At the time of this post the Coronavirus is affecting thousands of people in China.  Our hearts and prayers go out to those that have been affected by this outbreak.  Our blog in no way makes light of the situation.  Our intention is to highlight the timely Netflix series and how our parties relate to it.

The team from Pandemic, a Netflix original documentary, came out to celebrate the finale at our Silent Disco party at Pier 23 in San Francisco.

An epidemic occurs when a disease affects a greater number people than is usual for the locality or one that spreads to areas not usually associated with the disease. A pandemic is an epidemic of world-wide proportions. This fits in perfectly to the silent disco industry and how people interact at a party.

In 2007, silent disco was a small party of just a few people.  It was one channel, no colored lights on the headphones, and everyone called it a “silent disco”.  Just like a virus, the trend of a silent disco spread throughout the world.  Similarly to a bad virus, this one changes as it evolves, one channel turned to 2, then 3, and even 30 plus channels.  The terms have changed from silent disco, quiet clubbing, silent party, silent disco and so many others.  When you step back and look at how it’s impacted the world, it’s clear this is a good epidemic of pandemic proportions.

For a more micro-level, when you’re dancing at a Quiet Events’ silent disco party, there are three DJ’s.  The headphones change colors based on what you are listening to.  Similar to a Pandemic of a virus, if everyone is on blue “the norm” and one person switches to red, those around them want to listen to what that person is listening to, so then others turn to red, until everyone is on red.  This happens hundreds of times a night, switching back and forth between music like a virus that you catch visually.

Take a look at the silent disco scene from Pandemic, below.

The Netflix series Medical Police , a new release for 2020, is a spin-off of Adult Swim’s Children’s Hospital. The show premiered on January 10th and already has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomato. That’s only from 7 reviewers though, so… The entire season looks like it will be worth the watch but their fifth episode, “Deuce to Nines, Double Draw” especially piqued our interest because it featured a silent disco.

To recap a bit, the protagonists, Lola Spratt (played by Erinn Hayes) and Owen Maestro (played by Rob Huebel) got word of a new viral threat. Their quest to prevent an outbreak from occurring led them to Latvia. There, they were after a suspect known only as Nikolai. After receiving a viable tip, from his mommy, that Nikolai would be at a local haunt, Club Klüb, the pair made their way to the hötspöt. To their surprise, they had stumbled into a super gaseous silent disco. Ya’ know, we would hate to give any spoilers, so you’ll have to watch the episode for yourself to find out what happens next.

If you’ve seen the episode but haven’t been to an actual silent disco, we hope you know that party wasn’t the industry standard. The scene (and show, as a whole) is meant to be satirical but the “party” displayed in the episode makes us look bad. For starters, the attendees all seemed be to listening to the same DJ. Unless they only rented one transmitter for the night, there should be three DJ’s or music genres for party-goers to choose from. And unless the attendees didn’t know any of the songs playing, there are usually millions hundreds of people singing [off-key]. It’s evident that event wasn’t hosted by Quiet Events; they really should’ve contacted us as we do ship internationally.

Besides people wearing headphones, the only other thing that was true is that you can fart and no one will hear it. Unless, you didn’t notice that one person with their headphones off. Flatulence has never been an issue at our events but let’s just hope we didn’t jinx it.

Last week, reggaeton artists Nicky Jam and Daddy Yankee released the video for their song “Muévelo”. The pair, originally known as Los Cangris, made music together earlier in their careers and have reunited on Muévelo, which translates to “move it”. The song is the first release from the duo in over a decade and will be featured on the soundtrack for the movie Bad Boys for Life.

In the video, the world has become a place where music is banned. Police promoting “silence” are seen clashing with music lovers  who have taken to the streets. In rebellion, some revelers have created underground clubs hosting silent disco parties to enjoy the recently illegal tunes, like new age speakeasies. As you can expect, there’s lots of dancing taking place in the silent haunts.

The dancers are seen wearing wireless headphones, which highlighted something we in the industry have noticed; there’s been a recent upswing of silent disco references in pop culture. Over the past few years we’ve seen and been a part of some amazing productions utilizing the silent disco technology.

Television shows like Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine poked fun at silent disco in a season 2 episode, as seen here in this clip. Not quite accurate but amusing nonetheless. Also on Fox, Lethal Weapon featured a daytime silent party that seemed a bit lackluster, which is very unlike a Quiet Events silent disco, might we add. Oh, and speaking of Quiet Events, our equipment was featured in MTV’s Scream season 3 premiere. Quiet Stevens can be seen glowing all throughout Mr. Fade’s rave. We’re so glad we could be a part of that experience! Take a look at our MTV debut here.

We’ll keep our eyes open in 2020 for more silent disco scenes in tv, film, and music. The word is sure to keep on spreading and the popularity of the Muévelo song [and video] is sure to contribute to the trend. It’s already a crowd favorite, which means we’ll have to play it at our next Latin & Caribbean Silent Disco. It has amassed over 30 million views in just a week. Check out the video for yourself below.

As Silent Discos continue to grow in popularity across the world, there you’ll also start seeing them being featured in movies and TV shows.  What makes this so great for TV is that you can hear the leads perfectly.

What you may not know is that during a regular TV show when you see people dancing, they really are dancing to no music.  This way the microphone can pick up the people talking.

Grown-ish Season 2, Episode 19 features a silent disco at a college door party for this reason.