April 6, 2022

It’s a pretty chilled afternoon on April 6th, 2022. Two years have passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 6,184,628 deaths, and 494,322,684 cases as of now.

While according to most people the pandemic is “over” (for some it was long“over” before today) - as if viruses and bacteria have some sort of expiring date -, around five million people, in the UK, have been infected since the start of the month, the highest infection rate since the pandemic began, Shanghai has entered a city-wide lockdown, France has recorded 200,000 new cases, Germany reported 300,000 daily cases for the first time, and a new variant has been found in the UK.

Such elements strongly indicate that the pandemic is far from being over, even more so if we consider the disappearance (in most countries) of all kinds of health & safety measures, from free testing to isolation, with non-existent changes to the way people used to live, work, learn, travel, and else.

As such, after 2 years, clubs, promoters, artists, and agents are continuing to do what they used to, rejecting any criticism, not taking responsibility for their actions, and actually insulting those calling out their wrongdoings through inadequate reactions, with the “press” actively involved in sustaining, and defending, such behaviors and approaches, despite the evidence provided above.

What is really surprising, especially for those who were/are not aware of it, is the fact that such a modus operandi strongly reflects a business-oriented, profit-maximizing, managerial ideology, which our beloved “scene” has espoused many years ago.

In fact, we can clearly see how certain attitudes are interviewed with those present within other economic spheres, such as finance, manufacturing, retail, or else, where the health & safety of staff members, and the public, are disregarded, gender, ethnic, and disability pay gaps are vastly present, casualization and job insecurity is the norms, harassment / sexual violence predominantly ignored and deceived, and everything is centered around profit-maximization, as the US and the UK, cradles of global capitalism, indicate.

As such, comments like “frustrated clown”, “get a life”, “move on”, or smiles and emojis, when addressing serious issues, are idiosyncratic of the capitalistic system in which we live and work, with audiences as mere consumers of a product that has lost its soul, where people do not take responsibility for their wrongdoings, because they feel superior, and nothing is actually done for the better.