https://twitter.com/elementsfestnyc/status/1435695013493678084/photo/1
With Bonnaroo being cancelled, a lot of people were very upset, while just as many were glad they decided to cancel for numerous reasons. Now you have Elements, who decided not to cancel, and proceed to put on a shit show it seems. This is totally on them for not cancelling when they should have, but in their apology, they take no blame, and blame everything on covid and hurricanes, which has lead people to completely discredit the legitimacy of that claim, of course the blame ultimately falls on them for not reading the room well enough, their apology was bs, but we cant pretend like these things they mentioned did not play a major role.
When on the internet, it seems, reading comprehension is a major issue for some.
I see all these people saying things like this:
“I mean, I’m no expert or anything. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what the “repercussions of Covid-19″ has to do with bathroom cleanliness.”
“So every issue was because of a hurricane that technically wasn’t even a hurricane by the time it got to them and covid. Not at all because of there unpreparedness. Lmao that’s stupid and not accountable at all”.
That’s not what they said.. they said “the aftermath of the hurricane AND the long-lasting repercussions of covid-19 EXACERBATED COMMON festival issues, INCLUDING some long food and water lines and restroom cleanliness.”
They are not assigning any particular problem to either the hurricane or covid, they are saying they both greatly impacted many different things in different ways, INCLUDING long food and water lines and restroom cleanliness.
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Like look, Im on your side, they need to do better, if they couldn’t secure enough water and bathrooms and personnel to care for those bathrooms they should not have proceeded with the festival. Even without covid or hurricanes, festivals need to do better with pretty much everything across the board lol, especially with how corporate everything is getting, there is a quote later on that displays my feelings about that.
But yall need to do better as well. This wouldn’t even bother me if it wasn’t yet another example of people looking at surface level face value bullshit, instead of thinking deep on an issue they intend to publicly comment on.
Yall have to realize that Covid and the hurricane did in fact have some negative effects on this and other festivals, right? Did you guys see the videos of the mess the weather caused up there? And did you guys really think that Covid wasn’t going to have long lasting effects on this industry?
I mean this is something I talked about in 2020 when all these festivals were cancelled, I predicted that any festival, that wasn’t well established, that had to cancel, would be a shit show in 2021/2022, due to; financial losses, refunds and having to honor 2020 tickets in 2021, covid restrictions.
There’s more demand, and there’s still revenue and funding, for certain level players. But I still foresee a cut in quality of production, perhaps staff, vendors, water, bathrooms, everything across the board. I foresee a few more festivals joining the graveyard before shit returns to normal.
So again, I’m on yalls side, screw these corporations in this industry for the wrong reasons, all about money, charging $15 dollars for a can of beer or even cup of OJ. Even without covid and hurricanes they lack enough bathrooms and water and long waits and its a problem i see at every festival I’ve been. They’re already shit shows for the most part lol, covid and hurricanes will for sure makes things worse lol, that’s common sense.
Again, Im not trying to shift blame away from the corporations and money makers.
I’m just saying, we cant ignore the effects that covid, the shutdown, the restrictions and this hurricane have had, which has caused a lot of the unpreparedness, yall need to be more intelligent in your outrage, use that noggin of yours to think deep and actually understand what’s going on in particular situations, things are complex, things affect other things, again I wouldn’t have went off on this rant if it wasn’t for me seeing this shit everywhere, and this just happened to be the latest example that set me off, it gave me a chance to highlight a few things ive wanted to talk about for a bit, like the corporatization of these events, the effects of covid on the industry, and how people need to get better reading comprehension and they need to get away from the surface and dive deep. That’s just naïve to be in the mindset of some of those commenters. No thought process, just initial reaction.
I get that they should have taken responsibility in the apology, but even though they didn’t, that doesn’t mean the things they said in that apology are not true. That’s the part that bothers me. Its a problem you see in politics especially, its dam near to the point that if biden or trump say a known fact like grass is green, half the country will automatically say, um no that’s a lie. lol. Its just dangerous way of navigating, and its gonna get you caught up.
I am constantly finding myself agreeing with things or people but then they ignore certain facts, and its like, nah, we cant start doing that.
“So….here is the thing…..everyone knows a pandemic hit the world last year right? Things literally just became somewhat normal if you were vaccinated……now things are ramping back up again. Why the HELL anyone would buy festival tickets right now is a serious question as an avid festival goer? Yall know there’s a chance it could be canceled, or that it’s gonna be a shit show due to short staffing if the company still makes a poor decision to host it…..yet you still go then bitch about the experience. What do you expect right now as a buyer? Seriously? It’s gonna be shit because its understaffed, and the people that ARE staffed are qualified to handle it…..you know this….yet still attend, complain, and post about it” – Cecelia (Commenter)
“In other words we knew the product was going to be crappy but we put the festival on anyways. We’re sorry and here’s an email you can write your complaints too.” – Kevin (Commenter)
“It has been argued that these more corporate festivals are based on a standardized mode of production (Finkel, 2009) and have moved away from their creative and community-oriented roots, with a focus on profit and economies of scale.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01490400.2020.1774000
“so far this year, events haven’t yet reached their pre-pandemic levels, either in number of events or overall attendance, according to PredictHQ.”
https://www.vox.com/recode/22466585/events-concerts-sports-festivals-conferences-expos-pandemic-return
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Lets just be happy we got the opportunity to party again, its gonna be a shit show for a bit in all industries, that’s what you get when you shut down like we did.
Its not even the next day and we get news of, Blue Ridge Rock Festival regarding a complete lack of ADA onsite, VIP amenities that simply don’t exist, hours long waits for shuttles + much more.
I’m telling you. Also something i forgot to mention, not only will everything be cut back, but everything will be a tad more expensive. I believe, could be wrong, but that 15 dollar orange juice just became 20(not that extreme, but you know what i mean lol). lol, i chose to avoid festivals for 2021, Ill prolly start back up in 22, we will see what the climate looks like. So anyone that’s been to one this year, let me know if things were more of a shit show than usual lol.
