Parents everywhere are flipping out over bottle-tossing craze
Pastime’s repetitive sound enough to prompt meltdowns
Gurgle. Thud. Crunch. Gurgle. Thud. Crunch.
That is the noise of water-bottle flipping, which is the compulsion to toss a partly filled plastic bottle and try to get it to land upright. The practice, promoted through online videos, has captivated countless children.
Boys and girls view it as a harmless pastime, but for parents the repetitive noise of the children flipping (gurgle), landing (thud) and grabbing (crunch) the bottles is torture.
Dayle Tuna, 40, of Rockaway, N.J., described a refrain directed at one of her sons: “Would you stop with the bottles? Stop with the bottle! Stop with the bottle!”
To hear other parents tell it, she has plenty of company.
The craze gained notice in a YouTube video posted in May of a school talent show in Charlotte, N.C.
A contestant, Michael Senatore, held a water bottle and strutted up to a table while music worthy of a blockbuster movie blared. With a dramatic pause, he flipped the bottle, which landed upright on the table. The crowd erupted in pandemonium. That footage has been viewed more than six million times, and the Internet has been flooded with similar videos.
The start of school seems to have ignited the obsessive behaviour among young people as they swapped tips and egged each other on. Tuna said she was unaware of the videos and thought the activity was something her sons cooked up.
“I’m going to need a bottle of Xanax to deal with the bottle crunching,” said Tuna, who has five children, four of whom are living at home: three boys, ages10,12 and13, and an11-yearold daughter. She said they all toss bottles, though the girl less so.
Tuna said she had banished the practice to the outdoors, and then one day found them trying to land bottles on her car.
Wendy Cinnamon, 44, of Rockaway, N.J, said that among parents, “this is driving us all insane.”
Her son, Alex Venezia, 12, is a constant practitioner. “He’s flipped the bottle and hit something and he gets really yelled at to stop,” his mother said. “I told him stop and he wouldn’t stop.” Cinnamon has threatened to take away his smartphone.
She told him she would lock up all the bottles in the car and if he was thirsty, he could bring a cup to the car. But she said that after he tossed a bottle that landed upright on top of the refrigerator, she just gave up.
How many of his friends were doing this? All of them, Alex replied.
“When he said ‘all of them,’ he’s not kidding,” Cinnamon said.
“It makes you feel accomplished,” Alex added.
“That’s what makes you feel accomplished?” she asked incredulously.
Alex said he acts on the impulse to flip bottles “whenever I’m bored.” He predicted that the fad would soon fade. For Cinnamon and other parents, that moment cannot come soon enough.
Still, she said, it could be worse: “Better than going in the street terrorizing people dressed as a clown.”