American Juggalo: The Movie

[Video Link] Richard Metzger says:

American Juggalo, a new short film by Brooklyn-based director, Sean Dunne explores (without judgement or editorializing) the distinctive youth culture of the Juggalos, adoring fans of Christian horrorcore metal rappers, The Insane Clown Posse. It is funny, fascinating and disturbing in turns.
Each year approximately 20,000 juggalos and juggettes, meet up (usually in campgrounds far from civilization) for the four-day musical festival known as “The Gathering of the Juggalos.”

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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CSBD

Living near Detroit (and knowing people who went to high school with ICP) I don’t find them to be all that weird. Some of the fans however do take it a bit too far.

I went to one of their shows 15-16 years ago (I was ordered to take my younger brother… a big but young fan) and it was not that bad.

Their music was terrible and they had people on stage in costumes, dressed up to be some sort of horror movie. ICP periodically shook up two liters of soda, opened them and then droppkicked the soda into the crowd. Standing in the back of the theater, I stayed dry.

Thankfully, my brother grew out of it… eventually.

As for the fans, some of them were poor kids but many of them were getting dropped of in volvo station wagons while wearing their Clown Posse make up.

Its just another form of low brow protest for the sake of protest.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=892575306 David Politi

Reminds me of the ‘I like turtles’ makeup…
Kaffenated

Rebels without a cause will always find a cause. Some are better than others.
sparklemotion

For those who thought this would be interesting to have in a side window while at work: There is some full-frontal, sustained nudity starting around 8:45.

The first 9 minutes or so didn’t really tell me much about Juggalos besides the fact that they are apparently alcoholics and druggies who love hanging out with others of that ilk. I didn’t really get a sense of “rebellion” or “protest” from them at all.
- ChicagoD
  
  Thanks for the tip. I never would have lasted that long without the tip.
- daneyul
  
  “For those who thought this would be interesting to have in a side window while at work: There is some full-front, sustained nudity…”
  
  Thanks for the tip! I mean, who would have thought that playing a movie with “Juggalo” in the title could be a bad idea at work?
Lobster

Magnets…
- WhyBother
  
  So here’s the problem I have with the magnets meme:
  
  You start with ICP, a band which I personally never knew much about except for a few tidbits like their logo is cleaver-wielding clown, and they have a reputation for crazy, violent fans. Earned or not, that’s all I knew about them. Then they came out with a song with the fundamental message that life is beautiful, and everyone should chill out and look around them.
  
  To me, this seems like progress. Unfortunately, they’re still not the sharpest knives in thedrawer, and seem to have picked up a distrust of scientists that came out in their lyrics, so the internet siezes on it.
  
  Crazy violent people –> “hey, life is beautiful” –> “lol, morons”
  
  This is not progress. It’s like punishing a dog whose learned to play the piano because he did in the wrong key.
  - MarnieMacLean
    
    Some of us don’t buy into the idea that “finding god” is inherently a good thing. Further, ICP alleges that they have always been christian but they’ve been carrying on this facade as a way to reach people so there is no improvement.
    
    See the guardian article here
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/09/insane-clown-posse-christians-god
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708802329 Melissa Jeffrey

Christian horrorcore rappers… there music is NOT christian no matter what they say. I didn’t know a lot about them (stupid rapping?) until one of my kids wanted to be one for halloween. This is right after they “came out” as christians and so there were a lot of articles on them with quotes from their songs. Awful gross stupid.
- Cowicide
  
  Christian horrorcore rappers… there music is NOT christian no matter what they say.
  
  Seems to me you shouldn’t be the one judging that if you deem yourself one.
  
  http://www.openbible.info/topics/judging_others
  - Strato Head
    
    you are correct sir/or/madam. but maybe I just happen to be very lousy at being a christian
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708802329 Melissa Jeffrey
    
    “Do not judge lest you be judged” — right.. but that doesn’t say I can’t objectively look at lyrics and say “hey that doesn’t sound very jesus-y” music != the people themselves
    
    I’m not a Christian in the traditional sense of the word, but it bothers me that you were trying to religion bait my comment.
    
    And apparently further on in the comments people clarified that on the attack of the show they said their music WASN’T christian. So I’m satisfied with that… and it doesn’t mean I want my kids to grow up to be juggaloes.
Strato Head

“CHRISTIAN” ?! oh sure… I recall now that verse from the sermon on the mound;

” And lo, the Lord Jesus did commandeth, Tit’s or Get thee thy fuck out!”
- Lobster
  
  ICP claims to be a Christian group.
  - okupin
    
    No, they don’t.
    
    http://www.g4tv.com/videos/51053/the-insane-clown-posse-visits-aots/
    
    about 3 min. in
    - AlanStrangis
      
      Was gonna post the same thing. The “Christian” label is something a UK paper called them, and the myth has persisted, even though they deny it in this interview.
  - michaelfhn
    
    From wiki,
    “In an October 2010 article for The Guardian, Jon Ronson
    characterized the Insane Clown Posse as “evangelical Christians” who
    have “only been pretending to be brutal and sadistic to trick their fans
    into believing in God.In an interview with ICP conducted for the article, two of Ronson’s
    queries referred parenthetically to ICP’s “Christian message” and to the
    members’ identities as “[secret] Christians.” Several papers, including
    The Washington Post, published summaries of Ronson’s claims.
    
    Eight days after publication of the Guardian article, Joseph
    Bruce tweeted “I think [it's] crazy how some press say we’re a Christian
    band and act like we’re all religious [...] I’m proud that we believe
    in God but I haven’t been to church since I was like 10. I don’t even
    know if [Utsler has] ever been to church! Christianity Today
    writer Mark Moring also challenged Ronson’s characterization, writing
    that “The guys in ICP haven’t used the word ‘Christian’ or ‘evangelical’
    [...] so let’s not call them anything that they’re not claiming for
    themselves. ”
    
    So no, they don’t. For the record I’m not a fan of them but don’t make false claims on something you know nothing about.
we_the_people324

Mmmmm. Natty Ice Mountain Dew beer bong.

“An old man told me theres nothing good left in the world, and i believed that shit. Until i came here, with all the tittites, all the weed, all the fast food, and its bomb.”
victorvictorian

without getting into the niceties of editing, i.e. what goes into a film and what gets left out; this thing is full of judgement and editorializing. so many framing shots and seemingly innocuous crowd scenes get paired with offscreen dialog that runs counter to, or supports, or conflates what’s being said. people do get to speak in their own voices but this is hardly a hands-off ethnographic study. or maybe the spade cleaves too close to the root for me and i can’t help but read my own horror classii into this.

having said that though, jesus christ is this a mind-fuck, cross-section of what goes on in (dare i say it) post-Capitalism America. inchoate disenfranchisement writ large for all to see. having grown up white, rural and poor i knew the 70′s/80′s analog of these people, the dirt bag metal heads and bikers i had to hang out with because they were the only ones broke-down enough to accept punks. Juggalos are the future, and i don’t mean that in a way that would make them proud. i mean that in a William Gibson future apocalypse way. i can’t watch this without thinking of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road.’ once a Tea Party candidate wins the first big national office these people will have their voice.

the trickle down theory might not work as economic policy put it does work in terms of cultural signification. i have tattoos that are older than a lot of these kids and even then my own motivation for getting tattooed 25-some-odd years ago was already received information. it’s funny to see so many normal, run-of-the-mill white folks talk about their own difference.
- Halloween Jack
  
  I don’t think that it’s any more slanted than the reports filed by various bloggers who parachute in and pass judgment on the lifestyle for the amusement (and pagehits, especially if they throw in some of that full-frontal nudity) of their readers. One of the recurring things that pops up in blog posts, for example, is how pale juggalos are; yeah, some are, but some also have pretty decent tans, and one wonders how brown your average Gawker blogger is if they’re inside posting all day.
- certron
  
  If they are the future (they are already the present), who will be the equivalent of Fallout’s Brotherhood Of Steel?
WhyBother

I’m going to say something which will probably sound very obvious to young people and very depressing to old people:

Fundamentally, ICP is almost exactly KISS, updated for modern musical styles. Black and white make-up, fan “armies”, recurring dark carnival/psycho circus motif. I’m not saying that one is imitating the other. I’m saying that it’s weird to strongly single out the gimmicks of one as weird when the other uses the same gimmicks.
- ChicagoD
  
  Wait, KISS isn’t weird any more? Because when I was a kid in the ’70s they most certainly were. The fact that their lead singer turns out to be a reasonably amusing man with bad plastic surgery and a ton of business acumen has sort of taken the weird off, but at the time, oh boy.
Strato Head

yeah… sorry… all I see is a bunch of ignorant white trash getting fucked up in the woods, revealing in the culture of being ignorant, white, trashy, and getting fucked up in the woods.
- kartwaffles
  
  The one difference Juggalos have over regular people getting fucked up in the woods, is that Juggalos consider themselves one big family.
  
  Is that really any different than a bunch of sports fans tailgating with strangers in the parking lot of the stadium? What about Deadheads? or people who go to fandom conventions? or [insert cultural thing here]. This can be reduced to a known problem. Go to event. Meet strangers who have [cultural thing] in common with you. Party down.
  - Strato Head
    
    know how I know you didn’t watch the video?
    
    I was speaking of ICP/Juggalo “Culture” as a whole… not just “the gathering”. How is it different than say… Deadheads? well… musically speaking I would say LIGHT YEARS ahead of ICP were the Grateful Dead.
    
    How is it different in every other respect than say ConFans, or Sports Fans? revealing in a shared culture is one thing… revealing in ignorance is not something to be lauded.
    
    by your simile … how is “The Gathering of the Juggalos” any different than a White Power Festival? I mean… most skins are just poor white kids who are looking for a place to belong… they just happen to find it with other poor easily manipulated ignorant bastards who like to revile in their shared hatred of anything different than themselves.
  - Cowicide
    
    Is that really any different than a bunch of sports fans tailgating with strangers in the parking lot of the stadium?
    
    Nope. Good point.
- Cowicide
  
  yeah… sorry… all I see is a bunch of ignorant white trash getting fucked up in the woods, revealing in the culture of being ignorant, white, trashy, and getting fucked up in the woods.
  
  I helped sell a company to a 150 billion dollar company back in early 2000′s and one of my favorite songs at the time was “I want my shit” by ICP. Judge these kids all you want, but maybe you’d be better off focusing on your own success and happiness.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxWrwsLnHxc
  
  [click this link above to go to the right video instead of the image below, I edited the link but Disqus seems stuck changing it to the proper embedded video]
- Halloween Jack
  
  If you’re going to put down “ignorant white trash”–not that you should–you might want to get words like “reveling” right.
http://tokyofarm.com Spencer Cross

I realize they’ve recently adopted a religious stance, but that hardly seems like enough to start calling them “Christian rappers.”
Trent Hawkins

As far as I see it, there’s more violence and red neck behavior in the bible then all the ICP albums combined.
- Cowicide
  
  Haha… and the bible isn’t exactly a tongue-in-cheek approach either. Bible is serious business.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Spitty-Sumo/100002601661770 Spitty Sumo

wow. what an unfortunate-looking group of individuals — and i’m not talking about their hair/clothing/makeup choices.
shamocracy79

This is a tough one. On the one hand you have a group of lost individuals finding a bond and family like atmosphere, gaining what appears to be the closest thing these people have felt to love and acceptance in their lives.

On the other hand you have a group of lost individuals who still have a tainted view of what love and acceptance is, missing out on important aspects like self respect and self dignity while using “acceptance” as an excuse to overindulge without all that pesky “judgement”.

It really speaks volumes about the problems facing the youth of the middle and lower class in America, which seems to be a melting pot of ignorance and self abuse due in large part to a apathetic outlook on the future.
robotnik

Folks need to work on “thee” and “thy” (and also “revel”).
GuyInMilwaukee

Not that different than bluegrass festivals I attended in the late 70′s. Maybe just more expletives thrown in. It really doesn’t seem like anyone is too thrilled about the music or religion. It seems they are excited about… camping… in face paint.
Dani4a

Um, if they believe that Jesus is their savior, they are, by definition, Christians. You don’t get to excommunicate them just because you don’t like the way they practice. There are a lot of different denominations of christianity, and as much as you would like to say that you don’t share a religion with catholics, mormons or juggalos, you’re completely wrong.

That said, I second the “ignorant white trash getting fucked up in the woods” sentiment.
Petzl

“I’m gonna start going to college and become a doctor and shit.”
- Cowicide
  
  “I’m gonna start going to college and become a doctor and shit.”
  
  Awesome dawg…. but, man… me? I’m gonna start sellin’ computers and shit. Charge 666 dollars for it just to fuck widd people, yo!
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#History
http://twitter.com/cicadamania Cicada Mania

Your Juggalo Family is the family that your heart makes.
bcsizemo

Sometimes it’s things like this that make me feel bad to be:
-American
-From the South
-and White…

*sigh*.

At the same time I wouldn’t say what they are doing is all that weird. Family together aspect, large amount of drugs, loud music. Sounds like most electronic music venues, like Shambhala in British Columbia…
Brian Tuley

Finally! A Burning Man event for fat, white trash, inbreeds. And should most people really be having children? Look what happens!
- Joshua Roberts
  
  Malthusian Eugenics nougaty center wrapped in delicious, typical liberal hatred chocolate.
  
  im surprised there isnt some neo-con malthusian here to agree with you while quoting ayn rand.
  
  the most interesting thing about a phenomenon like ICP, to me, is the reactions it provokes in external cultures
  - Cowicide
    
    Malthusian Eugenics nougaty center wrapped in delicious, typical liberal hatred chocolate.
    
    Ok, drama queen. We hear ya…
xian

I loved the first two minutes of it – it was like Koyaanisqatsi meets the Juggalos.
staxnet

Note to self: Never drink Caribou Lou on the carnival rides.
- ShawShaw
  
  I play D&D with that guy. Let me tell you, he regularly sets all kinds of examples for others on what not to do.
  - Cowicide
    
    I play D&D with that guy. Let me tell you, he regularly sets all kinds of examples for others on what not to do
    
    Such a kind man to honorably perform this self-sacrifice.
    
    http://crockettlives.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/coalition-to-salute-americas-heroes.jpg
AndyBooth

I’m pretty confident that the insane clown posse themselves are high end performance art trolls. The christian stuff is just the next level of their massive prank. These kids and the cash they spend are the punchline. One day they’ll write a book and admit it all and a load of their fans won’t care and the rest will refuse to believe it.
GuyInMilwaukee

Didn’t they already make this movie? It was called Idiocracy. Imagine waking up and everyone on the planet was like this. [shutter]
- librtee_dot_com
  
  These people seem to basically understand the one fundamental rule of a peaceful society: don’t get in other people’s business, don’t be a busybody and go around thinking you can make other people’s life deisions for them, don’t judge other people, don’t try to impose your values on other people.
  
  “Controlled Anarchy” is a beautiful concept.
  
  Frankly, I would rather live in a society full of jugalloes than a society full of fanatical warmongering Christians.
  - Cowicide
    
    Frankly, I would rather live in a society full of jugalloes than a society full of fanatical warmongering Christians.
    
    Agreed.
librtee_dot_com

While I don’t have a problem with all the rampant drug use, I can’t condone any group that promotes the irresponsible use of sugary soft drinks. These are a bunch of people who are going to have serious degenerative illnesses later in life.

Seriously, this is a great little documentary. Any efforts to humanize and flesh out any groups of people that have been painted with simplistic and judgemental brushes. Whether it’s Taliban members, runaway gay teenagers, North Korean citizens, or jugalloes..I want to hear their stories.

There is nothing mysterious about this. All humans want to feel free. All humans want to feel community. All humans want to feel loved. In a society and family structure that greatly limits freedom, that has abandoned community, that has forgotten “loving thy neighbor”…people will go to any lengths to find these things. Much of what I see is a reaction to the arbitrary laws and strict family structures we grow up with. I really hope they take care of their health, and don’t lose their greatest visions for what their lives can be..but for finding a group of people who accept them for who they are without judgement, I say: congratulations, and more power to you.
librtee_dot_com

P.S. The parallels between this and Burning Man are interesting.

P.P.S. Tell me, did ‘woo woop’ come from this seminal meme video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_JtoW7GrdY (1:41)

P.P.P.S. Congrats for making an ICP documentary that doesn’t actually have any ICP music in it ;)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521240745 Ryan Griffin

…mom?!
Angry Chief

So this is that cesspool everyone talks about.
Joshua Roberts

humans do not exist for your approval or disapproval

it is inherently unameircan and flies in the face of liberty itself to ridicule other cultures or other cultural norms (fuck PC bullshit from me? – no this isnt PC bullshit, i think we all know deep down you either show mutual respect for other cultures or you wont receive any yourself in an extra-cultural sense from other humans, simply because you dont deserve to be treated with dignity on the account of such barbarousness).

now, we can all make the obvious arguments about this phenomenology stemming from a dumbed-down culture or a culture which has been deprived of opportunity and thus left to degenerate to some extent and cannabalize its own cultural momentum; however, this is child’s play and explains very little, one should not treat such mere adducement as logical analysis. the whole tropism and sublimative processes inherent in this or any culture, irrespective of it seeming “primitive” or “absurd”, must be understood from the standpoint of strict necessity and physical economy.

nature finds a way and an organism strives to sustain itself, there is nothing else to say and stroking your e-dick like an anthropologist, while glaring coldly down from some cultural high horse, from a position of security and opportunity… is that really what passes for Sophistication today?

perhaps it is.

and perhaps the juggalo culture is a biological inversion of this false order

perhaps all such hypertrophying is a symptom and hallmark of stunted growth.

nevertheless, the human being will struggle and survive, irrespective of the conditions into which it is born.

and could it be that the detractors who spout tolerance out of one side of their mouth, while glorying in abstruse schadenfreude from the other side, really, at the end of that day and in the last analysis, hate this shit because it is a stiff middle finger to that very judgement?

in that it is a deliberate expression of inversion, in that western civilization is being systematically imploded, in that it characterizes the decay diffidently, there is something to hate for those who have “given in” culturally to the onslaught of the New World Order.

interesting subject matter at any rate

i have never really followed their work but “Let’s Go All the Way” always struck me musically, graphically (the video) and etc. as pretty damn good – i mean its not shakespearre but what do you expect?

—

or to put this another way

“he who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man” – Samuel Johnson
- Joshua Roberts
  
  inb4weaknuclearforce
  - Joshua Roberts
    
    i think what gets me about that lyric
    
    is that it expresses a genuine state of doubt and inquiry, which is the corner stone of science method
    
    intellectual conscience…
    
    scientific integrity….
    
    what is that really if not the continual rejection of one’s own findings in the pursuit of a More Complete picture of the underlying phenomenology observed?
    
    people are so quick to mock this inquiry as being prompted by idiocy… but why? is it impossible that this is genuine? that these individual human begins have serious questions about the true nature of reality and its inherent super-complexity?
    
    at any rate….
    
    the state of modern science and modern physics tells us something interesting here…
    
    namely: we do not really know how magnets work!
    
    indeed, the very system of the four fundamental forces, of which one is electromagnetism, today is in question as we explore a more complete, more fundamental reality at the quantum level…
    
    but of course none of this can be put into a de-motivational poster and thus my arguments will likely fall on deaf ears.
Joshua Roberts

it may not be your culture or my culture

it may not suit us, but this is america and i, for one, welcome it – in all its apparent absurdity.
Joshua Roberts

Step 1) Systematically dumb people down and destroy western civilization culturally over generations, working in the scale of centuries

Step 2) Foster a cultural backlash against the byproducts (ICP for example is a byproduct)

Step 3) Stand back and do the same thing you do in the securities market after an engineered economic crisis, buy up everything for pennies on the dollar – only here one is surgically removing the cultural impetus of western civilization itself and buying up the cultural real estate, repalcing everything with iphone apps.

Indeed! THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF ART AND CULTURE – reduced to “lol u mad bro”

One must marvel at it almost, the full circle of humanity from juggalo to 4chan newfaggotree.

even as western civilization is dissolved as with a cultural Solvent before our very eyes

somewhere in there is whats left of my own ethical constraints…

and these thoughts flood my mind in response to a subject of which i have such little experience, that it is like seeing the universe in a grain of Fucking Sand.

being shaken to my depths by that vision and at the callousness with which we grind the universe to bits until we are all left with nothing.

as the country is brought down by design into a pre-EU style dynamism, as the dollar is quietly replaced and the top 5% of the planet’s population tighten their grip over the capital wealth of the planet, i want you to ask yourself who you would rather be surrounded by when the titanic sinks, juggalos or the kind of people who would just spit on them without even examining the individual to see if they are any good or have any good values…
- Joshua Roberts
  
  everyone has a cellphone that can make pancakes – nobody wants to rock the boat
  
  Beijing is just like L.A.
  
  there is more at work here than one might see at the surface and its a good case history, especially when indexed with a larger morphology of similar “rebel without a cause” dynamics throughout history.
Joshua Roberts

thou shalt not be poor and white
Joshua Roberts

still…

its all part and parcel of the same cultural unit that mistakenly thinks America still exists and we have time to kick back

there is potential in the community though because of the Perspectives and attitudes

though i cannot speak from experience i think id find myself more at home in a crowd of juggalos than Goldmann Sachs executives, but hey, w/e right.
Joshua Roberts

these “wretched of the earth”, express some very Humanistic perspectives.

funny that they should excite such outrage…

definitely Something there… in terms of being an analytical process for reactance in external cultures.
Joshua Roberts

bred FOR circuses

wtf ya gonna do?
frankieboy

Thanks Mark.
I thought this was Xeni’s beat; have you come around to da clownz?
http://twitter.com/nocleverhandle Pierce Nichols

I love how everyone defending them carefully ignores both their willful, violent misogyny and their deliberate rejection of any intellectual life whatever. Both of these characteristics are on full display in the linked video; did none of you watch it?

They aren’t misunderstood; just vile.
Smart E Pantz

Anti-working-class bias is apparent in way too many of the posts in this comment section. It appears, BoingBoing, that some folks in your audience are rather classist, judging from their comments. Not something to be proud of. But I know that some of your moderators post items relating to them because they take interest in or, at the very least, are amused by them–as am I.

From Michigan, I have known about ICP for longer than most, including those posting here. While the ICP scene/culture is not necessarily my “thing,” I get it. And if I had been close to Grand Rapids for the show yesterday where they just kicked off their current tour, I would likely have been in the venue for it, as an interested observer. They are homegrown, organic, grassroots–they started small and built something out of nothing more than an idea. Detroit, anyone? They are Makers, to coin a term well-worn on this blog.

The Gathering is, approximately, a Burning Man for those in flyover country, middle America. It’s obvious that many who attend work hard, menial jobs for a living, and scrimp every last penny to attend this event–quite possibly the one entertainment event many can afford and have to look forward to during an otherwise grim, low-wage year. Most don’t necessarily have the leisure time (read: luxury) to build giant, motorized cupcakes on wheels that they can putt-putt around the southwestern desert in for a week.

The Gathering has problems to contend with–let’s be blunt. When violent, sexist or racist incidents occur there, they’ve got to be dealt with, and the organizers need to own it and admit it when they haven’t handled crowd control situations correctly.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Lazzeri/100001029878902 Tony Lazzeri

the gathering of 20,000 confused white trash….and 2 black dudes
Mister44

I’m surprised BB isn’t more down with the clowns. They talk about hating rich people too:

From Piggie Pie:

The last little piggy, his house is made of gold,
He lives in a mansion on his own private road,
I started walking down it, the guard he told me wait,
I bounced off his head and did a Jackie Chan over the gate! <– I love that line
Cuz this little piggy, must definitely fry,
I'ma lop his nugget off and toss it in the sky.
And then I watch the moon take the form of the devil,
And pull it out the sky, and beat it wit' a shovel.
People in my city, they fight for they meals,
He sleeps on a mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills.
A richie is the devil, he never will admit it,
So I'm a take his money stack and stuff his face wit' it.
Opened up his door, he's sleeping in his bed,
I grabbed a brick of gold laid it upside his head.
He begged for his life, I told him it's too late,
Then I took away his dough and watched the devil suffocate
- Cowicide
  
  I’m surprised BB isn’t more down with the clowns. They talk about hating rich people too
  
  Oh, that’s right… pointing out issues with megalomaniacs that have destroyed our entire world economy in the process of sucking up as much wealth as possible is hating on the rich… I forgot.
  
  Why are you even here at a place you despise so much? Is it because you’re a glutton for punishment? It would appear so.
  - Mister44
    
    Geeze. Lighten up, Francis.
    - Cowicide
      
      Maybe don’t bring up “hating” and things will get lighter? Try it.
Trent Hawkins

This is what the hipsters of the future will look like.
Jaan

I have a lot of mixed feelings watching this. As a 41 year old metal head it’s easy to feel for these kids. Indeed, I was getting downright sentimental about the “old days”. Then one of them would speak.
ill lich

I’m trying to be fair, and give them the benefit of the doubt that there is more to the culture than just music and partying. The whole “family/acceptance” thing is fine, but you would find that in any subculture (and I suspect there are still occasional arguments and fistfights at The Gathering.) But if this is the best they could find, the positive side of juggalos, then the culture is still very lacking– even the most coherent and thoughtful juggalos they interviewed didn’t have anything deeper to offer than “family, acceptance, enjoy yourself.” If the whole mythos of the “Dark Carnival” is so meaningful to them, then why didn’t they elaborate on that?

Before I completely dismiss juggalos as drunk morons I want to see some interviews where they say something beyond “it’s all about family”, or perhaps intelligently discuss something outside the realm of their own culture, did the editors leave that footage on the cutting room floor? I’m not biased against mid-westerners or trailer parks or working class people, I just value intelligence.

I get the feeling they value “family” so much simply because they are outsiders everywhere else. It’s ironic– at The Gathering it’s all about acceptance and family, but back home in Indiana it’s about deliberately being a weirdo/outsider to set yourself apart from the rest of society.