Dozens of hippies who got stuck at a festival in Panama due to coronavirus realized that the collectivist utopia they sought after is actually “hell” as they bicker over food and territory.
One doesn’t want to laugh too much at their misfortune, but dear God, this is funny.
The Tribal Gathering Festival, billed as “paradise on earth,” was supposed to end on March 15, but 40 western hippies remain trapped at the site because Panama announced a national emergency due to COVID-19 and placed them under quarantine.
A subsequent ban on all entry and departure flights now means the hippies are likely to be stuck in “paradise” until the end of May.
A VICE documentary short about their plight shows attendees complaining about how they are “stuck in hell” as they struggle with bad weather and major sewage issues at the campsite.
“At first it was like a paradise, but when you are locked in, it’s not paradise any more,” one attendee said.
VICE reports that the festival was “designed to be a temporary paradise where people from western cities could learn from indigenous communities about how to rebalance society and live in symbiosis with the earth.”
However, any sense of communitarian oneness appears to have been washed away as attendees bicker and fight over food and territory.
“Don’t try to steal our food, I’ll get really upset with you,” one organizer tells the rest of the crowd. “And remember where you are, you’re in my fucking manor,” he adds.
“I’ve been camping on a beach for 80 days!” said Doug Francisco, who led Extinction Rebellion climate change activists last year. “While the festival was still going on, the police came in and tried to shut it down.”
Food, cleaning products and tobacco is all in short supply, with some hippies having to do manual labor to stay fed.
Attendees decided to visit the festival at the end of February despite serious government warnings against international travel and the expectation, which was obvious by that time, that coronavirus would devastate flight routes.
“While the situation is terrible, of course, it has also become extremely comical,” reports the District Herald. “The hippies are now being forced to live in their theoretical utopia — and they aren’t having the amazing time that they imagined.”
CNN Blasted After Lecturing People Not To Use ‘Digital Blackface’
Argues memes of black people are a “modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows.”
Published
3 days ago
on
27 March, 2023
Steve Watson
Screenshot
Mass backlash has ensued after a CNN report accused white people of using ‘digital blackface’ by posting memes of black people’s reactions as a way of expressing their feelings about situations.
In the piece, headlined What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it wrong when White people use it, CNN writer John Blake states the following:
"If you're White and you've posted a GIF or meme of a Black person to express a strong emotion, you may be guilty of wearing 'digital blackface,'" writes John Blake | Analysis https://t.co/KlHkWWHq6x
Blake argues that such memes and gifs are “radicalized reactions,” and that while black people “get a pass” for using them, white people posting them have “inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”
Blake goes on to declare that the use of the memes by whitey is a “modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows.”
The modern-day segregationists do everything possible to keep people divided by race, prevent them from having joyful and natural interactions, ban them from appreciating the culture and humor of others, and in general demand that they have as little in common as possible: https://t.co/pMXVCAf2Xr
I’d love to hear an explanation of how posting a gif or meme of a black person online is digital blackface, but a man dressing up like a woman in real life is heroic. Please explain @cnn. pic.twitter.com/fPYXF5ogDC