We came across posts about the following incident on multiple websites and social media platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Reddit and YouTube:
The posts claim that during a concert by the singer Lana Del Rey at the Foro Sol arena in Mexico City, a large number of the crowd members were knocked to the ground by a ‘mysterious energy wave’. Multiple videos from different angles appeared on social media indicating that showed the crowd collapsing progressively in a wave.
The phenomenon invited multiple explanations from social media users, with many convinced the wave had supernatural origins. Some users suggested that the wave was the result of ‘energy absorption’ by the singer herself as she practiced witchcraft.
These theories were encouraged by the fact that Lana Del Rey has publicly admitted to being a follower of the occult and attempting to hex Donald Trump with the help of her followers while he was President. Other theories put forth were that the wave was the work of ‘evil spirits and demonic energy’, the ‘Holy Spirit’, or the testing of a ‘crowd control device’.
Contrary to the theories suggested on social media, the wave appears to have a far more mundane explanation. Speaking to the US-based news website The Messenger, G. Keith Still, visiting Professor at the University of Suffolk and a leading expert in crowd science, explained that the wave was the result of a ‘progressive crowd collapse’. This was a phenomenon in which ‘the momentum of one person knocking into another increases significantly’ as a result of crowd dynamics.
He stated that observations among social media users that the crowd collapse appeared to be a ‘domino effect’ were ‘quite appropriate’. As the crowd was tightly packed together, it was much easier to knock over the entire crowd as one if one person fell or was pushed, just as a small domino could topple a larger domino in a domino stack.
In the worst cases of this occurrence, a crowd crush could result, where individuals who fell in the crowd collapse were unable to extricate themselves and were trapped under layers of other people. One recent instance of this was the tragic crowd crush in Itaewon, South Korea, in 2022 when 159 people were killed in a crowd crush as a result of highly congested and narrow streets.
Crowd collapses and crushes remain, unfortunately, a common phenomenon. The wave in the Lana del Rey concert has a natural explanation and the dynamics of the wave appear similar to previous crowd collapses. A similar instance of a crowd collapse can be viewed in the video here. In addition, there is no evidence to support the claim that supernatural forces were responsible for the wave.
It is therefore false that a mysterious energy wave with supernatural origins knocked over a section of the crowd at a Lana Del Rey concert.
