I went to Coachella and masqueraded as an influencer for 48 hours. Unfortunately, it was amazing.

INDIO, Calif — Like so many millennial women, I’ve wanted to go to Coachella ever since Vanessa Hudgens pioneered casual boho style and Snapchat brought the flower crown filter to the masses. For years, I watched iconic music moments pass me by — Prince’s curfew-breaking act, Beyonce’s paradigm-shifting performance, and even Frank Ocean’s controversial, widely-discussed set. I’ve also slowly watched the festival become less of a music event and more of a work trip for influencers posting sponsored content.

After spending 48 hours during the first weekend of Coachella on the ground this year, I can confirm that what you’ve heard about the festival being overrun by influencers is true. Opportunities to chase clout abound, and even civilian attendees pose for photo opps and accept free swag from brands. You might spend a lot of time trying to look cool, but the truth is that the fashion-forward music festival in the California desert is cool.

I kept a diary (well, a lengthy notes app entry) throughout my time in the desert, which I regret to admit was one of the most fun weekends of my life, despite the blisters I earned and the influencers I photo-bombed. Your FOMO is not unfounded. I’ll let you peek inside.

By the numbers

To paint a logistical picture of the festival for you, here are some of the stats I kept track of over the weekend.

Days at the festival: 2
Steps taken: 30,000 
Influencer parties infiltrated: 4
Times I caved and spent $30 on a slop bowl: 2
Performances watched: 4
Wristbands collected: 6
Screentime: 10 hours per day, somehow
Times I tried to Google “Julian Casablancas relationship status” while watching The Strokes perform: 5

Is it really as expensive as they say? 

Sure, the cheapest way to go to Coachella is probably to get sponsored by a brand that will ply you with free alcohol and caviar chicken nuggets. But in reality, that’s not how most of the public are doing it — there are a ton of people who get scrappy, camp out and make their own burritos to avoid having to pay $35 for chicken tenders or $17 for lemonade. Attendees — from a Sabrina Carpenter stan hand-selected to attend for free to a five-time camping pro who put a disco ball in her tent — shared their receipts with me. Read about it here.

Everyone’s an influencer. Even me. Even my uber driver!

I spent several hours at parties for brands like Rhode, Revolve and Red Bull with the explicit goal of soaking up the influencer experience and seeing if it’s as fun as they want us all to think it is. The answer is yes — despite the fakery and the forced smiles, there’s a lot of fun to be had at the content creation circus. Read all the luxurious details. 

The fashion still hits 

I cannot overstate how delightful it is to wander from stage to stage at Coachella soaking up all the beautiful, fringey bohemian outfits that people have painstakingly curated. So much thought, innovation and trendspotting goes into every look. Everybody came to play.

This year, it seems like Coachella culture has started to merge with its country-tinged sister festival, Stagecoach, because cowboy boots were by far the biggest trend. There was a lot of beige, as well — as my colleague Krista Rados pointed out, Coachella had the same approximate color scheme as Star Wars. On the first day, I wore a tan sequin poncho from Urban Outfitters, and counted at least a dozen people in the exact same top. It would have been humiliating if it wasn’t kind of beautiful to see that I had gotten the same TikTok shop ad as so many others.

Believe it or not, everyone’s actually talking about music 

Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter embraced two very different performance styles at Coachella. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo)

The go-to small talk conversation at Coachella is mostly about what artists you’ve seen and loved, and about who you’re excited to see next. Really! I heard buzz around the surprise DJ set from John Summit, and a lot of chatter about the massive crowds and impressive performances from emerging pop acts like Addison Rae, Katseye and Slayyyter. 

Then, of course, there were the headliners: tons of people praised Sabrina Carpenter’s set as the official start of her superstar era. It’s not often we get to see someone so clearly make the jump from a hitmaker to a bona fide pop diva, but her committed Hollywood-inspired performance, complete with celebrity cameos and Broadway-caliber set design, made it clear she’s earned her spot as an icon for many people on their imagined Coachella Mount Rushmore. 

A decade from now, I know we’ll still be referring to 2026 Coachella as Bieberchella. Bieber Fever ripped through the festival grounds like dysentery on the Oregon trail. There was so much discussion about what he might do — if he’d perform, if he’d play the hits, if he’d bring anyone out — ahead of the set, and so much debate about his understated, sweatshirt-clad performance after the fact.

When he sat at a laptop and started playing old YouTube clips, from the one that got him discovered as a child to the “Deez Nuts” clip that didn’t involve him at all, I knew I was part of a brilliant meta-commentary on what it means to be the first true mainstream internet celebrity. It was also an extremely intimate performance from someone who’s long struggled with his fans and fame. This is the same thing my friends and I do before we go out on Saturday nights — play videos that make us laugh and sing along. To do it with a pop star I’ve worshipped since I was a child — and thousands of other people who feel the same way — felt spiritual.

I also asked attendees what they thought the song of summer might be, though it’s technically more than a month before that race begins. Few people skipped a beat; the general sentiment is that people are hungry for bangers that are as different from Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” as possible. They’re nostalgic for the hits of 2016, when Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Drake were ruling the charts. The Coachella crowd has had just about enough of country music, thank you, although the same festival grounds will be flooded with country fans later in April for Stagecoach.

The joys of celebrity spotting 

Krista and I were on high alert the whole time on the hunt for celebrities, but at influencer hot spots, it was generally hard to determine who was famous and who was simply extremely beautiful. I accidentally interviewed a couple about music thinking that they were civilians, but they were actually Iris Kendall and TJ Palma from Love Island. 

There were plenty of surprise guests on Coachella’s main stages, too, and to be honest, they were truly surprising. Never in a million years would I have guessed I needed to be in the crowd for Teddy Swims in order to see Joe Jonas, or that Katseye would bring out the singers behind the fictional band from Kpop Demon Hunters. You see, this is how Coachella gets you. Everything is a baffling spectacle.

On my connecting flight out of the Palm Springs airport, I was on the same plane as Jack White, Cameron Winter and Slayyyter. If you ask nicely, I’ll tell you where they were sitting.

I still somehow ended up with FOMO

Despite my best effort to be in the center of the action at all times, I still managed to miss out on one huge part of the Coachella experience — I never saw an artist billboard! We bypassed the interstate between Los Angeles and the festival entirely in the attempt to avoid traffic. Thankfully my colleague Neia Balao curated them from home.

I’d go again in a heartbeat 

Kelsey in front of the Coachella Ferris Wheel on day 1 vs. napping in the press room on day 2. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: Kelsey Weekman/Yahoo)

Everything people say when they complain about Coachella is true. It’s expensive. It’s full of hot people aggressively angling for the best possible shots. It’s physically demanding and cumbersome to navigate. It’s also objectively some of the most fun that you can have. Whether you’re hopping from brand to brand collecting free swag or baking in a field between sets, you’re inundated by incredibly cool performances and surrounded by stylish outfits. When the sun goes down and the nighttime desert breeze rolls in as you’re packed like sardines with other fans awaiting the headliner, it feels like heaven.

The same things that make Coachella feel shallow — the ultra-popular music, the brand activations, the manufactured Instagram traps and all the phone-obsessed people — are also what makes it feel like a big community. The only thing I’d do differently is pack blister protecting heel pads.