ARE you attending a profit-focused corporate music festival? Follow our shallow, self-absorbed and unhappy guide.
There are more festivals to choose from than ever before, from massive working class pop events with oppressive steel fences and sniffer dogs to small, intimate weekenders where conceited rich people pretend to be interested in culture.
Festivals are about music, laughter and most of all they’re about conforming to a stereotype of a young modern consumer who never reveals their vulnerabilities on social media. Here’s how to behave at a festival:
Rent some pre-constructed wigwam thing then get in it and do a ton of coke
Become paranoid and have a panicked conversation about your insecurities. Decide you are leaving the wigwam for the entire weekend. Then do another line and feel a bit better.
Go and watch Will Self read some pages out of a book while worrying
The literary tent is sparsely populated and feels safe, but you’re not sure how this qualifies as entertainment. Why is everyone better looking than you? And they’re talking about you, laughing at you, saying you’re fat.
See a famous musician looking old and weak. Realise you don’t even like music
Watching a big act, you realise you’ve never bought an album. You’re more into the gym and sunglasses. This is like that Banksy exhibition you went to despite not knowing who Banksy was. You didn’t see the point of that either.
Eat a load of food in some fucking toff cook’s ‘feast tent’ thing you have to pay extra for
Maybe some of the people there are famous. You would like that. Then you do a load more coke.
Ignore inner voice telling you ‘there must be something better in this world’
Gather your best-looking friends for a contrived photograph of ‘the perfect moment’. Realise your whole existence is a vapid exercise in self-promotion, and that in your heart you are alienated and more than a little bit afraid. Go back in wigwam and feel alone.
