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Sydney Couple Does an Actual Burnout For Their Baby Gender Reveal

Gender reveal burnouts: the final frontier.

Baby. Gender. Reveals.

What are they? A baby gender reveal is a sort-of-ceremony in which a couple, whomst are expecting, and who reveal—yep—the gender of their baby to their family and friends. In new and creative ways, like shooting a rifle into the sky to REVEAL cotton candy pink gun smoke wafting through the blue. Or releasing a flock of baby blue-dyed doves or perhaps pigeons from a wooden box, to have them terrorise literally everyone in view, a wonderful day remembered forever by all.

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Why are these reveals so popular? I believe it is because human beings need milestones in order to punctuate life. And what in God's name possesses a couple to spend upwards of $1k on this arbitrary and meaningless juncture? As a person who just bought a cup of coffee less than thirty minutes after having made one at home and drinking them both despite not wanting nor needing to, I would have to say: because spending money is fun. In fact, it has the ability to make you feel alive.

Either way, the trend is not small. It's not niche. It's actually huge. Couples who've successfully fertilised an egg together are choosing to reveal their baby-to-be's gender more often—and more outrageously—than ever. Filming it, making scrapbooks, even hiring events coordinators to plan, document and propagate the thing (that is, make that motherfucker go viral, babyyy).

Has this all come to a strange and strangely enthralling head now that a couple in Sydney's suburbs have revealed the gender of their baby via a Facebook video in which the smoke and exhaust from a burnout ran blue? I would say, "yes. Absofuckinglutely it has."

This might be a good time to mention that I literally hate these things. I find them funny, yes, and I love them. But I hate them. Let your kid figure this shit out for itself, people. Don't fucking start with the baby blue and the trucks and the teeny tiny fireman's outfit before the Sicilian olive of a foetus even has fingernails. You know? Let the thing breaaathe. Let it worry about this shit when it's 14. Otherwise you might end up with one of those kids that's like, so fenced into its masculinity or femininity or whatever that it only learns how to express itself on Reddit and refuses to talk to you, and before you know it your child owns like seven different firearms and its only hobby is stealing your car when you're asleep and tormenting its more social and happier peers at house parties for liking pop music.

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Anyway. Nevermind all that for now. You do want to watch the video.

The best part of this story, though, is yet to come: The original video post came from a Facebook page called Sydney Events Escorts. And because burnouts are illegal, they were contacted by the Traffic Highway Patrol. Sydney Events Escorts told both the police and News.com.au that not only were they not responsible for the "event", they were mere bystanders who just happened to be in the street that day.

When News.com.au asked Sydney Events Escorts why the man releasing baby blue balloons towards the end of the video was wearing a t-shirt that said "Sydney Events Escorts" on it, they responded "We were giving out T-shirts. The man in the video was one of the people we gave a shirt away to."

And when News.com.au asked why, if they weren't behind the event, they had posted a strangely similar video days earlier on the same Facebook page, of another burnout gender reveal, Sydney Event Escorts hung up the phone.

All-in-all, a successful interview. A wonderful bit of journalism. On both sides. A nice day to be alive and spectating.

More on this as it develops! Maybe. Let's see how I feel.

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