The celebratory experience deneme bonusu has, at times, become a terrible one.
Last week, residents of several New Hampshire towns were startled by a blast that rattled homes and could be heard for miles.
The origin: 80 pounds of Tannerite, an over-the-counter, highly volatile substance used for firearms practice which in this scenario was involved in an gender-reveal stunt in a quarry at Kingston.
The man who purchased and detonated the Tannerite in Tuesday's blast turned himself , and police said they're determining whether he'll face charges. In addition to this Tannerite, a favorite method of sex reveals, authorities also discovered blue powder at the site of the blast, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Tannerite sells a gender-reveal"goal" that contains only 1 pound of those volatile, along with pink or blue chalk powder.
Authorities didn't report any injuries in connection with the explosion, even though have noticed the dangers of possibly misusing Tannerite, such as sparking wildfires or damaging property.
The New Hampshire explosion would be the most recent gender-reveal event to make headlines. Others have had severe, even fatal, results, turning parties into tragedies.
Back in Mexico last month, two individuals died after a plane involved in a gender-reveal stunt crashed into water. Back in February, a 28-year-old New York man was murdered when a device he had been building for his infant's gender-reveal party burst, police said.
In 2019, a soon-to-be grandma died in Iowa when a gender-reveal apparatus exploded and sent shrapnel flying. That exact same year, an plane dropped in Texas after the pilot dumped approximately 350 gallons of pink water, police said. Both passengers lived, one suffering only minor injuries.
Pyrotechnic sex reveals have also sparked massive, deadly wildfires.
Last September, a firefighter expired whilst battling a destructive wildfire in Southern California's San Bernardino National Forest due to a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used throughout a gender-reveal photo shoot, police said.
In 2017an explosion set off in a gender-reveal celebration in Arizona ignited a fire which burned 47,000 acres at the Coronado National Forest and price over $8 million in damages and in combating the fire.
Sex shows, from dyed cakes and confetti-filled balloons into the more over-the-top, occasionally damaging stunts, are likely being fueled by several forces -- a prime one being sociable networking.
"Gender-reveal parties are concentrated on a great deal on color and ornate presentation, things that are almost perfectly interpreted to the social media space."
A gender-reveal post can be a kind of"money" to help build cache and admissions social media, Kelli Matthews, a public relations teacher in the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, told ABC News.
"I think that's really a phenomenon that is unique to mid-to-younger millennials and Gen Z," Matthews said. "That is their money. The sharing of information and the sharing of experiences is the money of relationships"
Doing anything"different" or"bigger" can help add to this currency and"cut through some of the sound so that we may really find our people and locate our community and fortify those bonds," she said.
Beyond pursuing likes on social media, birthrate trends may also be partially responsible for the continuing popularity -- and over-the-top nature -- of those parties,'' Ortiz posited.
"While there is lots of people having children, people are having less children and waiting to have kids, therefore it is a very special event and that I believe people are looking for ways to observe that, beyond just the standard baby shower," she explained.
In 2019, the amount of births dropped to the fifth consecutive year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2007 to 2013, the number of births also steadily declined.
Gender-reveal parties have been criticized for reaffirming sex stereotypes. The mother who is credited with starting the trend in 2008 has since pushed contrary to the growth of the parties and their reinforcement of gender binaries.
Whether knowingly or not, Ortiz wondered if gender-reveal parties themselves are a pushback against changing conversations around gender identity.
"Having these gender-reveal parties re-emphasizes some of those standard ways we think about sex and gender standards," said Ortiz, who conducts research on sex and sex in the media. "It is not to say that people who have gender-reveal parties are automatically conservative in their thinking around this. But I believe there might be some thing relating to this, to push back against this drive against the status quo."
Either way, over-the-top sex reveals likely aren't going anywhere, she explained.
"There will always be people that take it to the extreme," Ortiz said, as a few strive to create a second that will"stand out among all the other content" on social media.
As the social networking landscape becomes more fractured, such as through programs like TikTok, people will go"bigger and bigger," Matthews predicted, regardless of the possible consequences.
"I really don't think anybody's learning a lesson from this," she said.
