THE ONLY SLOP HERE IS YOU

A kunt-ceptual theory of raving in an era of countercultural cosplay

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with my friend and fellow rave-cellectual Emily Witt to present our thoughts on the nightlife discourse at Demo Fest—the New Museum/New Inc’s annual festival on art and technology in New York City. Our jump-off point was my recent essay on the nightlife Vibe Drought—a concept that I was tickled to hear has already permeated New York’s hyper-networked party circles and become the term du jour.

But one of the things about a good collaboration is the way ideas can reflect and refract off each other. Mind-melding with Emily—one of the greatest cultural critics of our generation (follwq her coverage on the ground in Los Angeles of the ICE protests rn)—stretched my critique of nightlife into new directions, while circling back to the central question: why bother? In other words, if a lot of things suck right now (but a couple things don’t), why bother trying to maintain an underground?

What we believe is that the rave, at its best, counters the reigning logic of the world we live in—a logic that is materialistic, self-promotional, advertorial, motivated by profit rather than sustenance, and equates style with status. We need places that challenge that logic a little bit, or we will lose our minds.

In order to not fall in the “whining elder complaining about how things used to be so much better” trope, Emily and I also identified five elements of what makes a good party—the secret sauce, so to speak. You can watch our presentation (which begins around 2:14:19) below:

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Next week, I will be attending the world’s largest psychedelic conference, MAPS’ Psychedelic Science in Denver. For those of you who will also be there, I’m speaking/moderating a couple panels that will go deep into the challenges facing the worlds of psychedelic raving and the media respectively:

• Thu Jun 19 at 11:40 AM: Rave as Ritual, Festival as Ceremony: Ecstatic Frequencies of Dance, Music & Community — joined by a group of academics, healers, and party organizers, this panel will focus on a pretty controversial topic: the blurred line between recreational and therapeutic psychedelic use

• Friday Jun at 12:15 PM: The Dark Side of Psychedelics: The Media's Role in Confronting Shadows — three other investigative journalists (Rachel Nuwer, Mattha Busby, John Semly) and I will be discussing the media’s role in the psychedelics hype vs backlash cycle that’s currently playing out, as well as bad shamans, abusive leaders, and unhinged watchdog groups… it will get spicy!

Beyond these two panels, I am looking forward to taking the temperature of the psychedelic industry at large. It’s a strange time for the scene: a decades-long movement to legalize psychedelics took a huge blow recently when the FDA decided to reject therapeutic MDMA, and many are wondering what comes next, and whether new strategies are needed.

Right-wing politicians and business leaders are also becoming increasingly dominant in the psychedelic space—many believe that legalization will happen under RFK. Will these political forces have more visibility at the conference too?

I’m also dying to know what people are thinking and feeling about the Elon Musk drug addiction bombshell story—which has definitely been a PR disaster for ketamine. Is this an instance of public drug shaming, or a valuable chance to educate the wider public on the dangers of ketamine?

I’m sure everyone is going to be talking about all of the above—and more—and I’m going to do my best to bring you the news scoops and juicy goss from on-the-ground. My dispatches from the conference and its surrounding afterparties will be for paid subscribers only, so please smash the sub button if you want to be in the loop!