars.

Why worry about putting together your own gender reveal party when you can get a music superstar to do it for you? On August 3, during his solo Summer Tour 2019 stop at Columbus, Ohio’s Schottenstein Center, John Mayer helped a lucky couple announce the results of their pregnancy test in front of thousands.

Spotting the sign of soon-to-be parents, Ben and Margo, which asked if the musician would do their gender reveal, Mayer invited the expecting couple onstage, citing “points for originality.”

Giddily handing over an envelope from 7 Hills Women’s Health Center, Mayer said, “The future of your love and your life is in here, and you have bestowed upon me this great responsibility… so I’d like to sing to you.”

Mayer carefully examined the envelope’s contents, gave the couple a knowing smirk, and stepped up to the microphone, jumping straight into the bridge of the song, “Daughters”:

Boys you can break. You find out how much they can take. Boys will be strong. Boys soldier on. 

Taking the not so subtle hint, Ben and Margo embraced while the crowd roared. I mean, it’s no blue-colored lasagna or anything, but it’s still a pretty cool moment.

During the following set break, Mayer hosted an episode of his popular live Instagram show, Current Mood, where he explained exactly how the impromptu gender reveal went down.

It’s just nice to see a peaceful gender reveal instead of one that ends with an injury or fire.

Deciding to do a gender reveal party can take some cojones, and this one certainly did.

Parker Stuard and his girlfriend, Micah, from Tennessee, recently invited their family to watch as they opened smoke canisters to announce the gender of their first (and possibly last!) child. As they stood smiling at each other on the deck, their family counted down to the special moment, but as soon as Parker opened his canister, he was unable to celebrate his baby boy given the cannister’s cap was launched into his groin.

The stunt backfired. Literally.

Parker decided to share the hilarious event, and his pain, on Facebook, where it has received hundreds of thousands of views. He captioned it with “I reckon one child will be enough!”, with one of his friends commenting, “I laughed way harder than i should have!”

Micah posted another video to Facebook shot from an alternate angle, this time in painful slow-mo. She captioned the post “guess we’re never having kids again!”

At least when this dad looks back on his 15 minutes of fame, he can definitely say he had a blast.

Check out how another family in Florida used an alligator for their gender reveal.

Elaborate gender reveals are quickly becoming commonplace, however, several stories have popped up recently where things didn’t go exactly as planned.

That was the case for a Queensland, Australia family who decided they’d announce the gender of their new addition with a color coordinated burnout. Drone video captures the moments when the baby blue plumes of smoke were replaced by thick black clouds and flames engulfing the vehicle.

Police have stepped in after a gender reveal ceremony took a turn for the worst.

The explosive finale was captured on video, with the daredevil driver slapped with a hefty fine: https://t.co/V7DkwMkN2l @njkelly9 #9News pic.twitter.com/voh5QeTRqy

— Nine News Gold Coast (@9NewsGoldCoast) July 9, 2019

Luckily, no one was injured during the stunt, but local police were less than impressed with the soon-to-be-papa’s antics. The driver, 30-year-old Samuel Montesalvo, was charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, fined $1,000 and was forced to surrender his license for six months.

Internet commenters quickly caught wind of the incident, dishing out a few burns of their own.

I love to dust my friends and family with smurf powder and set my car on fire for my children

— The Big We (@colburn918) July 9, 2019

I believe the many gender reveal disasters might be what some religious folks would call a 'sign' https://t.co/RkP68gme1O

— Emma Evans (@TrancewithMe) July 9, 2019

While this video certainly demonstrates some poor judgement, it pales in comparison to some of the other flaming fails that have gone viral over the past few years, all in the name of celebrating a new life.

Last year, a young couple decided to set off colored fireworks in their backyard with friends and family gathered to watch the big reveal. Unfortunately the explosives were placed on a flimsy laundry rack which eventually collapsed, shooting pink rockets into the onlookers in every direction.

Yikes. Ok that one was bad, but at least it didn’t cause over $8 million dollars worth of damage or burn down 47,000 acres like off-duty officer Dennis Dickey of Arizona did back in 2017. Dickey had purchased Tannerite, an explosive substance that is totally just available on the internet. The border control officer and expectant dad then shot at the explosives with his rifle. What happened next took 600 firefighters from 20 different fire departments several weeks to extinguish.

Still thinking of doing something crazy to announce your new son or daughter? Here are a few more friendly reminders to bring you and your significant other a little perspective:

Folks: Please reveal responsibly. For everyone’s sake.

Gender reveals have become so popular that they’ve basically jumped the shark. So many different couples and families have resorted to elaborate productions to alert their friends and loved ones of the type of child they’ll be having, that it’s getting harder and harder to stand out.

Leave it to Florida to up the ante.

Tampa couple Stacie Childs-Wright and her husband Chad had a little get together to reveal the sex of their forthcoming child, but rather than simply use a lasagna with blue filling or jump out of an airplane with pink powder, they drafted one of their other children to help. A scaly, fearsome creature that goes Amos.

Amos is an alligator.

Chad, who works with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as a trapper, has had Amos since 2000, which doesn’t make me feel a lot better about the enormous reptile roaming their backyard, but maybe a little?

In order to get Amos to help spring the gender news on the party, Chad attached a black balloon to the end of a long poll and repeatedly waved it near Amos’ snout. eventually, the reptile bit, resulting in an anticlimactic puff of pink air. Stacie seemed thrilled that the 10th child in the couple’s blended family is going to be a girl, but Chad seemed even less enthusiastic than the alligator.

This is certainly the first gender reveal to use an alligator that I’ve seen, and I’d be perfectly content if it were the last.

Also, I should have said, “jumped the alligator.”

Elaborate gender reveal parties are a dime a dozen nowadays, so one Cleveland couple decided to go with a more intimate gathering with the people who really matter: soon-to-be mom, soon-to-be dad, and Indians’ second baseman, Jason Kipnis.

Despite being outside the purview of most MLB players, Kipnis was more than happy to do his part in unveiling the sex of Josh and Erica Smith’s first child.

Jogging out along the left field line with bat in hand, Kipnis was admittedly nervous about screwing up such a special moment, but he played his part perfectly.

Huge Thank you to the awesome @TheJK_Kid and @Indians for giving my wife and I an unforgettable gender reveal! #itsagirl #GoTribe pic.twitter.com/iT4Yv4dWpH

— j (@Tossincheese) May 6, 2019

After taking a face-full of pink chalk like a champ, Kipnis gifted the growing family with his bat as a keepsake for the future Indians fan.

Oh, and then he posed for a photo because everyone knows it isn’t a gender reveal party if it isn’t on Instagram.

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Congrats to the Smith’s and their new baby girl on the way! First time I’ve done a gender reveal and honored they asked me to do it! Best of luck you two! #noididntmiss @ericasmith1010

A post shared by Jason Kipnis (@jasonkipnis22) on May 6, 2019 at 9:43am PDT

Look, we know things are generally terrible nowadays, which makes it really hard to have to tell you this, but the newest trend in revealing a baby’s gender is…

Lasagna.

Yes, because 2019 couldn’t just be a normal year where terrible things didn’t happen, Villa Italian Kitchen had to go and ruin a timeless Italian entree.

For $140, you and your significant other can slice into this giant noodle dish together to discover the sex of your unborn fetus based purely on the carefully food-colored layer of cheese. Also, if you’re more worried about carbs than how objectively horrible that previous sentence was, the package also comes with your choice of a garden, Greek, or Ceaser salad.

Sure, slopping hunks of colored cheese and sauce is objectively better than starting wildfires, but should that really be the gauge we’re using, folks? Just because you aren’t burning down acres of land doesn’t mean you get a free pass to destroy beloved American-Italian cuisine.

Fortunately, the New Jersey restaurant boasts that its colorful creation is still a 100 percent authentic lasagna, with pasta, ricotta, and Alfredo direct from Italy, so it should still taste decent (as long as you don’t look at it directly).

The unnerving Italian meal serves twelve instantly regretful guests who will all cheer and feign smiles as you take your overly surprised Instagram pics. #LasagnaReveal #blessed

There are few things soon-to-be parents love more than broadcasting the gender of their upcoming child to the world. Scroll through your Instagram or Facebook feeds long enough and you’re bound to find a couple using another unique method to shove an outrageous amount of blue or pink in all of our collective faces.

But you can’t just cut into a cake or bake a bunch or gender-identifying baked goods anymore. No, that’s what the Johanssons down the street did last year. Your baby’s sex is somehow special and perfect and under no circumstances can you run the risk of it being overshadowed by some other gender announcement. No, sirree!

We’re assuming this was the general train of thought when Dakota and girlfriend, Karolina, decided to surprise their friends and parents-to-be, Kameron and Alannah, with the most amazing gender reveal method ever (granted, Dakota would probably use the word “rad” or “sick” instead of “amazing”).

In lieu of designing fun mocktails and decorating a living room in pastels, or causing 8 million dollars in damage, Dakota and Karolina jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet above the Mexican coast.

With Kameron and Alannah watching from the beach below, the daredevil couple deployed their parachutes and activated colored smoke grenades attached to their ankles, leaving a trail of pink smoke behind them as they returned to Earth.

Good luck one-upping that, Johanssons.

With every passing year it seems that gender reveals get more and more elaborate. Long gone are the days that a doctor or ultrasound technician simply says, “Congratulations, it’s a…”

These days new parents might opt to cut into an appropriately colored cake to find out the sex of their child. Others release a dole of dyed doves into the sky. Heck, one couple even used the powerful engine of a Mustang to reveal the gender.

The creativity used at these parties can be pretty impressive. But sometimes it’s just downright dangerous.

Like the time a dad-to-be shot his gun at a pile of explosives that was covered in a colored powder.

If you thought that last one sounded a little too far-fetched, you obviously haven’t heard about 37-year-old Dennis Dickey.

Dickey, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, was expecting a little bundle of joy in the spring of 2017 and decided to go all out when it came to announcing this milestone in the baby’s development.

In this case, “going all out” means blowing stuff up—specifically, Tannerite: an explosive designed to combust when shot with a firearm.

To his credit, he hit his target and the Tannerite did its job. Unfortunately, he didn’t account for the nearby flora which is also remarkably flammable.

According to his lawyer, Dickey contacted emergency services immediately and admitted that he was the one to have started the blaze. The 40mph winds that day, however, meant that that fire was spreading far more quickly than usual.

Despite nearly 800 firefighters working over the course of the week to put out the flames, the inferno ended up damaging more than 45,000 acres of land and cost the state approximately $8.2 million.

Because there were no injuries reported or buildings damaged, Dickey was only charged with a misdemeanor, but has agreed to a sentence of five years’ probation and will pay over $8 million in restitution.

“It was a complete accident,” Dickey told U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie A. Bowman in court. “I feel absolutely horrible about it. It was probably one of the worst days of my life.”

So if you and your spouse or partner are expecting, you might consider holding off on any reveal that involves weapons or explosives.

Update 11/27: Video of the explosion that caused the fire has been released to the public. First we see a gender labelled target, followed by a gun shot that causes a blue explosion. Flames the quickly engulf the grass. “Start packing up!” repeats one of the organizers, “Yup!” agrees another.