Why Criticizing Coachella is Useless
Beautiful people somehow managing to have fun.
Coachella- a term that may immediately create images of trendy cultural misappropriation, trust fund kids trying to desperately spot celebrities and a sea of people who generally contradict the foundation of music festivals. Coachella may also make one think of the first major festival of the year where an eclectic mix of the world’s most successful recording artists perform to countless beautiful people in ideal desert weather.
The incredibly popular two-weekend festival is less than a month away which is when an abundance of articles are released addressing how terrible the whole damn thing is. Meanwhile, it is expected that prior to the event, festivalgoers lounge in Palm Springs or L.A meeting Vince Staples and SZA by the Poolside. Coachella is geared towards the wealthy, lucky and stereotypically gorgeous people of the world.
The countless articles bashing Coachella mainly address A) How the festival focuses too much on fashion B) How the festival is made up of terrible people and C) The ridiculousness of celebrity spotting. The irony here is that these articles are generated from alternative or independent magazines and generally aimed at a demographic that is disinterested in attending Coachella to begin with. Additionally, these articles and discussions that revolve around them just perpetuate these topics thus making them even larger spectacles for even more useless reasons. Lastly, and most importantly this is removing the festival even further away from music which is essentially the only real problem happening here.
Indie magazines addressing these issues is essentially the same thing as the unpopular kids making fun of the popular kids in high school. The popular kids remain unaffected and the unpopular kids remain pasty. The people attending Coachella are having the time of their lives and are generally unconcerned about what kind of global impact they are making by being there. They have spent a large sum of money to live a temporary elitist lifestyle.
Once we start exclusively criticizing music festivals they are over, the excitement dries up and the music suffers which only proves we are mere victims not pioneers of subcultures. If you don’t like the cultural significance of Coachella, don’t go-they will continue to be wildly successful and there is a likely festival out there that is perfectly suited for you. There is no significant outcome that derives from excessively exhibiting why we don’t like something in a medium as inconsequential as social media. So, let's all relax about Coachella and focus on things we can change and enjoy because this V.I.P. party in the desert isn’t one of them.