Person Shouting In Your Ear At Rave Doesn’t Know Why They’re Doing It Either
The guy lining your eardrum with hot spit while you’re trying to enjoy yourself is bound by a strange
compulsion he’s also unable to explain.
Matt French, who has a creeping sense he despises everyone around him, said: “Every few tunes my
mate decides to scream the entire Discogs page for the release at me, less than an inch from my ear.”
“For some reason when I stand completely still and stare into the middle distance like a late-stage
dementia patient, or some sort of underwater prey, it only encourages him. I don’t know if he thinks
I’m impressed by his arcane knowledge of late-90s garage.”
“To clarify, I’m not, and the only thing I can think about is the fact my ear’s getting wet.”
Club-goers have also reported total strangers approaching them and engaging in bizarre, frustrated
attempts at communication that make them look like they’re lurking in the corner of a TV screen at
5am.
Olivia Jones said: “This fat guy kept gurning at me with increasingly frantic hand movements and
panicked eyes, as if he’d just witnessed something unspeakable. It looked as though he needed to
pass on a really urgent message, or he’d just shat himself and didn’t know what to do.”
“It turned out he just wanted to tell me he was having a really good time and see if I was having a
really good time too. Which is fine, but if people did that in everyday life we’d be America.”
Peter Young, a self-styled expert in ‘rave culture’ at Manchester University, said: “The main reason
for people wanting to speak to each other, despite the loud music, is the intense feelings of empathy
that popular club drugs such as ecstasy, or ‘miaow-burgers’ in youth slang, induce. So it seems one
way to stop this happening would be for people to stop taking drugs at raves.”
“The other option is ketamine.”