How it started: Garbage just completed their alleged final tour of North America, and at the Good Things Festival in Melbourne, Australia just under a week ago, there was an audience member who had a beach ball in hand. That was the biggest mistake of that man's life.

Here was Shirley Manson's response on stage to the ball handler in full:

"Big guy with your big fuckin' beach ball! Oooooh, I'm sooo scared of you, so thrilled by you! What a fuckin' douchebag!... Fuckin' dudes, wow. Oh my god, you're so cool. It's just so fuckin' outrageously cool, I can't get over it, wow. It's disrespectful. And musicians have had enough. And we're fed up of not getting fuckin' paid properly and fed up of having to play for douchebags like you. You're a fuckin' middle-aged man in a fuckin' ridiculous hat, and you're a fuckin' fuckface. And I want, literally, to ask people to fuckin' punch you in the fuckin' face. But you know what? I'm a lady, so I won't. But truly, I would love to send my crew over to fuckin' mess you up. But you know what? I won't because I pity you because you're a small man with a smalllll dick. Goodnight, angelface."

You'll prefer the video below, via Stereogum.

That was not enough. Manson doubled down afterward on Threads, posting the following message:

"I make NO APOLOGIES whatsoever for getting annoyed at beachballs at shows. I joined a band because I HATED THE FUCKING BEACH. I joined a band because I wanted to listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure and be dark and beautiful.

Continue listening to Spotify and toss your stupid beach balls around like you are ten years old. I love the musical community and I want to respect their artistry. I am so tired of folks taking music for free and treating us all like circus performers."

As Stereogum also pointed out, their own 2021 interview with her hints at the origin story for her villain arc against all things surf and sand:

"You've got to understand, I didn't come from a beach culture. I came from a cold Scottish granite city. And I had never even worn a swimsuit in public. The whole universe of California beach living was just something entirely alien to me and so I was horrified by the heat, I was horrified by the sun. I didn't know how to dress, so I was in a very uncomfortable outfit. I was in thick black tights with boots and a restrictive mini-skirt, and I didn't even have sunscreen on. I was really miserable, physically miserable and uncomfortable. And of course, we were not making music that applied to the kind of audience that MTV's Beach House was attracting.

There was a lot of jocks in swimming trunks and tossing beach balls around and I was just like, 'What the fuck is this? This is not appropriate.''"

But the war had only just begun. Garbage is playing a few other Australian festivals and Manson today wildly shifted the focus of the whole thing when addressing the crowd at Brisbane's edition of Good Things (who obviously showed up with many more beach balls):

"I just have to address your glorious beach balls. They're very impressive. They're very impressive, and not only are they impressive, but they are very, very big. So the only thing that kind of shocks me a little is that there's been more fuss made about me offending beach balls than there has been made about 20,000 Palestinian kids who are now fucking under the dirt. So whilst the press are busy cooking up some kind of crazy Antichrist rhetoric, I would just like to remind you all what actually is important in this life. And maybe a beach ball brings you joy. If I upset you about your blessed beach balls, I humbly apologize. However, I would really like it if the governments of the day apologized for what the fuck is happening in Palestine!"

You can watch that one below.

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She also changed the opening line of their song "There's No Future in Optimism" from "if you're ready for love" to "if you're ready for balls" during that set. As you can imagine, Manson is attracting more beach balls than ever.

When will the madness end? Not today.

At Melbourne's Palais Theatre, Manson broke her silence on beach balls just once more for old times' sake:

"I need to say one last thing about the bizarre beach ball thing. And I want our fans to know: If that person was indeed who he said he was, he was a Garbage fan, I would've never spoken to him the way I did. I would like you to bear in mind that everything is contextual. If you're not given any context, you have no idea what went wrong. Second of all, I've had a 30-year career. I have never spoken to any fan like that in my life before except one cunt who spat on me once. He spat on me once, I went fuckin' nuts, and you know what happened next is I got a fuckin' gig as a Terminator on a massive TV show. Thank you to the Fates, thank you to the true fans. We love you. I'm sorry I lost my cool, but I still fuckin' hate beach balls, and I always will."

And of course, you can watch that below as well (if you have the balls).