The festival bathroom situation has been getting worse over the past few years. So bad, in fact, that your chances of encountering someone’s bodily fluids, or worse, are 50/50 at this point. 

At Lollapalooza this past weekend in Chicago, a video began circulating of concert attendees crowd-surfing a cardboard box through the audience. Inside it was a plastic urine bag, the ones typically found in a hospital room. Instagram account @edmtrain posted the clip with the caption “Passing a bag of pee through the crowd is not ok.” It has since pulled nearly 177,000 views.

The comment section had thoughts. “That’s such a f–king biohazard. Gross,” read one. Someone reshared the video with the caption “passing pee through the crowd is DIABOLICAL.” Several others rechristened the event “Lollapeelooza.” One commenter’s advice was simple. “Have a friend hold your spot and go use the bathroom.” Another took the long view. “In my day we used to just fight the crowd to go to the bathroom and then find our way back like normal people,” they wrote. “This is nasty AF.”

Lollapalooza 2026 sparked widespread disgust after showing festivalgoers crowd-surfing a plastic bag filled with urine across a packed audience. The incident, dubbed "Lolla-pee-looza" by observers, fueled debate over concert and festival behavior.#lollapalooza #festival #music…

— Tomson (@TomsonWoo) August 5, 2026

Lollapalooza Fans Reportedly Passed a Bag of Pee Through the Crowd

The pee bag wasn’t Lolla’s only contribution to the genre. In a Reddit thread titled “Poopoopalooza,” one attendee described watching a woman defecate on the ground at the Bud Light stage while the crowd waited for John Summit. “PLEASE don’t poop in the crowd / on the ground in general,” they wrote. “Didn’t realize this needed to be said.”

As VICE has covered, the concert bathroom situation has been building. A Devilskin show in New Zealand was paused last week mid-set after someone defecated in the mosh pit. Earlier this year, Olivia Rodrigo told KISS FM UK she’d been smelling adult diapers from the stage—fans wearing them to hold their spots. The decision tree at major shows has narrowed. Leave your spot and lose it, or stay put and improvise. This is where that logic goes.

Noah Kahan wrote on X after human waste was reportedly left at one of his shows. “If you have to poop at a show, please dear god just go to the bathroom,” he wrote. “There’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that.” Meanwhile, a Morgan Wallen concertgoer in Baltimore last month accused a man of urinating on him and his wife mid-show.

If you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao I’ve pooped my pants as much as the next 29 year old but you guys gotta understand there’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that

— Noah Kahan (@NoahKahan) June 27, 2026

Live music has always involved a tolerance for discomfort. Elbows, spilled drinks, the guy who’s six-foot-four directly in your sightline. A urine bag traveling overhead or the waft of someone’s sh*tty diaper is taking things too far. 

The post A Bag of Pee Was Crowd-Surfed at Lollapalooza: ‘This Is Nasty AF’ appeared first on VICE.

Ever had an orgasm so good that you saw colors? Not in a metaphorical way, but with wild, vivid colors? Some people do, and it’s an actual neurological event. 

About 4% of people have synesthesia in some form—the neurological condition that causes senses to bleed into each other. Letters have colors. Sounds have flavors. Sexual synesthesia is when the cause is arousal or just the emotional experience of sex, and the responses could be anything from colored halos and flashes to abstract shapes and full-on scenes. Neuropsychologist Cathy LeBeau, whose 2026 study in Psychology of Consciousness examined sixteen cases, describes them as intermittent and involuntary.

One explanation involves what the brain does right before orgasm. Sex researcher Nicole Prause, Ph.D., told Bustle that “shifts in brain state appear to occur” before orgasm arrives, producing brainwave activity that resembles meditation. In that state, sensory filtering loosens, and the brain becomes less able to suppress visual signals—creating an opening for experiences that only exist in people with the right neural wiring.

The Rare Neurological Condition That Can Make Orgasms Look Like Fireworks

Sexual synesthesia is poorly documented partly because people who have it usually don’t know it even has a name. A study cited in the book Synesthesia: Perspectives From Cognitive Neuroscience found that 1.2% of synesthetes see colors during orgasm. As Lebeau told Men’s Journal, “most of the time, sexual synesthetes only become aware of their condition once they read about it.” People don’t exactly swap notes on what they see during sex.

The accounts people give are visually consistent in their variety. One woman told Scientific American she sees “seafoam green, bright yellow, black and red, hot pink or white,” like looking through tinted glasses or up at an aurora-lit sky. Another painted one of her orgasms to show her boyfriend what it looked like. It’s been shown that experience correlates with emotional connection. According to Lebeau’s research, arousal on its own isn’t enough—participants said trust and intimacy made it more likely to happen.

A 2013 study found that while synesthetes rated their experiences as personally enriching, they also reported feeling more isolated from their surroundings during sex—the intense inward pull consuming attention that might otherwise go toward a partner. Lebeau’s research found that some synesthetes treat the absence of a visual response as a dealbreaker. Meaning, they must not have a connection with this person. 

There’s no test for it, no treatment, and no way to acquire it. The people who have it have probably been having a fundamentally different experience of sex their entire lives, and most of them figured that out by reading an article.

The post Some People Literally See Colors When They Orgasm, Study Finds appeared first on VICE.

The 72-hour rule is the internet’s latest answer to the question of why couples stop having sex. The concept is simple. Aim to be intimate, whether that’s sex or another form of physical connection, every three days. On social media, it’s getting exactly the reaction you’d expect. Half the comments say it sounds clinical and exhausting. The rest are into it.

This isn’t a new idea. VICE covered the case for scheduling sex earlier this year, and the research behind it is fairly damning. The Knot’s 2024 Relationship and Intimacy Study found only 2% of couples actually schedule sex, while 24% say they’re dissatisfied with their sex lives. The 72-hour rule is the same argument with a catchier name—sex doesn’t maintain itself, so at some point you have to decide it’s worth protecting.

Leigh Norén, a sex therapist and coach, told Stylist that structured intimacy can work. “Intimacy, whether physical, emotional or sexual, can often fall by the wayside in long-term relationships,” she said. “While Hollywood has us believe that if we’re with the right person, we don’t need to work at it to keep it alive, we absolutely do.” For couples who respond well to routine, the 72-hour rule is like a regular checkpoint rather than a deadline.

Not everyone is convinced. Mariàn Martínez, a sex and relationships coach at Smile Makers Collection, told Stylist she thinks the rule is targeting the wrong thing. “Most don’t stop having sex because they forgot to put it in the diary,” she said. “They stop because they’re exhausted, resentful, disconnected, carrying unequal mental loads or because desire has become another thing to produce.” Putting a timer on sex won’t fix any of that. For couples in that position, a 72-hour deadline is just another thing to fail at.

This New Relationship Rule Says Couples Should Be Intimate Every 3 Days

A 2024 study out of New Zealand found that women who have sex at least once a week report the highest relationship satisfaction—suggesting frequency and satisfaction are connected, up to a point. The 72-hour rule sits somewhere in that range for most couples. Whether it works depends on whether both people are actually committed to it, instead of one person adding it to the list of things the other hasn’t done yet.

The number is almost beside the point. What the 72-hour rule actually does, when it works, is move sex from the category of things that might happen into the category of things both people have decided to do. Three days or once a week—the interval doesn’t matter as much as the agreement behind it. The rule won’t fix a relationship that has bigger problems. But for couples who’ve just let things slide, it’s a place to start.

The post Couples Are Trying the 72-Hour Rule to Fix Their Sex Lives appeared first on VICE.