Silent disco

This is one of the fucking stupidest things I've ever seen. Could it also be brilliantly self-parodic? In the Netherlands, stringent anti-noise legislation led to the ad hoc creation of the soundless disco, where all the dancers where wireless headphones with the DJ's music piped in. So you are confronted with a room full of self-involved exhibitionists literally locked into their own cone of silence. Small talk is boring if not impossible at clubs anyway so why not remove the pretense all together, and let people gyrate together in a communication-free zone. Brilliant! In the Netherlands, they were forced to do this, but these jackasses in Williamsburg (where else?) are doing it only because they think it's weird. It's supposed to be some kind of participatory performance art piece, but do hipsters really need new oppotunities to reagrd their lifestlye as a work of art?

Says one bemused bystander quoted in the piece, "It’s like everybody’s bedroom-dancing, but in a crowd!” Bedroom dancing exists because bedroom dancers experience a sense of shame and a socially graceful shyness that for better or for worse keeps their self-expression private. But these folks who dance in the crowd want attention. Also in the same article, possibly the best attribution ever: "'Well, I guess it doesn’t bother the neighbors,' mused Ambrose Martos, 32, a professional clown from Park Slope." A professional clown indeed.