Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Coachella

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

What began as a Woodstock-esque alt music fest in the '90s for fans of indie electronica to get freaky in the California desert has swiftly morphed into more of a celebrity horror show/Instagram museum, where people pay thousands of dollars to gather on a hot slab of corporate-sponsored land, wear disposable outfits, and pretend to have fun. Has Coachella just become obnoxious or something more like a cult?? As we come down from the festival hype this month, with the help of no-holds-barred listener call-ins, Isa and Amanda aim to find out! To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! Get free shipping on orders over $75 at SKIMS.com  You can find Julie at your local CVS Target or Walmart or by visiting Juliecare.co Get $10 off your first month of Nutrafol by visiting nutrafol.com and entering promo code CULT   

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The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. What do you think is the cultiest thing about Coachella? I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is the amount of physical strain that people put their bodies under in order to be fully immersed in the festival experience. Like knowing you're about to walk 10, 15, 20 miles a day

and be dancing in the desert heat for like three days straight and like the dust in your lungs, the lack of like normal resources that you would have on a day-to-day basis, I think is a bit culty. I think that it's gotten bigger. I think it's got more mainstream and I almost feel like they're a little greedy now.

Yes, you know what I mean? Like they're kind of taking away that like indie like experience that I used to have where you came here to like check out new artists. Instead, it's like, damn, I got to see who's worth even paying for. I would say the cultiest thing is probably electric music. It brings everybody together like a family,

but in a demonic way, you just try to feel close to one another. The rich consumerism of it, just the showing up and showing that I have more money than everyone else here. Not at all. I don't think it's called like, I think it's so fun and like amazing.

Everybody here is like different. Everybody's like fun, cute. I mean, like everybody's having a great time. This is Sounds Like a Cults, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montel, author of The Look. Cultish the language of fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina, a comedian.

You can catch my live stand up all over Los Angeles. Every week on the show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from diet culture to doomsday preppers to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult. What is it really?

What you been up to? Anything culty? I ran a half marathon. Did we already talk about that? Yeah. Okay. I won't stop talking about it to the day that I die. You're like my personality consists of bisexuality

and I just ran a marathon. Yeah. I watched an episode of Succession, the cult of rich families. Dude. I was triggered by it. I mean, not like we've been through anything exactly wink, wink, blinks twice

in the vein of Succession, but people- Amanda! When people use that corporate gobbledygook cultish language and talk about human life in terms of currency, it really does trigger my soul in a way. I'm not liable to speak of. Yeah. It is this thing where you see these characters

on Succession and you're like, oh, those people exist in real life because it's these people who have so much money that the only thing that matters to them is ego. At that point, you just wanna win to win. 100%. In Succession, not in our own life experiences, but in Succession, you know,

the family just wants to buy out Pearson. Pearson. Pearson, yes. Just because they want to. Yeah, just because they want another feather in their cap not to be confused with a feather in your culturally appropriative Native American headdress at Coachella.

How about that as a transition? No. I'm gonna give that one a hard no. I don't think that was a good transition. That was the most effort possible. So this episode is actually coming out perfectly time because it is Coachella season, whether we like it or not.

It's the most annoying time of the year. Yeah, I do not wanna be at LAX right now. No. And I also just wanna clarify that we do go pretty hard at Coachella in this episode because I don't know, it's low hanging fruit. We live in LA. The shallower aspects of Coachella can be frustrating.

They're very obvious, but we do wanna just say out of the gate that we don't actually think that everyone who goes to Coachella is like annoying or in a cold, in a bad way. This is really just to examine it from our culty point of view and it's mostly a bit anyway.

So take it with a grain of salt. So I actually did end up going to Coachella this year last weekend and it was, let me tell you, it was literally just another music festival. I've been to many, but for some reason there is so much allure. Is that the right word? There is so much discussion around Coachella

that it's built up to be this like next level enlightenment situation that I expected so much more. And once I set my standards to reality, it was fun, but my first day, because I didn't transform into like a butterfly soul, I was kind of underwhelmed. And all my friends did transform into a butterfly soul because they were on drugs

and I do not do drugs as we both know. Why? I don't do illegal drugs because they scare me. Like I said this to my friend. I was like, everyone's gonna be on hard drugs and like I don't do hard drugs. I just smoke weed and like drink alcohol. And my friend was like, I don't do hard drugs either.

And I was like, shrooms are hard drugs. Alcohol is way harder of a drug than shrooms. No. Yes. You literally cannot hallucinate on alcohol. Yes you can. Alcohol is so much more dangerous. Oh my God, alcohol.

Oh, we talked about this. You cannot hallucinate on alcohol. You can do things much worse than hallucinate. But yeah, like have sex with an ex but not jump off a roof. No, that is, dude, I'm telling you right the fuck now. That is media conditioning, dare I say, brainwashing. Shrooms are a live your life.

No they are not, Amanda, you can't, you can't hold this much power and say that a hard hallucinogen drug is a live your life. People are listening to us. I actually do, frankly, forget that. Okay, shrooms are a watch your back but I think alcohol is a more insidious watch your back because of how mainstream it is.

Especially because like you micro, micro dose. Like when I was growing up as a child of music festivals back to the subject at hand, I've been to many music festivals. I've been to Firefly, Bonnaroo, I've been to Lollapalooza. You're so cool. I'm not trying to be cool, Amanda. I'm not telling everyone that shrooms are a live your life.

Oh my God, we're really fighting today. What's going on? It's cause you're always like do drugs and I'm like no. I'll tell you why. Every time I've been to a music festival, I've had to babysit a friend who did a little too many drugs and they got fucked up and thought they were like in hell. And I'm like, I can't.

Well, yes, it's all about mindset and setting. That's important to bear in mind. Okay, it's a watch your back. God fucking dammit. Anyway, today we're talking about the colds of Coachella, which is to your point, a subject ripe for us versus them dichotomies. You're shamed if you don't go.

Especially I feel if you are, and I cringe to say this, a content creator because Coachella, if you have any type of public platform, then just becomes an Instagram museum, a content farm. And if you decide not to go, then it's basically like deciding not to attend your company's like most fruitful conference that year. So true.

That's actually a really good way of thinking of it because I actually don't even put Coachella in the category of like every other music festival I've been to because people go to most music festivals because they're really cheap. You're gonna get like a $300, $400 ticket and a lineup of like 50 of the best musicians. And in this economy, it's literally like $1,000

to see one artist. And so if you're very committed to the artist, you can get front row seats because it's general admission. And you can do that at Coachella. I did talk to some people who what they do is they buy a $650 ticket and they're there to see Bad Bunny front row. And so they wait at the barricade all day for eight hours.

So it's almost like the cult of Coachella influences and pressures you to sacrifice even more for the cult of your artist, of your stan, of the person that you're there to see. And in that same way, sacrifice all the other experiences that you could be having at that festival throughout the day.

I think price point is also something we're gonna talk a lot about in this episode. The tickets at Coachella have famously gotten a lot more expensive. I spoke to a lot of people this weekend who have been to six, eight Coachella's in a row. That's almost a decade of your life. And it feels like even though they all admit

that the lineups have gotten really huge in the priorities to just get huge headliners, which means the tickets are more expensive. And even though they all say it's not as fun as it used to be, they all keep coming back. Yeah, I mean, when I think of the cult of Coachella, the first thing that comes to mind for me is how it is this sort of like grotesque,

uncanny, performative influencer shit show that looks fun to everyone who's not actually there and isn't very fun to the people who are there. It's like the Megan of fun. Wait, what's Megan? The like horror thrill and movie about the little like AI girl. Oh, I thought you were like the Megan, the stallion of fun.

I was like, she is fun. Don't talk bad about my girl Megan. Would never Megan the stallion. I would never know the Megan that creepy girl. It's like good from far, but far from good. You know what I mean? It's like from far away. You're like, oh, that's so fun.

That's so cute. And then you get up close and you're like, holy fuck, that's horrible and terrifying. Like that's what Coachella can be at its cultiest, in my opinion. I agree, but I do want a caveat that neither of us have been to Coachella. Yes, I have.

Oh, you have? Ma'am, yes, I have. Listen, firsthand experience for once. Yeah, actually, because Amanda's like, soul cycle is a cult. Never been to soul cycle. Okay, I have spoken to so many sources though. Anyways, I did go.

I went in 2017, which I thought was like a peak year for influencer museum Coachella shit show energy. Right after Trump won the election, everyone was like, we're just gonna start posing in front of neon signs and pretend nothing is happening. Yeah, we were all like really trying to excise some kind of demon. But I went as a guest of Sephora

because I was writing for the beauty website at the time. And Sephora was a sponsor of the festival, which like that just is one example of how corporate and not DIY music festivals, Coachella in particular have become. But I was so stressed because like the outfits that I was stressed about buying and the hairstyles and the makeup where like,

if you actually look at the clothes objectively, they're absurd and sometimes offensive. And speaking of the VIP tickets, the VIP section is way, way, way far away from the stage. So like, you're actually not feeling the energy of the crowd, the like authentic cult experience that you would want. That's actually a really good point

that I feel like we should talk about that you went there because you were with Sephora and it was a sponsored event. Something I learned having gone this weekend, there is so much dialogue and there's so much conversation around the after parties, around the VIP parties. So they're like,

these parties that are outside of the festival that you have to get on the list for. And a lot of them are sponsored by huge brands, like Liquid IV. I did go to the Liquid IV party, hashtag love you liquid IV. And it was so much fun and I wanted to go. So I reached out to Liquid IV and they got me on the list, but it does give very culty energy

that just buying your ticket to the festival and just going to the regular festival is not enough. There are ultimately like levels of enlightenment that everyone wants to get to. And even at the party itself, there's a VIP section, but then there's a artist section, which is even more VIP. So like, you probably weren't the only one

who fell out of place, you know, at that beauty party. It's like everyone there is like pretending to be more than they are. Hollywood and social media, like in corporate culture, like those are the three industries that have really corrupted Coachella. Like it began as a sort of like Woodstock-esque old music festival in the 90s

for fans of like indie music and electronica. And they wanted to get freaky in the desert for a weekend. And now I think you're right. Like it has been bastardized and like morphed to like freaking Megan into this like monstrosity where people are not being in the moment where you like lose yourself and let go and have a blast. They're like trying to build their own cult

while they're at Coachella, you know what I mean? Definitely. And you see a lot of that at Coachella. Like I mentioned, the sponsored events, the VIP tents, the after parties, that exists so much. But something that I did also experience in the crowd and in the back of the crowd, because I definitely wasn't someone

who was like getting there early, was that there is still the counterculture there. I do want to like devil's avocado for those people, like the OGs who still go to the festival to vibe out. I feel like now there's two types of Coachella. You can go to Coachella because you just want to vibe out in the desert and listen to live music or you can go to Coachella

because you want to like influencer and take pictures. So what you end up seeing, and this is something I observed a lot, is that you see a lot of people who are there to let go of their ego and to be present in the moment. And then you see other people who are there literally just to build their ego. So there is that battle of like what is Coachella right now?

But at the end of the day, everyone is kind of just like under the sun dehydrating themselves for the sake of this huge experience that is like larger than life. Totally. And that's like the good kind of cult, right? Like those are the live your lives when you can participate in a quote unquote sacred space

for a temporary period of time, lose yourself, be a follower, not in the Instagram way, in the like true Woodstock 60s way. It's not about your ego. Maybe do a little mushrooms. I'm telling you, it helps with the ego. But watch your back, but watch your back, okay? And then you return to your everyday life.

And I think that can be really beautiful, but I don't know. I mean, I remember when I was at Coachella, Lady Gaga performed, Beyonce performed, Father John Misty performed, I don't know. I barely remember the music acts because I myself was not present due to the fact that I felt really insecure

being surrounded by so many models and influencers and wannabe influencers and the like. And then I remember like it was so obvious that so many people were there just for the photos. And I think you can get an accurate impression of at least parts of Coachella without having been there because a lot of it is quite hollow. Like it is quite artificial.

But then the question is, has Coachella become a fucked up cult or is it just obnoxious? Yeah, that's a good question. Because when I was there, I barely had service. So I didn't post, but now, even though I had a good time, I'm back in LA and I'm stressed out that I'm seeing all these posts on Instagram and I have to like pick my carousel of posts

to make sure that it looks like I had a good time. And that's almost putting a bad like taint on my weekend because I can't just like have enjoyed it and be done with it. And before we get into my devil's avocado, because I do wanna give a little devil's avocado to thinking that Coachella is super obnoxious, let's talk about just the roots of Coachella really quickly

for those who might not know exactly what it is or where it came from. Just give a little, let's just give a little summary for people like my mom who are listening. Shout out on a Maria. Hi, my name is Jamie. I'm from New York City. And the reason why I think Coachella is culty

is because there are Instagram's galore showing women and men and everybody in between living their best life, looking on point with their outfits all coordinated, makeup on point, but what's really happening behind the scenes is sweat, exhaustion, dehydration, and nasty bathrooms, projection, not reality.

The cultiest aspect about Coachella is that for those three days, you sacrifice your sleep, you sacrifice your health and you sacrifice your money as you spend the weekend trying to get as close as possible to the altars of your favorite musical idols. And then you spend the rest of the year trauma bonding with your fellow festival mates, reminiscing about how great it was.

Hey, sounds like you're cold. My name's Marlene and I'm from Germany. And I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is how everyone knows that the owner is homophobic and supports homophobic causes with his money, but still many queer artists perform there every year and many queer people support him indirectly with their money.

And that's very culty. Coachella, or formerly known as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, takes place in early spring in Indio, California at the Empire Polo Club in the Coachella Valley. I didn't know it was an actual club. It just looks like a hot slab of nothing. Pretty much if you don't live in Southern California,

it's about a two, three hour drive outside of Los Angeles. And that's why it's so easy for a lot of LA people to go and then very problematically for a lot of really rich people to take a private helicopter there because they don't want to drive two hours. So Coachella was launched in 1999. It was launched as an alternative music festival by alt music fans named Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santin

who run the music promotion company Golden Voice, which is a part of AEG Presents. And I didn't know this, fun fact about the company. There are some problematic politics as there often are with these large, massive, late stage capitalism industries. In 2022, right after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Rolling Stone reported that the larger parent company

that owns Coachella made a big donation to anti-abortion efforts. So the Anschutz Corporation, which is this big holding company that owns AEG Presents, made a donation of $75,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which had plans to install attorneys general who could enforce anti-abortion laws in key states.

So I think it's interesting to know that that is where some of like your Coachella ticket money could be going. Oh, Valk, are you serious? So like they made a huge donation to conservative general attorney who is like pro life. Yeah, it's just so like late capitalism mind fuck that you could buy a ticket to go see Bad Bunny

and that money ends up funding anti-abortion causes. Isn't that fucking nuts? It's like, how do those two things have anything to do with each other? But just like the swallowing of companies and the like conflation of capitalism and politics is just like, it's never cease to be a mind fuck. Yeah, that's why I always like am very forgiving

of brand politics because I genuinely think there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, especially at the stage that we are now. Like a lot of the biggest companies like Walmart's CEOs and Target CEOs are very conservative people and they have a lot of influence. And to judge everyday Americans on every single purchase that they make is really unfair

because not everyone has the privilege of choice. And so I do think that like we have to be more forgiving of each other while also being really intentional when we can. I completely agree. Like these are just formerly untreated waters. Like no one has the answers for how to navigate a market where like you think you're buying

an ethically sourced bundle of asparagus but you're actually supporting Amazon because they bought Whole Foods. You know, it's like everything is so conflated and it's really confusing and confusion makes people upset. And so like I completely agree. Like we should have as much awareness as we can tolerate and like the more privilege you have,

I think like the more careful you have to be but I too, I think it's really important to be forgiving. We talked about this in our Cult of Fast Fashion episode if anyone's interested in more of our thoughts about that. Yeah, like if you make out with women and you are a woman then I think like every once in a while you are allowed to enjoy a Chick-fil-A sandwich, okay? Just don't donate to like a Republican campaign.

Yeah, yeah, no, I know. It's just like we have to like do all of this individual responsibility calculus in order to like justify our actions to ourselves these days. And I think it's just one other check in the column of like how culty our culture has become. I thought you were gonna say it's just one sandwich. It's just one sandwich.

One chicken sandwich. It's just one chicken sandwich and every once in a while you just need it. I mean, I don't know if I'm in a position to forgive you but like I do love you despite your- And that's okay, that's the thing is like if you don't wanna forgive me for having a chicken sandwich every once in a while,

I'm okay with that. I have to live with those consequences and like another consequence of Coachella is that it is too weekend. Actually, it is not just one weekend. If you're really in the cult, I guess you would stay the whole time, right? Yeah, so when you buy your tickets,

tickets are included for one weekend bundle. And so like you either buy tickets for the first weekend or the second weekend or people who are very intense Coachella heads will buy both weekends and then stay the week in between and party all week between the two weekends. Which I feel like, I don't know if I'm just getting older. I just turned 17 and so like,

I just don't think I could do that anymore. Party for a whole week to party more. Dude, I mean, we're gonna do a Burning Man episode later this year and I wanna talk about this more when we discuss Burning Man. But I do think that something that makes Coachella very, very culty is that in addition to it being a fucking Instagram museum,

I do think it is this permission structure for certain people who maybe like work a corporate job or don't feel like they can be their full selves or let loose very much or they're working in a grind culture or whatever. Like people who need an extremely cathartic excuse to let loose use that week of Coachella as an opportunity to like embody this Dionysian fucking

like demon who just like is gonna do a million drugs and like jack off in public. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you're describing a lot of my friends who have gone for like the last 10 years. They've all jacked off in public. No, not allegedly, not allegedly just not confirmed. No, no, the mentality of like going hard

just for that one weekend because they work so hard the rest of the year that every year they go in on buying the tickets together. Cause if you buy them in a bundle, they're a little bit cheaper, which by the way, they're literally like $5 cheaper. Like it's not that good of a deal, but they buy it in a bundle,

they book the house ahead of time and they talk about it like this really like spiritual release where like they just do like a million drugs and then I'm just like, that stresses me out. No, no, I completely agree. It's like a more balanced life allows you to have like a little bit of Coachella every weekend.

Some of them do be having Coachella every weekend about Coachella, I mean cocaine. Yeah, well, right. So this is the thing is that like Coachella is so extreme. It can be extremely artificial. It can be extremely Dionysian, but no matter what's happening, the sort of like DIY origins

of what music festivals meant to people in the 60s and 70s, you know, the sort of classic cult era, but also the 90s when it began, it's not really there. Like we've kind of lost that. Hi, my name's Bella and I'm from Sydney, Australia. The most culty thing about Coachella is the artist and famous Instagrammer influencer and performer areas that they have

that are separate to all of the general public access areas. It's quite funny because people go to Coachella thinking that they're going to see Paris Hilton or Gigi Hadid or Justin Bieber when in reality, they're actually in a separate area that's actually closer to most of the main stages. So you don't actually really see them there at all. So I think the cultiest thing about Coachella

is how people who go to stagecoach insist it's less culty than Coachella, despite the fact that it's just country Coachella. Like the fact that Coachella has like created and spawned all these like new music festival cults that are just like it, but with different types of music. I think that's what's cultiest about it. Before we get into the rest of the episode culties,

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cost $50 a day and about 10,000 people attended. So it was pretty affordable. Headliners at the time included Beck, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine. Then once more, according to this iHeartRadio timeline, there was a massive shift in attendance ticket price and headliner vibes in 2011 when Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Kanye, and The Strokes all headlined

and tickets shot up to $269 for the weekend. Oh, so it was as recently as 2011 that ticket prices started going up. Yes, ma'am. That was the year I was born. I don't know. This bit is just gonna follow us until you're like, I'm 17 years old, it's easy for 100 of sounds like a coat.

But that's recent. I mean, also $269 is a really good price. So the year that I went to Coachella, 2017, that was another big moment when prices really jumped because Radiohead, Lady Gaga, and Kendrick Lamar were the headliners and at that point, one single weekend cost $399. So now we're getting into the big bucks

for your Instagram. Yeah, and I remember when I went to Bonnaroo, tickets were around $250 to $300, and I thought that was a lot. And I remember everyone always talking about Coachella because there's the cult of Coachella, but there's also the cult of music festival attendees. And I think a lot of people talk about it

as like wanting to go to every single one. And I always used to talk about wanting to go to Coachella as like the West Coast Festival. But it's known amongst all music festival goers that it is the most expensive one. And I think those are the years that start to peak even more because that doesn't even include your camping ground ticket or your stay, which as we have talked about,

a lot more people at Coachella decide to stay at Airbnbs and houses and house parties rather than camping, which is a lot cheaper. Dude, yes, like the excess costs that you may or may not be aware of or that might be hidden, concealed, that gets culty too. Got, I had no idea that 2017, the year that I went was like such a pivotal moment

in the like further cultification and corporatization of Coachella. That year set this major record for the first recurring festival franchise to earn more than $100 million. Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know about that until I talked to a lot of people at the festival.

I think that was one of the years that the lineup really popped off. It was like biggest headlining lineup of all time and it's only built up from there, which means they are prioritizing big artists over newcomers and ticket prices continue to rise. And today, the number of people attending Coachella is more than double the number of people

who live in Indio year round. So there are about 100,000 Indio residents and 200,000 people roundabouts now go to Coachella. So just to recap, it started out with $50 a day tickets and about 10,000 people. And now it's over 200,000 people who attend the festival and that doesn't include the people who just go to Coachella Valley and like hang out all weekend

and don't actually go to the music festival because I know a lot of people do that now too. And the tickets this year were baseline around $650. Yeah, it's just gotten so far from its origins. Like I think it started out as like this nice fun thing for like a reasonable number of fringy weirdos to get together and listen to some tunes. And now it's this celebrity studded,

obscenely expensive scene with a capital fucking S. Well, also I think something that's important to discuss is the fact that it costs more money, does pull it further away from that live your life catharsis of concerts that we were talking about. That's like so important to go to a concert and let go of your ego and just like be really present in like the music and be all in

just so that you can go back to your regular life afterwards because the more money you spend, the higher expectations you're going to have. And the more money you spend, the more you're going to be concerned about how good of a time you're having. There's nothing that can harsher mellow like a $22 piece of corn.

Everything starts to add up. I mean, I bought a lemonade after Bad Bunny because I was so thirsty from dancing in my house off. The lemonade was $15. The drink is $25. A coffee cost me $10, no joke. A rice bowl cost me $20. And that just is going to affect the experience

that you have and you can't bring drinks, you can't bring food inside. So you either are not eating all day or you are succumbing to the prices of the festival. And I did succumb and by the third day, I thought $15 for a lemonade was normal. Like I was brainwashed. I think it's exploitative, honestly, in a cultish way

to have all of those upcharges because you're on a remote desert. You need to buy food, you need water, you need to charge your phone, you need to shit. Well, I don't think you have to pay to shit, but that's going to be next. All of these things are necessary and you are on essentially a cult compound.

They know that they can charge a good jillion dollars, especially because they know that a lot of the people going have the money, they're there for an influencer work trip. It's just like so icky when you think of it that way. It's no longer this like, oh, I spent $250 and like, I hope it's fun. And so you have lower expectations

and so you end up having more fun. For example, I bought my ticket knowing that I wanted to leave early on Sunday so that I could like go home, do laundry and get ready for the week. But because I spent so much money, I already had this sunk cost fallacy that I was like, oh, I might as well stay for Frank Ocean.

And I did and it was really disappointing. And now I'm so exhausted and wishing I hadn't done that. I want to talk a little tiny bit about the allure of cult music festivals in general at its foundation. So modern music festivals, as we've been mentioning, in the US really grew out of that Woodstock ethos. So Woodstock was not the first of its kind event

by any means. There were a few festivals that predated it like the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals and Milwaukee Summer Fest. But Woodstock, which famously, I mean, we say famously so much, but we need to stop saying that word. It was famous.

It famously occurred in 1969, which was a very important year in cult history and mythology because that was also the year of the Manson family murders and the year that my dad was forced to join Synanon. So big year for cults. That's when Woodstock happened. And that's part of why that late 60s era

now holds this sort of mythical place in the hearts of festival goers because that was sort of like the birth time and the birth place of the sort of like communal, fringy, hippie era of music festivals. It's so easy to mystify and to glorify like the past and like past experiences because you weren't there. You know, they were like, ooh, Woodstock.

It was like so amazing. But when people went to Woodstock, they were like, oh, this is fun, but they weren't thinking it was going to be historical. Oh, definitely not. I think, and speaking of being high, I think they were all like pretty fucked up. But whenever I think of like an event

from back in the day like that, which probably didn't have like, I don't know. I don't quote me, but well-working toilets or anything. You can look back on the photos from, you know, bygone events like that where everybody is in their like, you know, long linen dresses and flowers in their hair and think like, oh, it's so romantic.

But I always think it must have smelled awful. It must have. I mean, even at Bonnaroo alone, it smelled so bad. I was pleasantly surprised how people did not smell that bad. I coach all this year that could be because people are staying in homes and showering, but there are also people who are camping and the lines for the showers on the campsites are hours long.

And that's after you've been standing all day, walking 13 to 15 miles a day just in the desert. So this is pretty fucking interesting, in my opinion. One of the reasons why music festivals, Cotel in particular, have gone so corporate and mainstream is largely because of the quote unquote experiential economy. So there's been this shift in the consumer market where now being able to share reels

of you watching Billy Eilish on Instagram has become more valuable, identity-wise, et cetera, than owning an expensive purse, for example. And brands have realized that. And that's why brands like Sephora are so interested in sponsoring festivals because they know that they're going to get that advertising propagated by all the people who

attend. Oh, that makes sense. My name's Morgan. I'm from Michigan. I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is the capitalistic venture of outfits that everybody has. I mean, it's such a competition for who's going to look the best, who's wearing what.

And it's just so bad for the environment, for people's confidence levels, and just the fashion industry in general. I feel like a lot of temporary trends come out of festival season. And it's really damaging to the people working for fast fashion companies and producing that clothing and also making a lot of people

feel unnecessary pressure to always look festival ready. Hi, Issa. Hi, Amanda. I'm Ellie, and I'm from the UK. And I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is the global impact it has on fashion trends, things like that. Over here across the pond, you can

see a lot of people wearing typical Coachella-style outfits, things you would see on people's Coachella Instagram posts. And it's people who will never go to Coachella and who have never been, and in weather that's very, very much colder than typical Coachella weather. So not only is it brave, but it's very, very culty. So we mentioned this a little bit earlier

when Amanda was talking about her outfits giving her anxiety when she went to Coachella. But you cannot talk about Coachella without talking about Coachella fashion. That was definitely an anxiety that I did not expect to have as much of. And it took everything in me to battle it. I did go and buy a couple of things for Coachella,

but I made sure that they were things that I could later wear in my everyday life. And I don't know, it stressed me out. Leading up to it, I wasn't as excited because I was stressed out about these outfits. When I walk down the street in LA, and I have to imagine this is true in other parts of the country where this clothing makes even less sense,

everybody's in alien, jelly, space pattern, lycra, $5 flair pants. Well, actually, even though Coachella is full of vegan and organic food, the fashion is very fast fashion. I mean, I used to live right by Melrose in West Hollywood. And every year, right before Coachella, a bunch of pop-up shops would pop up on Melrose

that would only be open for one month before Coachella, one month after Coachella. And they literally were called Coachella outfits. And it's where people go to buy cheap, flashy Coachella outfits. And then I can't imagine that they keep those for the following year, because they already posted pictures with them. So, of course, they're probably gonna get rid of them.

I know, I know, that's the culty conformity. Like you cannot simply go to Coachella in overalls. I actually did go to Coachella in overalls, but I was wearing only a bra underneath. So I feel like that's like festival vibes. But that's not to say like there weren't times I didn't feel out of place because like everyone dresses so wildly.

Even the celebrities feel beholden to the Coachella standard, because they wanna be in like all the roundups of best dressed celebrities at Coachella, you know? And I remember like, I'm so facetuned in all my Instagram photos that I posted of me at Coachella. Like I actually archived them years ago because I can't bear to recall like me

and these like checkered, well, I did thrift them. So that was one good thing. But pink checkered pants and the off the shoulder white linen top that was covered in the spray tan gunk. I just, I felt pressured, you know? Yeah, that's embarrassing for you. I never had that. I know there's a picture of me

that I also think is archived, but it's me in shorts overalls with two friends, four cigarettes in my mouth at the same time, doing a peace sign and the caption is happy Father's Day. Youth is a time of experimenting. Also, I know we brought this up a little bit earlier, but not only can Coachella be cringe sometimes, not always, but there also have been these cultural appropriation issues

when it comes to the fashion. And what's culty about that too, is that I feel like that cultural appropriation is passed off as boho chic. That's what it's been labeled so often when that is just a complete misnomer. And other music festivals, by the way, like Britain's Glastonbury Festival,

have banned Native American style headdresses because of the cultural appropriation, but they continued to persist in Coachella way long after they were considered offensive elsewhere. And I think that highlights the fact that there is a little bit of overlap between these different cults, like the cult of Coachella,

the cult of essential oils and wellness and goop, because even though it started off as a music festival, just because of the fact that it's outside and the fact that people wear kind of like woo-woo wellness outfits and it's in the desert, all of a sudden it's associated with finding like spiritual enlightenment. Awakenings at this music festival.

And ironically, because they're monetizing those quote unquote spiritual awakenings, they're not actually having real ones, which you can have at a musical event. I know, I know. It's like literally no one ever awakened their most authentic self by going on Instagram live. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And then like popping into the Sephora pop-up in the corner and getting an Evian face mist. It's like that's not how you reach your true internal soul. The thing about like having spiritual moments is you cannot be aware of the fact that you are being observed. You just have to have those moments very alone and very on your own.

Present, yes. Yeah, the fact that everyone is documenting every single moment of Coachella, it's gonna be very hard for you to like separate yourself from your third eye of like being observed. Oh my God, yeah. It's like the act of observing inherently changes that which is observed.

But what if you're observing yourself? Like what if the lens is an uncanny version of you? I don't need to do shrooms. I just got high from that sentence. Oh, I like that. I do think the point that we're generally getting at is that in a sense Coachella does fall into this general category of pseudo spiritual new age cultiness

that has come to imbue so many modern spaces from the fairly innocuous live your life moon circles to the full blown get the fuck out QAnon shaman. And there is still not often but there is still that third version of people who really just do go to enjoy the music for a good deal. But I think that version is shrinking every year because it is really expensive.

This was the other kind of like spooky thing about Coachella is that like in order to leave the festival, it takes like an hour and a half. If not more. It's like Ikea. Yeah, dude. Like you have to wait in a long ass motherfucking line. You have to board a bus.

It moves so slow. You're so hot. You're going to get like trampled by some influencer in like seven inch tall heels who's tired and her ankles are breaking because she's been in the desert all day. It's scary. It is scary and they do have water stations.

There aren't as many as I personally think there should be but water was cheap. I will give them that. Water bottles were $2 and they could upcharge for that but I guess they didn't choose to. Hi, my name is Sabrina. I'm from Santa Barbara, California. I think the coolest thing about Coachella

is the influencers. Probably everyone wearing bucket hats. My name is Devonche and I think the coolest thing about Coachella is that in the middle there's a giant spiral staircase that leads nowhere. For some reason people always walk up it. The cultiest part of Coachella is carpooling with a group of people hundreds of miles

to sleep in the desert. My name is Becca and I'm coming to you from France right now. I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is that it's honestly just turned into an influencer event. Do regular people even go to Coachella anymore? But you just pay thousands of dollars to go to shitty influencer parties basically and it's not even about the music.

My name is Ashley Golden calling from Baltimore, Maryland and I think the cultiest thing about Coachella is how people are obsessed with making it the new wood stock that they let themselves get overwhelmed with the vibes of free love. They end up in juicy cheating scandals every time. By the way, Team Ariana. So really quickly we wanna do a quick little segment

and if you guys like it we will do it again but we thought it would be really fun if we found stories online or anecdotes of people who have been personally associated or involved in the Cult of the Week and read them and kind of talk about it. Yes and sometimes we'll ask you culties for your personal stories but we're just,

we're trying this out, we're beta testing this as they would say. Well, cause you guys email us paragraphs and paragraphs so I'm like, hey, maybe we can actually talk about those. Yes, okay, so here is a cultie story from Coachella. So this guy was at Coachella about 10 years ago. He said, I saw a guy without a wristband run past the front gates but he was tackled down

to the floor by security. One minute later, this same guy starts having a seizure on the ground in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. Security freaks out, gets off of him and then they called the EMTs. The next thing you know, this guy gets up and fucking bolts through the crowd and leaves every security guard in the dust.

All of the onlookers clap at what they just witnessed, mission accomplished. Oh my gosh, so this guy pretended to have a seizure so that he could get through to Coachella for free. This is the kind of desperation that this cult is causing in people. But I mean, this is the thing, you abandon your senses and your values when you join a cult.

And I think that's an example of that. Yeah, you really do, but I think that is so funny and that everyone just clapped and cheered for me. I do like that. Okay, here's another quick story. This person wrote, last year at about eight or nine o'clock, an extremely drunk girl stumbled onto our campsite while a few of us were sitting around having a few drinks.

She said she had just lost her friend's phone wallet and keys while crowdsurfing. Then very enthusiastically, she told us that right after her crowdsurfing session, a quote, lesbian pulled a tampon out of her vagina and gave it to me, huh, end quote. Then she held up, said tampon and dropped it in the middle of our chair circle

after she loitered for a bit and then moved on. So this girl crowdsurfed, got handed a tampon and then brought it to a bunch of strangers and was like, look what somebody gave me. That's disgusting. Okay, if this was Burning Man and not Coachella, they would have done some kind of like a witchy ceremony. They would have burned it.

With the blood. Yeah, that does remind me. I did crowdsurf once. I went to Lollapalooza alone and I wanted to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but Alt J were playing like right before at a different stage. So I went to Alt J because I was like, I need to see Alt J. And then I ran to Red Hot Chili Peppers,

it was too late to be in the front row, but I was like, this is my one chance since I'm alone. I asked these guys to pull me up and I crowdsurfed to the front. And then I hit everyone who was still pushing me to the front, cause the thing about crowdsurfing is you get pushed all the way to the front and then you get kicked out

and then you have to go to the back. So when I was crowdsurfing, I crowdsurfed to the third row and then I started kicking and then I was like, put me down. And then I was like. I did not know that, but that's the most youth story I've ever heard in my whole entire life. Yeah, it was lit. And then I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Yeah, that's pretty fucking cool. I've definitely never crowdsurfed. I don't have that kind of chutzpah. I also only did it because I was wearing pants. I was wearing jeans. I would never crowdsurf with shorts or a skirt on because it's like, the patriarchy doesn't want women to crowdsurf.

That's fucked up. Exactly. All right, Issa, out of these three cult categories, live your life, watch your back and get the fuck out. Which cult category do you think the Cult of Coachella falls into? I think it's a watch your back, but I do think it's starting to get really expensive.

I think it is a shame how far it's gotten from its origins. But at the end of the day, I do think we've gotten past the worst of the Instagram museum era, in my opinion. I sort of do think it's a live your life. Oh, yeah, I think it's a live your life. Okay. Maybe a lighthearted watch your back, but...

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's in general, oh, I'm so easy to convince. Yeah, you're right. You're the professional here on this line. No, these are totally subjective. That's true. I think generally a live your life,

but if you're on drugs, maybe watch your back. Yeah, always, right. We're coming back to where we started, full circle, love when that happens. Where we started this podcast was a discussion of how when you do drugs, it can be wonderful, but do indeed watch your back. That is our show.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created, hosted, and produced by Issa Medina and Amanda Montel. Our theme music is by Casey Colt. This episode was edited and mixed

by Jordan Moore of the Podcabin. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeAcultPod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montel, and feel free to check out my books, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and Word Slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language.

And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-D-I-N-A, where you can find tickets to my live stand-up comedy shows or tell me where to perform. We also have a Patreon, and we would appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.

And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you'd rate us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you were a solo music artist,

what would your name be? Oh, that's a good question. It would be... Cheez-me. I'm like, that's a really good question, Amanda. Thank you so much for asking. My solo artist name would be... Don't Look at Me.

That's actually cute. Yeah. I can see that on Spotify right now. Oh, yes. You could have a little banana emoji covering your eyes. Like, I'm so cute. Yeah, I think I would want to go the sea route where my bangs cover half of my face.

I'm loving that. What about you? Shamefully, I have thought about this. But I don't. But you want to act like you have it. No, no, I don't have a good answer. What is it? Come on. Yeah, you do. It's in your hand.

Tell it to me. I guess I would just call it, sounds like a cult, the musical act performance. What? That's your band name? No, I don't know. What would my freaking band name be? Oh, no. If I really try to spitball something,

it's going to sound like the name of an evangelical child. It's going to sound like a deciduous tree or something. I feel like you would end up going the Lana Del Rey route, which is very curated, but farmy organic vibes. Yeah, like Tread Wife Energy, Boho Tread Wife. Yes. Loving that. Yeah, you'd be like Amanda Del Rey. No, I'm just kidding.