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Lindsay Thompson / Her Campus
Culture > Entertainment

We are officially entering the flop era of Coachella

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Purdue chapter.

For years, Coachella has been THE event that everyone wants to go to and have fomo if they do not. The first weekend of Coachella happened this past weekend. This was the first time that Coachella has happened since 2019 before the start of the pandemic. The one thing that is different this year from all the other years that the festival has been going on is that no one really cares about it this year. And honestly that is because Coachella has lost all its clout and traction. Let’s face it, the music and artists were not really the key things bringing people in. Yes, it was a reason, but it was not the main reason to attend. If you were an influencer the main reason was the outfits, the celebrity sightings, and all the content that you can make while you are there (and bragging rights of course).

But for some reason, this year’s Coachella flopped and that’s because people are not really into the influencer culture anymore. Influencers have completely taken over Coachella and not in a good way. When the influencer profession started it was such a foreign concept to people and it made everyone so interested in their lifestyles. Now I feel like the world is tired of influencers as a whole. When influencer culture first got on the map the beauty gurus on YouTube had every girl aged 12-16 in a chokehold. Before influencers took over the music festival, we as a society were already a little familiar with Coachella. That is only because of the paparazzi photos of Vanessa Hudgens and her 30 different outfit changes she had for one weekend or Jake Gyllenhaal cuddling up with Reese Witherspoon. But the difference between seeing it through celebrities’ eyes versus seeing it through influencers’ and youtubers’ eyes is that youtubers/influencers actually showed people what was going on behind the scenes both the good and the bad. The vlogs and outfit videos were a way to include their audience with their experience. As amazing as that is, it has been going on for years and people are over it. Coachella now just comes across as inauthentic and fake. At first Coachella seemed like a place where everyone wanted to have the experience of the festival itself. Now, it just comes across as inauthentic and fake.

Emani Powell

Purdue '22

Emani is currently a senior at Purdue University studying mass media communications and minoring in film and video studies with the hopes of becoming an entertainment journalist. In her free time she loves to read, bake, and binge any tv show that is currently trending.