A Letter from a Forever Emo

Why the “When We Were Young” Festival Feels Insensitive and Problematic

By: Shannon Brault

Emos and pop-punks everywhere celebrated the announcement of the one-day Las Vegas festival earlier this year. I mean, for goodness sake, My Chemical Romance and Pierce the Veil will be there! With more and more recognition, second and third dates were added with the same lineups. But people quickly questioned the safety and logistics of this festival, which would be run by the same event promoter of the Astroworld Festival that left ten people dead and hundreds of others injured in November. 

Live Nation Entertainment, the event promoter for Astroworld, is facing multiple lawsuits and an investigation into the disastrous festival’s safety protocols that imploded at the Houston concert. A spokesperson for the When We Were Young festival said they have “thoroughly planned” concert safety measures, but how much weight does that statement carry when the festival was announced only two months after one of the most disastrous music festivals in recent history? 

For many, it doesn’t hold up at all. A recent fascination with the emo and punk community and it suddenly being “cool”—when every punk kid you meet will tell you how they were bullied in middle and high school for it—makes this feel like a fest preying on the emo and punk communities in order to pay litigation fees for the Astroworld disaster. 

However, there are also hundreds of tweets every day talking about how amazing this festival will be and how excited people are to see their old favorite bands. 

I wonder about why we have forgotten the tragedy of two months ago so quickly, and the fact that we are not yet in a “post-pandemic” world, but are willing to settle for “thoroughly planned” safety measures by the same people who planned a festival that left ten families without children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and loved ones. It feels insensitive and suspicious to be planned so soon after ten people won’t live to see another day because they decided to go to a concert for an artist that they love. It feels entirely contradictory to what the punk community stands for.