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> If anything, Woodstock taught me that nothing in this world is black and white; the capacity for both love and greed exist to some degree in all of us. The hi

by cbanek 4y ago

> If anything, Woodstock taught me that nothing in this world is black and white; the capacity for both love and greed exist to some degree in all of us. The highest highs can come with the lowest lows; beauty can be corrupted. But mention Woodstock ’99 to me, and my initial feelings aren’t of guilt or disgust. They’re of joy, nostalgia, and the thrill of being able to utter the phrase, “Dude… I was there.” I honestly don't know how I feel about this conclusion. It seems like a very whitewashed (pardon the pun) thing to say. You could talk about the corporate gouging for water and food, which was extravagant. Or the lack of planning and safety traded in for profit which was so in vogue right before the dotcom boom and bust. They were supposed to provide free drinking water fountains, but provided like 1, and it didn't work right. Bottled water was ridiculously overpriced. Even the Simpsons ragged on this, in 2001 in the episode "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", Otto is at a concert where he gets set on fire and runs to the concession stand where Becky pours an 8 dollar bottle of water on him to put out the fire. That's when he knew it was love. Or you could talk about how people can easily resort to mob action at a person on a stage shouting at them. That would have been a good lesson to learn maybe 20 years ago. Or how consent has radically changed over the years, or if you will, consent is more respected than it was back then, and how that's a good thing. This feeling of nostalgia almost points to the fact that we didn't learn. We just watched it go by and did what everyone does. We go home. We turn on the TV. We make the same mistakes again. It's almost this feeling of "yeah, there's good and bad on both sides, but let's not try to do better next time. it is what it is" Maybe there was supposed to be another paragraph after this one (it feels like the article ends in a weird place, maybe got edited)? The title is that it destroyed your innocence. Which I guess is true, but usually you don't just lose it, you trade it for knowledge, and experience. In this case, I'm just not sure they did.

fullshark 4y ago
I mean it seems much more honest to me than the title, which the writer likely didn't choose. My guess is it's been a great conversation piece in the writer's life, and that's what sticks with him moreso than "loss of innocence."
- cbanek 4y ago
  This is absolutely a great point. I forgot that authors generally don't pick their titles (which I think is foolish, a title is so important! same for cover art! or at in general! but that's for another day). It's kind of weird since the pictures are just very... kind of normal I guess. It's a kid taking pictures of himself and his friends at a concert. By it's contrasted with some pretty heavy topics. I also honestly wonder if the end was edited and there was more to the story that got chopped off. It just seems like kind of a weak ending although the rest of his writing was actually pretty good.
monktastic1 4y ago
Totally agreed. The biggest example of "love" I read in the piece was... people jointly throwing plastic bottles in the air (most of which they presumably just left on the ground)? That's the epitome of human kindness? Unlike the original Woodstock, this doesn't sound like a group that came together out of any shared values other than to have as much fun as they could, whatever the cost. Oh, and of course to brag that they were there. Not exactly inspiring, and I'm dismayed it's at the top of HN.
- sybercecurity 4y ago
  For some reason "throwing water bottles in the air" seemed to be the thing to do in concerts in the late 90's - 2000. I remember it happening in just about every venue I was at (wasn't at Woodstock '99). Maybe it was the nexus of bottled water being ubiquitous for the first time but before the backlash about waste and switching to reusable bottles.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >Not exactly inspiring, and I'm dismayed it's at the top of HN. The kind of people that did these things in 1999 are now pushing 40 and have jobs as PMs, 1.2 kids and a house in a good school district. Why wouldn't this sort of nostalgia be top page of a white collar website on a slow Friday?
shane_b 4y ago
they traded innocence for humility and tolerance
dogleash 4y ago
The entire premise of the article rests on the context that most coverage about Woodstock 99 are exactly those things you're criticizing this for not being. In addition to all the lessons learned, both by society and this author, it still also functioned as a teenager's music festival experience. Just with seeing more shades of humanity than you get at a flawless festival. The very point is that there are people who don't recall the event the way you want them to discuss it: as a sterile learning opportunity where every word they speak must be chosen to maximize the societal value they are able to impart.
- cbanek 4y ago
  > The entire premise of the article rests on the context that most coverage about Woodstock 99 are exactly those things you're criticizing it for not being. I mean, fair enough if you want to say that the author wants to talk about something other than those issues, but they do call them out and talk about them as real, like the sexual assault part: "Tragically, following the festival, there were also reportedly allegations of rape. And while I didn’t personally witness anything as serious as those accusations, I don’t find them at all hard to believe, given the tenor of the event by the end of the weekend. You couldn’t go more than five minutes without seeing a topless woman being fondled by a random stranger." Then literally the next sentence plays it off almost as if this was said just to say he's not denying it, only to brush it off instead: "With all of that said, even after hell had broken loose, there were still some beautiful moments during the concert’s last day" It's almost like saying, it was crazy, and a lot of people got hurt, but you know what? I had fun. And I didn't get hurt. And that's what I remember. > The very point is that there are people who don't recall the event the way you want them to discuss it: as a sterile learning opportunity where every word they speak must be chosen to maximize the societal value they are able to impart. I think the point of the article is he does recall the event the way everyone else does - it was basically a literal shitshow. But again, he had fun. I don't care that he doesn't want to talk about what he wants to impart, but he's writing this specifically to impart something. And what he's imparting is his nostalgia: nostalgia, that act of taking a memory out of the disposal bin, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. There are so many better ways to write this article if you want to talk about something other than what the documentaries are talking about. Here's some ideas I came up with in 2 minutes: - I found my old Woodstock '99 photos, #7 will surprise you! - Looking back at my Woodstock experience, then and now - Toss it up in the air like you just don't care, the best part of Woodstock '99 - What I didn't see at Woodstock '99 but everyone else did Or you know, talk about the reason why he was there. The music? What made it great? Did he go with his first love? Friends from high school that he misses now? He could easily play to the hype by saying "well that's what other people saw, but from my vantage, this is what was going on in my life" But by spending pretty much most of the article saying either yeah it happened, yeah it happened, and then kind of say but I had fun, implying that it wasn't really that bad. It didn't really happen. That leads down the "It's all fake news" path.
fsckboy 4y ago
alexashka 4y ago
What are you talking about? He's telling a coming of age story, that's it. Imagine coming into a movie theatre that's playing a kids movie and complaining that it isn't realistic, animals don't really talk, we're confusing the youth, bears are actually dangerous and don't sing songs. Duuuuude... Shut up!

by cbanek 4y ago

fullshark 4y ago

I mean it seems much more honest to me than the title, which the writer likely didn't choose. My guess is it's been a great conversation piece in the writer's life, and that's what sticks with him moreso than "loss of innocence."

cbanek 4y ago
This is absolutely a great point. I forgot that authors generally don't pick their titles (which I think is foolish, a title is so important! same for cover art! or at in general! but that's for another day). It's kind of weird since the pictures are just very... kind of normal I guess. It's a kid taking pictures of himself and his friends at a concert. By it's contrasted with some pretty heavy topics. I also honestly wonder if the end was edited and there was more to the story that got chopped off. It just seems like kind of a weak ending although the rest of his writing was actually pretty good.

monktastic1 4y ago

Totally agreed. The biggest example of "love" I read in the piece was... people jointly throwing plastic bottles in the air (most of which they presumably just left on the ground)? That's the epitome of human kindness? Unlike the original Woodstock, this doesn't sound like a group that came together out of any shared values other than to have as much fun as they could, whatever the cost. Oh, and of course to brag that they were there. Not exactly inspiring, and I'm dismayed it's at the top of HN.

sybercecurity 4y ago
For some reason "throwing water bottles in the air" seemed to be the thing to do in concerts in the late 90's - 2000. I remember it happening in just about every venue I was at (wasn't at Woodstock '99). Maybe it was the nexus of bottled water being ubiquitous for the first time but before the backlash about waste and switching to reusable bottles.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>Not exactly inspiring, and I'm dismayed it's at the top of HN. The kind of people that did these things in 1999 are now pushing 40 and have jobs as PMs, 1.2 kids and a house in a good school district. Why wouldn't this sort of nostalgia be top page of a white collar website on a slow Friday?

shane_b 4y ago

they traded innocence for humility and tolerance

dogleash 4y ago

The entire premise of the article rests on the context that most coverage about Woodstock 99 are exactly those things you're criticizing this for not being. In addition to all the lessons learned, both by society and this author, it still also functioned as a teenager's music festival experience. Just with seeing more shades of humanity than you get at a flawless festival. The very point is that there are people who don't recall the event the way you want them to discuss it: as a sterile learning opportunity where every word they speak must be chosen to maximize the societal value they are able to impart.

cbanek 4y ago
> The entire premise of the article rests on the context that most coverage about Woodstock 99 are exactly those things you're criticizing it for not being. I mean, fair enough if you want to say that the author wants to talk about something other than those issues, but they do call them out and talk about them as real, like the sexual assault part: "Tragically, following the festival, there were also reportedly allegations of rape. And while I didn’t personally witness anything as serious as those accusations, I don’t find them at all hard to believe, given the tenor of the event by the end of the weekend. You couldn’t go more than five minutes without seeing a topless woman being fondled by a random stranger." Then literally the next sentence plays it off almost as if this was said just to say he's not denying it, only to brush it off instead: "With all of that said, even after hell had broken loose, there were still some beautiful moments during the concert’s last day" It's almost like saying, it was crazy, and a lot of people got hurt, but you know what? I had fun. And I didn't get hurt. And that's what I remember. > The very point is that there are people who don't recall the event the way you want them to discuss it: as a sterile learning opportunity where every word they speak must be chosen to maximize the societal value they are able to impart. I think the point of the article is he does recall the event the way everyone else does - it was basically a literal shitshow. But again, he had fun. I don't care that he doesn't want to talk about what he wants to impart, but he's writing this specifically to impart something. And what he's imparting is his nostalgia: nostalgia, that act of taking a memory out of the disposal bin, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. There are so many better ways to write this article if you want to talk about something other than what the documentaries are talking about. Here's some ideas I came up with in 2 minutes: - I found my old Woodstock '99 photos, #7 will surprise you! - Looking back at my Woodstock experience, then and now - Toss it up in the air like you just don't care, the best part of Woodstock '99 - What I didn't see at Woodstock '99 but everyone else did Or you know, talk about the reason why he was there. The music? What made it great? Did he go with his first love? Friends from high school that he misses now? He could easily play to the hype by saying "well that's what other people saw, but from my vantage, this is what was going on in my life" But by spending pretty much most of the article saying either yeah it happened, yeah it happened, and then kind of say but I had fun, implying that it wasn't really that bad. It didn't really happen. That leads down the "It's all fake news" path.

fsckboy 4y ago

alexashka 4y ago

What are you talking about? He's telling a coming of age story, that's it. Imagine coming into a movie theatre that's playing a kids movie and complaining that it isn't realistic, animals don't really talk, we're confusing the youth, bears are actually dangerous and don't sing songs. Duuuuude... Shut up!