INDIO, Calif. — Our most unexpected brush with the ubiquity of influencer culture at Coachella came in our Uber ride to a party. “Are there food influencers?” our driver, John, asks as we sit in heavy traffic on Saturday afternoon. “Tell me if I have what it takes.”
The middle-aged Coachella Valley resident swipes out of the navigation app on his phone and opens his camera roll, scrolling to a video where he narrates his trip to a sandwich restaurant. It’s a good video. He might as well be a food influencer already.
The storied music festival has gotten a bad rap in recent years for being less about the music and more about turning into a carnival for influencers, who compete to capture the best displays of beauty and wealth to feed their viewers at home. Never mind that every year, people also go massively viral for hating every second that wealthy festivalgoers take over their feeds.
Has a music festival that started out as a bastion of the counterculture really evolved into an influencer work event? Well, yes. Because even if you aren’t a full-time influencer here on a sponsored stay attending invite-only parties — if your day job is, say, in retail or Uber driving — you clock into the content mines the second that Ferris wheel becomes visible against the dusty, rolling hills on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want to go viral, get a little famous, or at least cosplay as a luxury content creator for the weekend? At Coachella, we’re all influencers.
It’s better to seize the opportunity while you still can— the bacchanal might not last forever. Despite the lucrative brand deals still on offer, audiences are growing increasingly weary and bitter about the bread and circuses in times of economic turmoil. It could all go south at any moment, so influencers might as well get in while the getting’s good.
I descended on the festival for a whirlwind 48 hours with Krista Rados, my colleague and social media producer, a Californian whose history as a backpacker made her the perfect safari guide for our excursion.
Inside the influencer zoo
Mona Molayem, a luxury travel influencer, has been to Coachella 18 times. She’s seen firsthand how the festival has evolved from being “solely about the music” to “a full lifestyle weekend made for social media.” If you can manage your expectations about crowds, lines, prices and heat — she recommends going later in the day, leaving before the headliner finishes performing and locating non-port-o-potty bathrooms — it can be worth it to stay on festival grounds. That just wasn’t her scene this year.
“I myself am guilty of skipping the festival altogether and just attending the parties.
“I myself am guilty of skipping the festival altogether and just attending the parties,” she tells Yahoo. She was planning to go to Coachella’s chiller country sister, Stagecoach, until she received a few invites that included free food, drinks, experiences, gifts and performances for free. That compelled her to drive out to the desert last-minute to attend the special events in Coachella’s orbit, just like us.
John the Uber driver asks if we’re going to the Khloé Kardashian party — unclear if he means Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila Outpost or Kourtney Kardashian’s Camp Poosh — but we had tried and failed to get into both (Khloé was, in fact, absent this year). The Kardashians, the longstanding beacons of American consumerism and beauty, have become the unofficial mascots of Coachella.
Kelsey and Krista at Rhode World. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo News)
Earlier that day, we’d stopped by Rhode World, an event hosted by beauty and phone case mogul Hailey Bieber, the Kardashian-adjacent first lady of Bieberchella herself. Rhode plied us with free drinks from sponsor Patrón, food from Los Angeles-area hotspots, delightfully bizarre popsicles, roughly a half dozen photo opportunities and carnival games. I won a plush blob on a keychain by throwing balloon darts and stuffed my pockets with chic acne spotwear. When we left, the line to get in stretched down the dusty desert block as guests gathered to get out of the sweltering sun under Rhode-branded umbrellas.
Next, we popped by another party thrown by a Kardashian-adjacent beauty brand, Paris Hilton’s Parívie skin care company. It was held on a picturesque estate with a massive pool decorated with maximum pink decor, including pillows with Paris’s face on them. We were too late to load tote bags with personal fans and skin care products or to get a selfie with Paris, but I ate a bouquet of sweet potato fries and took a shot of watermelon, strawberry and collagen listed on a menu as “Stay Pretty.”
Kelsey at Paris Hilton’s Parívie party. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo News)
Our last soiree that night was Revolve Festival, a renowned invite-only influencer party that takes place just minutes from Coachella proper and serves as a second, alternate destination with its own performers and photo ops. Upon arrival, we spotted a spinning swing ride and, somehow, more carnival games. The comparisons to the circus were getting a little on the nose. “You’d think it was a Victoria’s Secret casting call,” I heard one woman tell her boyfriend.
There was a mechanical bull sponsored by Seeking, the infamous and now rebranded sugar baby dating website; performances by genuinely impressive artists like Kehlani, Mustard and Don Toliver; and a claw machine where I won what appears to be a cross between a Bratz doll and a Labubu.
Brand activations at Revolve Festival. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo News)
As far as my eyes and camera could see, there were influencers taking photos: Posing in front of backdrops and manufacturing candid moments. An uncannily popular pose was one that I’ll call the influencer shuffle — two people hold hands, swinging them back and forth as they take steps forward and backward. One influencer duo wordlessly thrust an analog camera on me and got extremely frustrated when I didn’t understand how it worked.
Trying to chit-chat with strangers here was nearly impossible. My opening declaration of “I love your outfit” was met more times than I can count with a blank stare (the “influencer stare”?). Was I invisible, or overly social with people just trying to work?
“There’s no shame here,” Krista reminded me. When she put it that way, I respected it. Getting the perfect shot to reflect a balance of effortless cool and this-is-all-so-worth-it fun is an anxiety-inducing task that requires a competitive edge and even the abandonment of certain social norms. The influencers are working. They’re performing. This isn’t the grocery store, this is Coachella. It’s serious business, despite the massive forced smiles on everyone’s faces.
The festival haves and have-nots
When we got to the official grounds of Coachella at the Empire Polo Club, Krista and I took photos, just like everyone else. After walking the thousands of steps from the parking lot to the grounds, battling the heat and dust, we waited in a scattered line of boho-clad hot people for photos by the Ferris wheel, the translucent rainbow cylinder, or any of the other art installations that unmistakably signal you’re at Coachella.
Get your posts, then you can relax. Prove you’re there, then you can have fun. Turn in your assignment, then you can go play.
It’s hard to refute that putting the experience of Coachella on display feels like a higher priority than enjoying the moment. Get your posts, then you can relax. Prove you’re there, then you can have fun. Turn in your assignment, then you can go play. There are Instagram traps everywhere you turn. Even the mandatory wristbands that serve as your tickets are aesthetically pleasing. There’s fun to be had — genuine fun! — but it’s meant to be documented and shared.
For most civilians, the hours are long, the wind is aggressive and the crowds are fierce. It’s all so ridiculously hot, sprawling and expensive — the $500+ tickets, the overpriced food, the exclusive lodging and skyrocketing gas prices — that indulging in a bit of spectacle feels non-negotiable. Even the cheapest options aren’t very cheap, unless you can get a brand or an artist to sponsor your trip. Exhibit A: The only food options for the non-famous (corralled in a separate area) at the Red Bull Mirage party were a very-much-not-free Omakase Nobu sushi popup that included $150 caviar hand roll and a $24 vodka Red Bull.
Nobu sushi and views of people having fun at Red Bull Mirage. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo News)
Given those facts, I understand why influencers are living it up at what is, to them, essentially a sales conference. If you had the means to flex, why wouldn’t you try glamping in an air-conditioned yurt with private golf cart transportation, grocery delivery and spa access? If you could have caviar chicken nuggets with a side of Caesar salad with pink sparkly sugar and a hyaluronic acid açaí superfood smoothie, wouldn’t you? And even if you hadn’t cracked 20,000 followers yet, wouldn’t you post as much as you could this year so it could be you eating caviar chicken nuggets next year?
For the ultrarich and/or influential (and even those aspiring to be ultrarich and/or influential), it’s not worth getting out of bed or schlepping to the desert if they’re not getting something extremely special. Rob Dellibovi, owner & CEO of RDB Hospitality Group, tells me that Coachella has always been loaded with wealth and stars solely because of its proximity to Hollywood. The clientele there wants to be given what they believe they deserve. And for festival organizers, it’s worth it to woo these attendees.
“In this newer, Instagrammable world, having the right names at your show or festival can boost marketing impressions into the billions, which will help sell tickets for future years,” Dellibovi says. “Having these areas and experiences event helps the festivals market themselves.”
Influencers, in other words, might be underwriting the festival’s future at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make money from art. But there’s no getting around the fact that Coachella’s reputation as the influencer Olympics has also invited fierce backlash. Many people scrolling at home have expressed exhaustion with these gratuitous displays of wealth and schadenfreude when things go awry, like last-minute trip cancellations, Airbnb scams, bad views in the VIP concert section or Camp Poosh being destroyed by a sandstorm.
“Hot take, but influencers have literally ruined everything. Music festivals, vacation destinations, the whole of social media, stores…literally everything,” one X user wrote in a viral tweet. But do they? That’s the paradox of Coachella — people have been saying they’re tired of influencers for years, but their posts still get millions of views, brands keep sending them places for free and regular people keep acting like them on festival grounds.
The festivalgoers I spoke with over the course of two days offered some simple advice for those trying to avoid the circus: If influencers are a problem for you, just go on weekend two. That’s less about the spectacle and more about the music. It’s also when the anticipation has faded and the surprises have been revealed. What remains are leftovers — a Justin Bieber who’s already made his comeback, food that’s already been taste-tested and photo opportunities that have already been posted. Joining for the crush of the first weekend means admitting the spectacle is at least partially the point.
Is being an influencer … kind of charming?
In the packed crowd of the lawn where Justin Bieber had just emerged to perform a historic set, everyone had their phones in the air. They were blocking my view. Sick of masquerading as an influencer surrounded by so many other faux influencers, I was furious.
But my phone was also in my hand, and it was also, in turn, probably blocking the view for someone behind me. What was I supposed to do, not capture a memory to prove I was part of something bigger, something that felt important for my own personal fandom and music in general? Oh.
It might feel gaudy and fake, the way that everyone who steps into the realm of Coachella falls under influencer hypnosis, hellbent on capturing content as if their value depends on it. But the longing to show you were there, that you were a part of something memorable and meaningful, even if all you have to show for it is just a blurry personal recording of a pop star, is also understandable.
What was I supposed to do, not capture a memory to prove I was part of something bigger, something that felt important for my own personal fandom and music in general? Oh.
I didn’t think I’d leave Coachella with empathy for influencers. Desert madness, dehydration and dozens of blisters, maybe. But rubbing elbows with them, being ignored by them, getting a little jealous of them and even pretending to be one gave me a little respect for their work. They’re salespeople. I don’t have to buy what they’re selling if I don’t like it, and neither do you.
That said, if you don’t like dirt, walking, sweating, crowds, foot pain, intense pop music fans, expensive food or influencers, I suggest checking out a different festival.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
