modern hippies fail at hippiedom, exhibit 37
I read the news every day. Any given day in my life you can be sure of two things. I will drink coffee and i will read the news. To be honest, i mostly just glance the headlines because that's enough to give me general overview of what is going on in the world, but there are always a couple of articles a day that warrant a clickthrough
( Read more... )
In the 90s I did comicons/sci-fi fantasy cons.... and now that they're immensely popular with pre-fab $10,000 cosplay outfits to buy and the dance room and the marketing room switched places... so that the big event rooms are used for commerce and the little break out rooms are used for dance rather than vice-versa. Sure, maybe its "Now that it's cool, its uncool to me...." but it's more like people TRYING to be cool/seen at a cool scene... is how every cool scene gets ruined. Those people turn a really awesome, strange, honest, weird, playful event... into some acting stage for themselves... and when LOTS of people join in on that phantom stage and it goes from being weirdos being naturally weird and having a blast to a bunch of people on ego trips and power trips making fun of all the weirdos being naturally weird (which chases the weirdos who made it so cool to begin with off) and replaces them with these weird expectations and their personal performance of cool. Burning Man used to be the putt-putting VW microbus and minivan crowd.... bringing very little except a tent, a blanket, some body paint and shrooms. For more than 20 years its morphed into the RV crowd who tow a Tesla behind... just in case they want to race in the desert and spend their whole time videoing everything they see on their phone so they can tell everyone they were there.
The Seattle tech crowd tried to take over the Barter Faire culture/scene 'round here. I stopped going when one year more booths only took money than there were booths willing to barter. It's a literal fucking bartering party, assholes! What are you doing here with your cheap-ass Chinese import jewelry and dream catchers who doesn't accept barter OR cash but has a printed sign about proudly accepting credit/debit cards? Fuck you.
They are also the assholes who cause problems at the first aid booth because they ate too much pot and are having some kundalini experience and are yelling at volunteers its their fault you ate that damned cookie that was probably made by some home green baker at Rx strength for someone suffering MS or cancer and you didn't hear when they said, "Don't eat it all at once... man....... " which you didn't hear because the girl with dreadlocks was in some little dusty dress and no bra.
Like this sorta shit is the downfall of every decently weird and fun place.
I went to a big name folk/punk concert a couple days ago... a friend gave me a ticket last minute so I found a spot where I could see and figured I'd just chill and enjoy it (rather than being up front against the stage and dancing my ass off while the mosh pit rages behind me) from the back.
Nope. I couldn't see... there were too many cell phones held above people's heads recording in 3 minute bursts for me to see much beyond everyone else's relayed/replayed/overplayed bullshit attempt to prove they were there and make it memorable rather than... like actually BEING there, and ACTUALLY watching it.. with their eyeballs, directly.
Fuck this future.
Reply
I know people who still go to Burning Man or have been in recent years, and they are/were pretty seriously into the arts scene, so i am quite sure it's still a lot of fun and filled with creative installations and great music and all the rest of the stuff it always was. I don't want to shit on an event just because it got big or famous. Like i said to siglinde99 above, i get that some people just really enjoy massive events. Can't fault them if that's their vibe.
Personally my sweet spot for a party is a couple of hundred people. I've been to a bunch of raves and festivals of 1000 and up and to me once you get over 500 it's just too much, even though the production values clearly ramp along with the headcount. I think i am just the kind of person who feels more comfortable with smaller scale events, even while being perfectly happy living in a city of millions of people.
I feel you on the crafts fair thing being import stuff. I actually know a few people who are in the business of sourcing products from South America, Africa and Asia and then selling them at a great mark-up at "humble" market stalls in developed countries... One even went on to open her own little store of hippie dippie foreign curios and knick-knacks. I have to say seeing the catalogs where they got their stuff busted my illusion of these market stalls dealing in hand-crafted wares made by local artisans. I mean, sure, there's still artisans making the stuff, but they're churning them out by the hundreds and going through middle men who deal to small business owners all over the developed world. Is this exploitation? Is it neo-colonialism? Is it a modern incarnation of the East India Company? Or is it just adventurous expats and wise traders linking up western buyers with artists and craftspeople from the global south who otherwise would never find a market? I don't know. I find it hard to judge when clearly some people get so much pleasure out of it.
I do wonder how i would feel if i had stayed in the US (or at least Canada) over the past 5-10 years, though. A lot of people i know have said the place is really going downhill, certainly as far as counter-culture goes. But is that just because everyone i know nowadays is old? Maybe there is a new counter-culture and we're just too old to see it?
Reply
There are a lot of things that get big, without having its culture (especially when it is SUPPOSED to be counter-culture) co-opted into a more commericalized and digestible form. "Commercial" as an adjective isn't just... branding or advertising (which Burning Man disapproves of).. it is specifically talking about integrating "wide appeal" or "mass appeal" into the event.
That picture of a 100 RVs idling in the desert in the traffic jam is just like a huge warning sign that the anarchists and artists could easily be less than half of the participants. So... who the fuck is everyone else and why are they there?
I spend quite a bit of time in lot of little fringe social/artistic/nerd communities and there is something that happens when the general public tries to attend en masse something outsider, just because its currently popular. Yes, some people become inspired and a great time can change lives... but most just come and fuck the whole thing up. So many things are [Awesome Thing} + a Party.... but if you really love the awesome thing, the party is usually just like the.. bonus. And the party is wild but safe. But if you come to the awesome thing... not at all interested in the awesome thing and ONLY the party, that's where parties become dangerous and weird and it looses all the fun for me.
A 3000 person party where everyone is at the party for the same reason(s) is very different than a 3000 person party where more than half the people give zero shits about the awesome thing, they're just there to party untethered... and it changes everything.
Reply
Leave a comment