The lyrics to David Lee
Roth’s Just Like Paradise painted a wonderful world of no problems
whatsoever. “We’ve made it!” A phrase often uttered that signals that your
struggles are over and comfort is here.
Well, if you can even call it comfort…
I’ll be the first to admit
that I’ll be very cynical about today’s topic.
It’s not nice shaming people and I ought to let people do what they want
to do if they’re not hurting anyone and they made the money themselves. However, I dare somebody to keep a straight
face if they found out their friend bought a muddy pair of jeans for over $500,
and closer to $600 than it is to $500.
No, this is not a
lie. The New Daily reported about the
expensive dreadful jeans in the article, “Dirty Jeans for $597. It’s Official – Fashion’s Gone Mad”. This is all real by the way. You are awake. We have reached a point in our society where
rich people think it is trendy to look poor.
There are subliminal
immorality issues associated with that but that’s not the focus. The focus is the ridiculousness of charging
so much for something so, so, so not worth that much! Fashion is not easy to understand granted. It’s like art and some art pieces cost a lot
with their abstract prices. And if
that’s the argument here, this is some cruel art. So basically, I can smudge mud on a pair of
jeans and I am able to lie to consumers and sell it for $500. But if I wash it off, then it’s cheaper. So, it’s more expensive for the jeans to look
uglier.
Is this a far leap from
the outlandish things we see in fashion?
Not really, we already have jeans with holes. Jeans with holes… They want you to pay more for providing less
material and coverage for your knee. I
have a hole in my jeans, does that make it fashionable? Gee, I should fall down on tar roads more
often. Actually, I should. Mine looks really weird with just one hole on
one side.
With all that said, that’s
just the appetizer. Like I said, art is
abstract. Less could mean more, the
clothing tells a story, blah bla blah. I
don’t understand and don’t want to understand.
The highlight of dumb luxury belongs to the Fyre Festival. If you have not heard about this festival,
take a break from this article. Google
it, get your mind blown and then come back.
I’ll wait.
Amazing, right? It’s a comedy, a drama, a thriller, a
survival tale! You name it! If you were too lazy to Google it, here’s the
rundown according to The New Daily article titled “Once in a Lifetime Fyre
Festival Ends in Chaos”. Guests paid a
range of $12,000 to $120,000 for a music festival that promised to be an
immersive and rich lifestyle experience with great music, luxurious
accommodations and gourmet dining. But
when they arrived, the bands didn’t show up, their villas and suites were
replaced with disaster relief tents and their gourmet dining was a Styrofoam
box containing two slices of bread with two slices of processed cheese and a
cheap salad. To make matters worse, it
turned out that the island had no water and sewage system. It turned into a survival tale as guests
turned on each other and mugged each other for food and other resources. Frankly, the reason we can all laugh at this
is because nobody died.
But how did we get
here? This needs to be remembered for
the future if you ask me. The Fyre
Festival is a fascinating case study of what not to do to sell a product or
organizing an event. I’m getting
sidetracked again. That’s not the
focus. The focus is on the consumers. It’s not a stretch to say they have been
duped. I know it’s harsh and rash to
consider this a fraud. But the fraud
isn’t so much the event itself rather than what was essentially being sold. It’s the market itself.
Music festivals are
traditionally speaking about the exploration of music right in front of your
eyes. It’s for the genuine music lovers. The gourmet dining and beautiful hotels are
just accompaniments. However, the
genuine core of the original idea, which is the music festival, is all lost
with the overpricing. Ron Knox of Slate
wrote an article titled “How America’s Luxury-Obsessed Festival Industry Made
the Fyre Festival Debacle Possible” and I am basically acting as an echo for
his thoughts.
Buyers have lost their
buying power by accepting the rising costs.
The event of rising costs is a natural progression of the market but
$100,000 to see punk-rock band Blink-182 and forgotten rapper Ja Rule as the
headliners? That’s way too much, even if
you are a big fan of either of them.
Never mind the disaster of an event.
They could have kept their promises and I would still balk at the price!
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