I guess you are talking about Wacken? That became a total sell-out, but not since yesterday. Only larpers and normies there.
But I don't see it that bad with the drugs etc. It was always kinda like that tbh. Your first festival? I mean what did you expect? Are you a conservative? Avoiding drugs for health reason or playing it safe makes sense, but they have their use. They are not evil. Don't buy into the bullshit government narratives.
Metal is no ideology and not even about values anymore, but these were even then always subject to interpretation. Don't project something onto it. It will just make you said. I had the same problem. Even coined a word for it about this experience in my social circle, the "metal depression".
It doesnt matter if you share activities, nationality or heck even political ideologies. In the end it comes always down to the individual characters of the people. Only those matter. Identifying with umbrellagroups is cope and if you start to look honestly at it will make always you sad in the end. So better accept this sooner than later and start to go your own way.
Always thougt this straight-edge is more like a punk thing? Seems like big cope to me for an incel tbh. No offense.
Wish you the best.
Well it was not my first festival, but my first WoA experience - and probably the last one. I will stick most probably to tamer, small-scale local festivals from now on forth; at least people who go to those are more - I dare say - authentic and agreeable, than the masses that swarmed this place.
I noticed it too, what you say about thr larpers and the normies. What was - and still is in its underground - a musical subculture that dwells on rejecting the mainstream, it seems it turned out mainstream quite fast.
In the end, I expected if anything to form friendships with fellow black metallers, but it seem it has not been the case here at Wacken; hardly met any BM fans who genuinely enjoyed the music and its broad ideals, and were not taking it as "irony" (I mean if BM is listen to ironically, then fuck me, that's a disgrace to the genuine suffering to all those people who found solace in the confines of that genere's darkness). Curiously enough this has never happened at any of the local festivals in the Balkans I have also been throughout my metak journey.
Anyway, I guess you are right, should not have placed my hopes onto finding anything worth my own values and morals in such a broad mass of people as it was present there. With so many, the sentiment of mainstream thinking was almost if not constantly prevalent.
About drugs, honestly I abstain completely from them (except from my prescribed antidepressants, that is, until my next medical check-in at the psych ward, after my suicidal escapade not so many months ago) because of health considerations. If I do not care for my body and my own well-being nobody will; and considering how weak of an immune system, how slow of an metabolism and how unstable of a psyche I do have, drugs, alcohol and any other stimulants or inhibitors from an outside source are utterly wrong for me. What others do, well, it's their choice...
And yeah, this mindset fits quite well sith my - admitedly - authoritarian-left (more like center-left) leaning political worldview.
Going my own way, from now on really... as I had always. This was but an sad episode, a self-reflecting social experiment of mine that has wielded dissapointment; but in the end that is it, life goes on, and we learn from our own mistakes (or we should, at least).
And straight-edge/vegan ideas, while originating in punk per se, they are not exclusively related to that sub-culture alone. Maybe my local metal scene here in this rather lesser populated part of the Balkans is an exception from the rule for being rather welcoming for individuals such as myself; but generally speaking there are straight-edge fans in metal as they are in punk alike, or at least that is what I concluded after interracting with some of the subsequent communities online.
My condolences, brother.. you should not get your hopes up for anything involving others. Metal, video games, the internet, whatever, anything that was once a safe refuge for people like us to find other outcasts, other losers, who would welcome us, has long been corrupted by normies, that is the times we live in, the end times.
As Gyros said, it will always make you sad.
I hope it was somewhat enjoyable, at least. Just think, the songs about isolation, estrangement, and hate, you can relate to far better than any of the hedonistic party goers you encountered. They only went for the social aspect, as you said, for debauchery. You went for the music.
Yeah brother, I made the most out of it and managed to enjoy the music the best I could, in the end being an overall positive experience, tough somewhat of a rather asocial one.
In the end I will stick to local and smaller-scale festivals in the future, for they seem to be more balanced in terms of people with similar ideals I do manage to meet through them.
The larger the masses that gather at those festivals, the more mainstream and intellectually numb the ideals of the participants there seem to be. Should have been expecting that though...
As you said, I went for the music - and for that part I loved it. I am just saddened to see that beyond -some probably outlier scene there is here where I'm at in the heart of the Balkans - this great, big, "metal" family is nothing but a bunch of - well I say it and it saddens me - conformists that play the cards of an alternative life-style in order to gain some social acceptance points for their peculiarity; poseurs, and unfortunately nothing more.
Sounds like Elliots writing. You know what to do at the next metal fest.
Ha! Very funny...
