It’s just another way for kids to annoy their parents — if you ask the parents, that is. But bottle flipping — promoted through online videos to toss a partly filled plastic bottle and try to have it land upright — has captivated children nationwide.
Youths view it as a harmless exercise, but the repetitiveness and the noise is torture to their parents.
Dayle Tuna, 40, of Rockaway, New Jersey, told the New York Times about her refrain directed at one of her sons: "Would you stop with the bottles? Stop with the bottle! Stop with the bottle!"
To hear other parents tell it and to read their posts on Facebook, she has plenty of company.
The craze gained notice in a YouTube video posted in May of a school talent show in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Michael Senatore held a water bottle and strutted up to a table while music blared. With a dramatic pause, he flipped the bottle, which landed upright on the table. The crowd erupted in pandemonium. That footage has been viewed more than six million times, and the internet has been flooded with similar videos.
Wendy Cinnamon, 44, of Rockaway, New Jersey, said that among parents, “this is driving us all insane.”
Her son, Alex Venezia, 12, is a constant practitioner. “He’s flipped the bottle and hit something and he gets really yelled at to stop,” Wendy told the Times. “I told him stop and he wouldn’t stop.”
Cinnamon has threatened to take away his smartphone. But she said that after he tossed a bottle that landed upright on top of the refrigerator, she gave up.
“It makes you feel accomplished,” Alex said.
There are several bottle-flipping groups on Facebook, and in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, the 12-and-under Cooperstown baseball team is hosting a bottle-flipping challenge on Oct. 30 to raise money for the squad.
Some parents are finding inventive ways to curb the craze. Erica Boilen of Morganville, New Jersey posted on Facebook that she gets the “Mom of the Year” award. Her 11-year-old son was flipping bottles while she was on the phone, and she finally looked at him and yelled, “If you don't stop I'm gonna find the clown and have him scare you.”
In a “super sad whimper the boy said, ‘don’t mention the clown.’”
That gave Boilen an idea,
“I’m going to print up a photo of the clown and wrap all water bottles with it,” she wrote in her post.
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