Hello, girl from the 4 panel comic about PLUR here. What are you talking about? I don't have any tattoos..?
Hey. I misinterpreted your necklace as a tattoo. My mistake there!
And yeeuh, I apologize for getting all cyberbully up in this. I have a lot of vitriol I should spew in the toilet instead of the Internet, but sometimes I take this shit quite seriously. I really care about the scene (though I know I’m not helping matters by being a rusty cunt all the time) and when I see this kind of false propaganda about PLUR and candy kids it really gets my goat. Seems like a lot of new kids want to uphold this credo of PLUR without any of its foundations in the rave scene. I need to be civil about this and educate the new kids but they just don’t want to listen, you know? Everybody thinks they know everything, and with the tumblr community’s special splash of “social justice” smeared on everything, I’ve been told I’m infringing on others “identifying” as candy kids because I say you kind of need to actually be part of the rave scene to be a candy kid. Being a candy kid is not about bracelets and PLUR. Sure, it’s an attitude, but you have to actually participate in the rave scene to understand and strengthen its roots.
Do you know what’s so admirable about being a candy kid? Candy kids are always excited for the next party, are always dancing to their favorite DJs, are always ready to go out of their way to make a night successful and memorable. Whether this means distributing goodies like kandi and lollipops or enduring physical labor like transporting equipment or creating props, candy kids put a dollar for the average two cents. This is important because it makes these people a lifeblood in a scene dependent entirely on its community. Insomniac threw renegades like everybody else, hoping to pull maybe 500 something heads to the desert in San Bernardino. Now they pull hundreds of thousands of god-knows-who to hundred degree heat in Las Vegas. Candy kids helped to make this happen, as did junglists, groovers, gabbers; the lot of them. They traveled and sweat and bled for the music they loved the shit out of. And parties are thrown by the people in attendance, not by a bunch of employees, so to speak, who are handed different batons of responsibility and left to their own devices. Your DJs, EMTs, security, lighting, sound, venue, all belong to the rave scene and are all ravers themselves. Many of them started out as, or still are, active candy kids.
DJ Paul Elstak—the godfather of hardcore—fills stadiums, beachfronts, and forests in Europe, but I saw him for a humbling ten dollars at a dingy warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles. That was this year, not some faraway point in the ’90s only heard about in fables or glorified in Groove. And we, the people, worked to make it happen.
So I see these kids on tumblr who claim to be candy kids, and they say that they’ve never been happier and it’s who they really truly are, but they’ve never stepped foot in a rave. They shout PLUR at the top of their lungs and have no idea that Frankie Bones is a human being that exists (with some fuckin’ bangers under his belt!). And it just makes me wonder, how exactly can they call themselves a candy kid without tapping into its pulsating roots? To be a gamer, you have to actually play video games. To be a raver, you have to actually attend rave parties. I know it’s hard under certain circumstances—believe me, I have been there—but if it’s what you truly love and is part of you, you will find a way no matter how long it takes.
I know you’re just off-hand shooting me an Ask about some diluted meme you participated in, but I really feel like all of this needs to be said. I don’t know who you are or your history, what you’ve contributed, what parties you’ve attended, etc. but this message/rant is not for you specifically so please don’t see this as me forcing a lecture down your throat. It’s just that this past weekend has been really eyeopening about how much work it takes to actually throw a party, and how entitled some people are that they belong there or that raves need to just magically pop up so people have somewhere to take drugs without their parents knowing. That isn’t what this is about. We didn’t bring a saw, hammer, nails, and crates of wax to the fucking desert so people could drunkenly bump the tables or piss and moan about the poor turnout. If you want to party, pull you and your friends together and throw a fuckin’ party. You’ll sweat and swear, but I guarantee you’ll have a good time.
