Viral Party Trick Destroys Entire Neighborhood, Over $8 Million in Damage

You've probably heard something about what's going on.

The sky turning red and orange in San Francisco, towns gutted, and wildfires burning from the border of Oregon, all the way up to British Columbia and down to the border of Mexico.

And what blows my mind is that one of these fires was caused by a gender reveal party of all things.

In particular, a fire that has burned over 10,000 acres of land around El Dorado in San Bernardino County, Southern California.

So what exactly happened here? And how did this gender reveal party fad get started? And when did it become so destructive? Well, if you're an old fogey like me, you may be asking yourself, wait, what's a gender reveal party? Well, actually, yes, I am wondering that myself.

Huh.

According to Internet Knowledge Amalgamator and Invalid College Essay Source , a gender reveal party is, quote, "...an event or celebration had during pregnancy.

The primary goal of this event is the eponymous reveal of the baby's sex to the expecting parents family and friends.

This is usually done through some kind of means involving the color blue or pink being hidden somewhere, like icing in a cake, confetti in a balloon, or some kind of smoke grenade I guess? But as bizarre as some of the current trends, like throwing pies at people or grown men dressed as giant babies bursting forth from giant cakes have become, these gender reveal parties have an oddly innocuous origin point.

a fairly recent one too.

2008, blogger and expectant mother Jenna Myers-Carvunidis had an issue.

She wanted to throw a party, but her family had just celebrated the birth of a highly anticipated nephew, meaning that she needed something to, in her own words, get the family jazzed up about her own pregnancy.

And if there was anyone who was going to get them excited, It was herself, so she came up with the then-novel idea.

During their ultrasound, Carvinidis asked her midwife to keep quiet about the baby's biological sex.

Instead, the results were printed on a sealed note and hidden away in an envelope.

For this first gender reveal party, there weren't any explosions or fires.

Instead, there were two cakes, one with blue icing, one with pink, marked as such with a discreet toothpick.

Once the family gathered, Carvunidus took a look, then cut into the cake and revealed the pink center.

Her family was thrilled.

To quote an article from The Guardian, there were gasps, tears, and someone shrieked, I feel like she's been born! Her plan was a success, and she wrote about it in her blog, a story that led her to being interviewed by pregnancy magazine, The Bump, and leading to the spread of the sweet and sugary trend.

Well that seems nice, just trying to do something to stir up excitement.

Yes, if it had stayed that way, things would probably be fine.

The issue is- The issue is, is that people are idiots! Not quite the words I was going to use, but yes, things started to go awry.

The concept of a gender reveal party spread like, well, like wildfire throughout the 2010s, especially on social media, with baby showers already growing more lavish and shared on sites like Pinterest.

You've probably heard something about what's going on.

The sky turning red and orange in San Francisco, towns gutted, and wildfires burning from the border of Oregon, all the way up to British Columbia and down to the border of Mexico.

And what blows my mind is that one of these fires was caused by a gender reveal party of all things.

In particular, a fire that has burned over 10,000 acres of land around El Dorado in San Bernardino County, Southern California.

So what exactly happened here? And how did this gender reveal party fad get started? And when did it become so destructive? Well, if you're an old fogey like me, you may be asking yourself, wait, what's a gender reveal party? Well, actually, yes, I am wondering that myself.

Huh.

According to Internet Knowledge Amalgamator and Invalid College Essay Source , a gender reveal party is, quote, "...an event or celebration had during pregnancy.

The primary goal of this event is the eponymous reveal of the baby's sex to the expecting parents family and friends.

This is usually done through some kind of means involving the color blue or pink being hidden somewhere, like icing in a cake, confetti in a balloon, or some kind of smoke grenade I guess? But as bizarre as some of the current trends, like throwing pies at people or grown men dressed as giant babies bursting forth from giant cakes have become, these gender reveal parties have an oddly innocuous origin point.

a fairly recent one too.

2008, blogger and expectant mother Jenna Myers-Carvunidis had an issue.

She wanted to throw a party, but her family had just celebrated the birth of a highly anticipated nephew, meaning that she needed something to, in her own words, get the family jazzed up about her own pregnancy.

And if there was anyone who was going to get them excited, It was herself, so she came up with the then-novel idea.

During their ultrasound, Carvinidis asked her midwife to keep quiet about the baby's biological sex.

Instead, the results were printed on a sealed note and hidden away in an envelope.

For this first gender reveal party, there weren't any explosions or fires.

Instead, there were two cakes, one with blue icing, one with pink, marked as such with a discreet toothpick.

Once the family gathered, Carvunidus took a look, then cut into the cake and revealed the pink center.

Her family was thrilled.

To quote an article from The Guardian, there were gasps, tears, and someone shrieked, I feel like she's been born! Her plan was a success, and she wrote about it in her blog, a story that led her to being interviewed by pregnancy magazine, The Bump, and leading to the spread of the sweet and sugary trend.

Well that seems nice, just trying to do something to stir up excitement.

Yes, if it had stayed that way, things would probably be fine.

The issue is- The issue is, is that people are idiots! Not quite the words I was going to use, but yes, things started to go awry.

The concept of a gender reveal party spread like, well, like wildfire throughout the 2010s, especially on social media, with baby showers already growing more lavish and shared on sites like Pinterest.