Everything is Not What it Seems - Abby Crombie

Previously, the only thing I worried about when going to a music festival was “Am I going to get stuck behind some ridiculously tall person?”. Now, there are completely new worries and pressures to consider, even before getting to the field. The worst of all? The ever-looming, ever-present, social media presence. One quick look at the festival hashtag on Instagram and you’re overwhelmed with post after post of perfectly curated, completely unattainable festival outfits and VIP wigwams having the ‘time of their lives’. This is far from the reality of ruined shoes (courtesy of the typical rainy Scottish weather), overpriced food and drink, and the lingering question of whether it was beer or piss just thrown over you. So why do we do it?

The fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a familiar term. You probably joke with friends about having ‘major FOMO’ but unfortunately, it’s a very real thing and fuels a lot of this social media behaviour. I’ve had friends spend a lot of money, the kind of money that makes my student loan look like pennies, on attending a festival where they don’t even know who is headlining. FOMO can rear its ugly head for many different reasons, whether it’s anxiety or jealousy - most of the time it’s just us striving for that social recognition. We believe we are less than, have less than, and will be less than everyone else, because we see all these other opportunities and experiences people are having and aren’t involved. We also just want people to relate to us. So, this partly explains the motivation for setting that 8:50am alarm for Ticketmaster to bag your festival ticket, but where does the pressing need to glamourise the experience come from?

The likes, views, replies, and comments we get from posting on social media is like a real, physiological high - it’s why we can’t keep away from it. It’s a reward cycle, where you get a shot of dopamine every time that little notification pops up. We’ve psychologically trained ourselves to become dependent upon positive reinforcements from social media, which impacts our mood and influence our behaviour. But, I hear you say, how are we exhibiting these obsessive behaviours with next-tono signal in the middle of the field? That doesn’t stop anyone. I’ve witnessed people climbing fences, statues, and even abandoning their ‘favourite artist ever’ just to get enough signal to post to the ‘gram. This need to document every single moment seems new, at least in my lifetime. Now, when the lights dim, the intro music begins, suddenly you’re surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of micro-concerts going on with people desperate to show their own little online world that they are here, in this moment, and are having the best time.

People are also social media savvy. This generation is the first to have grown in front of the camera, always manned with a phone and a tablet. Research has found that we’ve evolved to engage with a post more when it’s received a large number of likes. This spurs on a ‘follow the crowd’ kind of mentality, where we produce carbon copies of the same overdone pose, standing in the middle of that scorched (or saturated) field, surrounded by discarded drink cups, with the saturation turned right up to emanate some form of sunshine because of the positive reaction we know it will get. It’s foolproof.

Social media is a virtual reality, not an actual one; and while it can put on a good show when it comes to catering to the social interaction we innately crave as human beings, it’s nothing in comparison to the real deal. Now, I’m not saying just don’t bother attending a festival, because some of my best memories to date live in those sweaty crowds and £9 (I know) vodka red bulls. All I’m saying is that your music festival experience shouldn’t be crafted for social media. It should be crafted for you. You should see who you want, wear what you want, and take pictures of the things you want to remember: unfiltered.

by Abby Crombie