The problem is your insistence, which baffles me, on presenting your theory/opinion as if it were incontrovertible fact. I’m not asking you to pretend that another theory is “equally valid” — I’m asking you, and all the ErosBlog commenters, to present theories with the tiniest bit of basic humility. Overstating your case with insupportable certainty is an aggressive rhetorical technique, it’s a type of verbal agression that’s rampant on the internet, I don’t understand the need for it and I don’t enjoy it. So, I’m asking people to refrain from it, and in extreme cases, I’ll enforce that request with the moderation tools.

I hope I don’t spoil this by pointing out that your #4 is an example of the unwarranted internet certitude that I usually delete from my comments, though. If you’d started “I think” or “It’s likely” or “I’ll bet” or with any other verbal signal that you were presenting a theory, backed by evidence and an argument and likely to be right, I’d have been much happier with the comment.

I get this all the time as people comment on pictures I post to this blog. They have an opinion, often a very sound opinion, but they spoil it by presenting it as fact — when they weren’t there, and don’t actually have any justifiable way to be as certain as they sound.

There is, as it happens, a whole centuries-long tradition of swallowing skills — swords, snakes, canes, nails, glass, light trucks (ok, kidding about that one) — and so I’ll say right now it’s completely possible for someone to have done what this girl appears to do. I don’t actually think that’s what’s happening here, but really, nobody but the girl knows for sure. That’s why I like comment #6 so much better, for its “more likely to be true” phrasing and accompanying set of arguments.

If she could swallow something that thick and that long, why would she use a balloon?

The give-away is how she’s holding the end when she puts it in her mouth. She doesn’t hold it with one hand, or have both hands at different places. No, she’s clearly pinching the end closed with one hand and placing it in her mouth. Once her lips close around the balloon, she can slowly breath the air in the balloon into her lungs, deflating the balloon.

It is well performed.