Botond173
2hr ago
I think it’s obvious. Of the three recorded deaths at Woodstock, one was a simple accident (you shouldn’t fall asleep on a hayfield where tractors move around) and two were drug overdoses. Compared to this, there were 742 recorder nonlethal overdoses according to Wikipedia. I imagine any jurisdiction in the US affected by the opioid epidemic (more or less all of them?) would be rather happy to produce such a ratio in their police reports. There was not one recorded murder or rape. Compared to this, hired security stabbed a man to death in Altamont, which is a significant difference. (The other three recorded cases of death were due to mundane accidents.)
Botond173
2hr ago
I remember hearing in another documentary that later about 20 million Americans claimed to have been there...LOL. There was also a running joke among hippies: if you say you remember being there, you're lying.
Botond173
2hr ago
I see that others already gave detailed answers. I’d add a couple of things. Michael Lang, the organizer of the original festival was also an organizer of Woodstock ’99, and probably (the documentary doesn’t go into detail about this particular aspect) had a big role in promoting the event as them paying homage to the original after 30 years, resurrecting the old spirit of peace and harmony, bringing people together and basically providing the same great experience. It was the BS they kept repeating even as the disaster unfolded, in order to conceal what a naked money grab it was actually supposed to be.
You and I will probably never understand Woodstock because neither of us are liberal US Boomers (I presume) nor were we there. With regards to its cultural legacy, the deaths and miscarriages don’t matter one bit. It was surely the one defining, uniting life experience for hundreds of thousands, taking place before their illusions and ideals were forever shattered.
Botond173
2hr ago
This reminds me of something I forgot to mention: one attendee did die during Woodstock '99. Interestingly this is not even mentioned once throughout the 3-part series.
Botond173
7hr ago
I ask you to consider that the Overton window has shifted significantly with regard to judging female sexual choice and single motherhood since Sk8er Boi was released. On the other hand I won't disagree that society does indeed give female speakers limited license to mock other women and their life choices in certain contexts.
Botond173
8hr ago
Roughly one and a half years after first reading about it here and elsewhere I decided to finally binge-watch the 3-part Netflix miniseries about the infamous Woodstock ‘99 festival, released as episodes of the Trainwreck documentary series. I guess I’m lazy like that, or there are hard limits to my curiosity. Anyway, as I’ve commented on it here before, I did read and hear commentaries about this documentary and the one released earlier by HBO on the same subject, and based on these I assumed that I’ll be seeing some another tiresome woke Netflix slop about toxic masculinity and nu-metal being horrible and cringe. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised but also found that the rather little amount of woke commentary in the series seemed to be included in a rather ham-fisted and clumsy way.
To first address what was probably driving the dismissals/accusations about the series being woke propaganda slop: the topics of sexual harassment and assault are regularly brought up in it, which is understandable as this was eliciting much of the negative media focus on the festival. Based on the series there were three interconnected phenomena that were routinely taking place. One: women in the crowd flashing their tits, usually while being drunk or drugged, and prompting guys standing nearby to grab and grope them. Also, women who stage-dived were often groped all over. Three: as nudity was completely normalized from the beginning, which I imagine had much to do with the extreme heat, there were many cases of naked or semi-naked, similarly drunk or drugged women stumbling around and then getting surrounded by sleazy guys, usually also drunk or drugged, who also went on to grope them.
Plus there were rapes taking place, usually in tents and vehicles as mentioned by two interviewees, with a featured news segment mentioning 4 such cases being reported to the police. All this is mentioned in passing, except for one probable case of statutory rape which happened in a commandeered vehicle inside the rave hangar. I say 'probable' because the witness who described it said the otherwise blacked-out girl looked underage and it seemed like some guy just finished boning her, but he wasn’t sure. It also bears mentioning the context, namely that naked chicks were getting boned left and right in the dark next to the walls inside the hangar.
To finally move on to the culture war angle: there are two female interviewees relatively extensively commenting on the subject; one is a black former MTV reporter who curiously claims that the MeToo phenomenon was sparked by incidents and sexist behaviors such as these and a former attendee who was 14 at the time of the festival who said she’s just thankful that these behaviors are no longer considered acceptable.
I watched this and thought MeToo was obviously driven by multiple things, but I’m sure average drunk dudes groping drunk naked girls on festivals is definitely not one of them. Also, how do you then explain the 18-year time gap between the two? As someone of some experience at rock and metal festivals I also wondered: surely these behaviors cannot be said to be normal and acceptable during music festivals. What I think is fair to say is that they were routinely occurring on these particular festival, and that social and cultural factors that are peculiar to the late ‘90s were at play.
For example, widespread nudity was not the norm at the original festival, at least nowhere near to that extent, as far as I know, as evidenced by the many pieces of archive footage also included in this miniseries. Only by the late ‘90s did social licentiousness reach such an average level that such behaviors were normalized. Girls flashing their tits during music shows (and/or getting drugged on Ecstasy) is another expression of this, and I don’t think this was considered normal until the ascendance of nu-metal and rave, with both genres dominating Woodstock ’99. But still, it’s not like groping and touching was seen as a routine pastime during every similar festival in those times, I guess.
To mention some other things:
Curiously no member of Limp Bizkit was interviewed even though many Millennials apparently scapegoated them for the entire, well, trainwreck. Their former manager, on the other hand, was featured and he predictably denied any allegations, and it didn’t appear to me that the show’s narrative was trying to contradict him. However, it appears to be clear that him and the RHCP are responsible for cluelessly inflaming an already agitated and destructive crowd even further when an orgy of vandalism was already poised to break out, their only excuse being the organizers clearly not communicating effectively their request to help tame things down. On that note, no member of RHCP was interviewed either.
The incompetence on display on the part of the organizers is just hilarious, especially in included news segments of the bosses giving press conferences. A complete and delusional denial of the reality on the ground, one rosy and baseless statement after the other, refusing to take responsibility and shifting blame to a small number of evildoer attendees even on the morning after the disaster already happened. The mayor of the host town also came across as a complete dunce during those events, putting on an optimistic façade and actually having the temerity to even openly invite the organizers to return and put on another festival sometime later, doing all this at a point where everything already went to literally shit and things were to fall apart completely in a few hours.
While not openly naming late-stage capitalism as a culprit, the documentary creator clearly consider it to be the main culprit, and for a good reason, I think. Despite all the bullshit and pretense of doing everything to honor the great legacy of the original Woodstock, the overriding objective was to make maximum profit, driven by the bad example of Woodstock ’94 not turning any profit at all, and this went hand in hand with cutting to the bare minimum the budget for any services, facilities, staff and security, while at the same time banning the attendees from even bringing their own drinking water on site.
Botond173
13hr ago
I doubt it's only rednecks and working-class kids who get written off as having peaked in high school, if that's what you're referring to. I think it's entirely plausible for some midwit and otherwise unremarkable guy to come from a comfortable middle-class suburban household and suffer the same fate.
Botond173
13hr ago
I suggest that we delineate female perishableness, which is a biological reality that cannot be addressed in polite company without the penalty of cancelling, from the peaking-in-high-school concept that does exist within the Overton window and is thus safe to discuss. I’d also argue that it’s a bit over the top to argue that girls are often at their prettiest at 16-18. Realistically speaking I think female fertility and beauty usually peaks at the age of 21-22.
Botond173
14hr ago
Yeah, for some people high school never ends, as they say. Alternatively, not everyone who graduates from high school actually leaves it behind. Others have also observed that the Great Awokening and SJW tendencies are also partially driven by resentments developed in high school and getting nurtured later on.
Botond173
14hr ago
High school is notable because although you still have some decent latitude in terms of who you spend your time with, you are still surrounded by the same set of people every day, forced into constant, recurring proximity.
This social dynamic also occurred to me. It’s a unique life experience. For men, I think the only comparable experience they used to have in the past was the draft. I’m guessing there’s a subset of teenagers that are helped out by this, namely those who do have a normal level of social skills but find it difficult to socialize voluntarily for whatever reason.
And not everyone makes that jump. If you go straight into the workforce, it's probably even more stark.
It’s a usual lifestyle change which isn’t exactly voluntary. For the average college-educated man, graduation entails the dissolution of his only existing social circle. If he moves to another place to start working, which is a usual course of events, he’ll soon find himself socializing only with his colleagues and with family members, should the latter even be present at that place. Everything else, he’d have to build up from scratch.
Botond173
15hr ago
How does college make it so "you are still surrounded by the same set of people every day, forced into constant, recurring proximity"?
I have the same question. The social situation where college fills this role but high school doesn't seems to be rather peculiar.
Botond173
1d ago
As someone with a moderate interest in sociology, despite that field of science generally being captured by leftist activists I cannot really stand, I’m somewhat intrigued by the American concept of ‘peaking in high school’ which I wasn’t even aware of until recently. I tried to dissect what it actually means but I feel like I’m not getting that much closer.
Before I continue I’d like to state two assumptions on the subject, based on what limited information I’ve gathered. One is that the concept, or accusation/dismissal if we want to be more honest, is almost always applied to men only. The second is that it doesn’t really exist as a subject of any conversation outside the jock-vs-nerd dichotomy as a wider concept. It’s a subconcept, if such a thing even exist. It's also inseparable from the idea that your high school years are the best years of your life.
As far as I can tell, the concept basically describes a high school guy who’s a midwit and largely without ambition or intellectual curiosity in life but also has street smarts and some level of charm, plus genetic attributes that are to his advantage (muscle mass, height, jawline etc). Whatever he goes on to do after graduation, wherever he moves to and whatever choices he makes, his social status will never be relatively higher than it was in high school. He’ll never be more popular in his social circle or at his job than he was in high school. Whatever level of success he goes on to have, it’ll never surpass the success he had in high school in terms of noteworthiness within his social circle. The things that made him popular he probably is not even aware of, and he just doesn’t know any better.
Is this an accurate description or am I missing the point?
Botond173
1d ago
Sounds interesting. The buddy cop novel actually has its own wikipedia page:
Botond173
2d ago
I'd argue that any propaganda advocating unfettered access to abortion and the morning-after pill, and any propaganda messaging about there not being tangible risks to late pregnancy and childbirth i.e. propaganda advocating for the indefinite postponing of breeding, counts as anti-natal psy-ops.
Botond173
2d ago
What I had in mind is the simple social reality of overtly frail, senile, potentially demented people not being able to look after their grandchildren at all, which severely degrades the quality of life of those children and their parents.
Botond173
2d ago
There's also the evident effect of social isolation. If you're a child with older parents, they are unlikely to socialize with the parents of the children you want to, or otherwise would be, socializing with, there being a significant age gap, and the adults your parents do socialize with are unlikely to have children of your age. Both are significant barriers to socializing.
Botond173
3d ago
I was observing the whole thing from a more practical point of view. Apart from building and maintaining a world empire, what else did unite the English, Scots and Welsh? What else did they agree on?
Botond173
3d ago
is the advancing age of parents worse for children than we think, or are these fears unfounded?
Definitely worse for the grandchildren, if there any.
I’d prefer not to start discussing something here that is only tangentially related to this miniseries, nor am I an economist or a redditor for that matter, but if you wish to discuss late-stage capitalism in general on this site, I’ll be happy to take part. To keep this comment concise I’d make the following argument.
In early-stage capitalism: the concentration of capital is yet of a low level, some natural resources are still untapped and not depleted, some markets are still unclaimed and unexplored, the low-hanging fruit is generally yet not picked, market forces did not yet eat away at social norms and cultural traditions (fertility rates and family formation rates are still high, and labor is plentiful), the environment is not yet poisoned and contaminated all over. In late-stage capitalism, none of that is true anymore.
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