I've been dropping in on the Sydney Botanic Gardens' titan arum (corpse flower) live stream and it gets less hinged by the hour, especially now that Putricia (the flower is named Putricia) has begun to bloom
At time of posting (5:30pm), she smells like wet socks and dead mice:
Other highlights:
People in the greenhouse are taking selfies with the plant but also the livestream camera
There is a discord server, apparently mostly comprised of the people who've been in the chat for 3 days straight
Aformentioned people formed a community of like 50-200 chatters until Putricia started blooming and the viewers and chat exploded to like 9k people ⠀
There are what appear to be Prayers to Putricia™, consisting of: WWTF (we watch the flower), BBTF (blessed be the bloom), WDNRP (we do not rush Putricia), WDNEP (we do not eat Putricia), and now WSTF (we smell the flower)
Faithfuls frequently post these to spread the word of Putricia
They have dubbed themselves the Children of the Corm:
Yesterday someone asked if Putricia's petals had started to open/bloom yet, and without fail 50% of chat immediately made innuendo jokes about their """""petals""""" opening, but that it depended on their personal humidity, who was touching the petals, and if the time was right for petal opening ⠀
Every 3rd time someone stands dead centre in front of the camera's FOV sufficient to block the view, chat starts 1: speculating on how tall they are (one guy was erroneously thought to be 7ft tall), and 2: immediately switch priorities to telling them to duck ⠀
a lot of people are waving at the camera and goofing off in the 3 minutes they have in the greenhouse with Putricia
A guy and his kid signed in AUSLAN at the camera ⠀
loads of fart jokes now that Putricia is starting to dutch oven everyone
