With summer and the advent of festival season comes a surfeit of well-intentioned festival survival guides, telling you to wear lots of sunscreen, and drink lots of water, etc. But for all that the advice contained in such guides is sensible enough, it doesn’t prepare you for the most annoying aspect of any festival experience: the people. And wait, before you start calling us judgmental hipster douchebags in the comments section, a disclaimer: we are all for going to festivals, getting loaded, and having a generally raucous time. The only thing is: don’t annoy the shit out of everyone else while you’re doing so. Sadly, at pretty much every festival you end up at, there’s always a minority who have to make asses out of themselves (despite the occasionally hilarious lengths some festivals go to to keep them out). And with that in mind, we give you… our ten most annoying festival attendee stereotypes.
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Large sweaty bros who insist on taking their shirts off And then swinging said shirts around their head as they sway to the music, all the while grinding their sweaty torsos against anyone unfortunate enough to be standing next to them (i.e. you, usually). Closely related to…
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Crowd surfers “What? I just kicked you in the head? With these giant desert boots? Oh.”
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Wastoids Shit, we’ve all been there. It’s hot, it’s been a long day, and you might have accidentally swallowed those pills someone gave you, then washed them down with about 25 cans of PBR. Now you’re trashed. Really trashed. There are two ways to deal with this: pass out gracefully in a corner somewhere, or rampage around the festival crashing into people at random and then giving them frightening bug-eyed stares before you wander off mumbling about “the demons.” We’re clearly referring to the second class of wastoid here.
Tweeters “At the festival.” Five seconds later: “Watching the band.” Five seconds later: “Enjoying watching the band. #awesome.” Five seconds later: “Still watching the band.” Ad infinitum.
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People who are only there to see the headliners You’ll recognize them because they’re the ones wearing t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to said headliners, and the ones who spend the rest of the time expressing their disdain for everyone else on the bill (including, inevitably, the bands you’ve come to check out.) “I mean, who even are these guys? Have you even heard of them? Like, whatever.”
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People who aren’t even there to see the headliners AKA the ones who have way too much cash and who have just come for the “experience.” These are the people wearing both festival t-shirt ($50 from the official merchandise stand) and festival hat (another $30), proclaiming a little too loudly to their friends that they really love festivals in general, and hoping that no-one noticed one of their tweets ended up here.
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People with stereos The bane of every camping festival. It’s 4am. The tent’s leaking. The bands have long since finished. You’re drunk. There’s another two days of festival action to go, and now you want to get some sleep. But you can’t, because the guy three campsites over is blasting Kings of Leon on his car stereo. Great.
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Hippies “Look, everyone, I brought my fire-twirlers! And my hula hoops! And my fairy wings! And… Oh, I can’t believe you just said that! That’s so mean!”
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Non Native American people in Native American headdresses Seriously, what is this all about?
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The giant dude with dreadlocks or an afro who’s always standing right in front of you Always. Seriously. If we were watching from the moon, this guy would still be right there, two feet in front of us, happily grooving away. Bless him.