worst fad of the 21st century so far. it's steampunk, right?

The fact that the bass is more a physical sensation than an aural one makes me think this could never be great

Yeah, silent discos have been around for a while. I always hated the idea but one year at Supernormal they had to finish the music early so compromised with one of these - it was reasonably fun, and quite amusing when you weren't participating watching people bop around to nothing.
However, if you don't *have* to do a silent disco, I have no idea why you would actively seek to do one.

A friend used to run them - one feature which was interesting was that there were separate channels so people were dancing to 3 different sets of music indicated by colour rings on the headphones. If you wanted to dance with someone you could switch to their stream so you were both hearing the same thing.

that sounds really nice