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> 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
by 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.
- mkmk3 4y ago> 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 It doesn't feel like you're acknowledging the parent comment
- rcoveson 4y ago> 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. This is every time you have fun. How far away was the closest person being assaulted from you during your last joyful experience? Might have been the alley outside the restaurant. The more densely populated and/or poor the area, the closer it probably was. Festivals in particular are insanely densely populated and, in a narrow sense, "poor". There are probably robberies and assaults at every Wikipedia-scale gathering you or I have ever attended. It's not some 17 year old's responsibility to police the wild festival, or to feel shame about it after learning after the fact that worse things happened there than they realized. Finish the sentence "he should have..." for the day things got crazy at the festival. Left the scene, and by so doing become less corrupted by the proximal sins of others? Suspected that the craziness would probably lead to serious crimes and gone around seeking them out and reporting them? Or is the important thing that he just change the way he feels about the festival now in hindsight? I dunno what I was doing the day those bad things happened at that festival (I was in Colorado) but I was probably having a good time. And I don't regret it!
- cbanek 4y ago> There are probably robberies and assaults at every Wikipedia-scale gathering you or I have ever attended. I mean, true, but when there are literal piles of flaming debris and the fun involves what other people might consider a riot, I think it's not like he didn't know what was going on. Look at what happened with the twitchcon party thing with the open cups of alcohol and a bunch of people got drugged. Now that was just bad party planning as well, but for random attendees, I get it - they didn't know that some of the cups were spiked. > Or is the important thing that he just change the way he feels about the festival now in hindsight? He doesn't have to change the way he feels, but the way he presents what he feels very much sounds like denial to me. And if you're posting your feels on the internet, you have to put up with everyone else's (including mine)'s feels too. He could have just posted all the pictures on his very popular instagram and not written that he didn't see the bad things. It would have been just as interesting, if not more, to let people draw their own conclusions based on the pictures. > I dunno what I was doing the day those bad things happened at that festival (I was in Colorado) but I was probably having a good time. And I don't regret it! Fair enough, but this is almost like someone saying they got married on 9/11 and that is why they had a great day so it wasn't as bad as people remember? It doesn't seem related at all if you weren't there.