Media outlets across the U.K. and Ireland are reported to be gleefully anticipating a “field day” following reports of up to 15 young people being treated for problems arising from drugs and alcohol misuse at DJ Mag winner Hardwell’s over 16 event in Belfast last night.
Outlets across the world are keen to use the incident as a “shocking example of how them dance music kids are out of control” in the hope that they can “induce an overreaction out of someone, preferably someone famous”.
Sky News have warned concerned parents to “panic as much as possible” on the basis of “the little information [they] have” about the incident.
“We were on the scene but weren’t able to get much usable footage because we couldn’t find any young people sober enough to interview,” laughed one delighted Sky News correspondent. “But thankfully that glib observation amounts to what we were going to report anyway so we didn’t need to interview anyone.”
Irish journalist Brian Boyd said he’s hoping to just “re-use the article on the Swedish House Mafia” incident in Phoenix Park Dublin from a few years ago by making slight adjustments and re-titling the article “I Told You So”.
“I’ve got the perfect story for an occasion like this,” explained Brian. “All I’ll have to do is change a few names and dates, but the prejudice and message is still the same, ‘dance music kills kids and would probably piss on them as well’, is basically the jist.”
“I’m just hoping to blame underground dance music again,” he continued, “which is the style of music that I’ll knowingly and wrongly attribute to Hardwell, in spite of him being a pop act and there being a vibrant underground dance music scene in this country that goes off without incident every day.”
“I’m not going to let ‘facts’ get in the way of blowing things out of proportion,” he added.
“These events are a blessing for us because it provides exactly the sort of soapbox we need to further sensationalise drugs,” claimed a Daily Mail journalist. “They occur every couple of years and thankfully they help to stifle any attempt to have a reasoned and informed discussion about decriminalizing drugs.”
“When I first heard about it I just said a quick little prayer that someone would be seriously hurt,” continued the unnamed archetypal Mail journalist. “It’s a lot easier to manipulate people’s emotions when you’ve got some dead meat on the pavement.”
Most reporters are said to be pleased that they’re getting the chance to use frightening graphics with statistics and big words like “drug epidemic”, “out of control” and “evil”, while struggling manfully to suppress well rehearsed and contrived indignation.
Panels of right wing experts have reportedly been gargling honey and lemon all day so that their voices “are able to reach the maximum octave of strident chagrin”.
One correspondent confided the game plan for mainstream media networks saying, “We’ll be sure to encourage concerned parents to not attempt to talk openly and frankly to their teenagers about drugs, and to basically just blindly panic and make threats and sanctions on the child that will then, with any luck, heighten the allure of drugs to the teen, who is often willing to do or take anything to assert his/her independence, even if it is dangerous.”
“So hopefully they do the drugs, get hurt and the news cycle of outrage can continue,” she concluded. “But if not, I’m sure we’ll find something else to crudely sensationalise and blame on a culture of music we don’t understand.”
