Up to 45 people were rushed to hospital at Skrillex’s Coachella show after paramedics mistakenly thought the people were suffering from acute epileptic seizures when in fact the people were merely dancing to the US producer’s brand of build-drop, hard “dubstep”.
“They had all the hallmark symptoms of an epileptic fit,” explained attending paramedic John Marvin. “There was the trembling jerking head, clenched limbs, wild eyes and foaming mouth. As a paramedic, when you’re faced with that the training kicks in and you just react. You don’t stop and think well maybe he’s just dancing and not epileptic because in all my years of working as an emergency response unit at festivals I’ve never seen anybody call what I saw at the Skrillex show dancing.”
“Admittedly we thought it was strange that the fits seemed to coincide with a drop in the music, which occurred at least 8 times per minute, but we put that down to it being a reaction to the overly elaborate light show that lit up with every drop,” he continued. “We never thought, even when the people tried to fight us off, that they were dancing. It was so unnatural and scary looking for what is supposed to be dance music, not a nu-metal.”
John says that he has had similar incidents at early Linkin Park shows but that eventually it became obvious that the movements he was witnessing were “some sort of dancing” and that those people “as terrifying and unhealthy as they looked” were not in urgent need of medical assistance.
“When I first saw what was happening my first instinct was ‘oh they must be nu-metal fans’ and this is dancing,” he continued, “but apparently Skrillex is dance music so when I saw the people moshing and jumping around like angsty teens I knew something was wrong and that the entire audience of several thousand people must be suffering from photo sensitive epilepsy. That just seemed like the only logical explanation.”
The people who were forcibly removed from the venue and rushed to a local hospital are reportedly angry and have initiated plans to sue event organisers and Skrillex for the mistreatment.
More on this as we have it….
