Akon Crowd-Surfs in Giant Bubble at Concert in Africa, Spurring Rumors That He Was Avoiding Contracting Ebola

The recent Ebola diagnosis of a man in Dallas has turned up the paranoia across the U.S. And now photos from a concert in Africa have scaremongers working overtime. Here they are, pictures of R&B star Akon performing at the International Day of Peace celebrations in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is seen crowd-surfing over the hands of the 60,000 concertgoers in a giant bubble. Seems harmless enough, but some people are assuming that he chose this method of transportation as a way to avoid coming in contact with the deadly virus.

It all started when the website the Source posted an article that read in part, "The Ebola virus is no joke, and to avoid contracting it from anybody, when Akon left the stage to crowd surf with the people that were attending his concert, he did so in a huge plastic protective bubble." Twitter took care of the rest of the assumptions about the man in the bubble. But let's take a step back and look at Akon's history with the giant crowd-surfing bubble. He has used it at numerous concerts in Australia, India, and Dubai, to name a few.

And it's not just Akon — other performers crowd-surf in a similar fashion, such as Diplo, the Flaming Lips, and Sugarland. Akon has yet to comment on the incident. If you still think this was a way for Akon to avoid Ebola, well, we hate to burst your giant bubble, but it's safe to say this was all in fun.