Watch Coachella From the Comfort of Your Home

Shortly after the headlining set on Saturday of Coachella 2018, the area surrounding the Polo Fields in Indio, California became something more along the lines of a zombie apocalypse of garishly dressed teenagers offering hundreds of dollars to any car that would get them the hell out of there. It began with a stand-still Uber line in which guests were trapped in miles of snaking fencing that would have taken hours had it not been for the mob at the front of the line that tore down the barrier and made a mad break for the waiting queue of cars.

Of the hundreds waiting for a ride, perhaps only about a dozen people made it into Ubers as security scrambled to restore order. With the Uber system completely dismantled, half drunk and dazed festival-goers spilled into the streets trying to hail cabs and Lyfts and Ubers, while police patrolled stopping any cars from picking up passengers in order to keep traffic moving. What was now some sort of dystopian ride situation became every man for himself fight for a lift through the desert. Eventually, word got around that cops were allowing Lyft drivers to pick up passengers in a convenience store parking lot a mile away.

My point is, I remember this hellish experience trying to get back to Palm Springs more vividly than I even remember Kendrick Lamar's incredible headlining set hours before. Coachella is less about the music and more about being seen in your coolest outfit, which is nothing more than poor survival gear against the harsh desert weather (heat, cold, dust storms) and whatever challenges come at you from being trapped in a crowd of 90,000 with no cellular service and long bathroom lines.

You know what doesn't have bathroom lines, drunk bros in bunny outfits, torching sun, and dust storms? Your couch at home (I hope).

Coachella peaked long ago; it's no longer a tastemaker festival, but rather a questionably corporate brand experience with predictable lineups and unimaginable crowds. It's an excuse to get bragging rights and Instagram fodder for seeing music in the worst possible setting from thousands of people deep in a field. Do you want to hear Radiohead play through a set of sound issues from two miles away? Do you want to look at some sweaty dude's back instead of the tiny dot that is Lady Gaga playing somewhere in the distance? No! You want to see these artists in an arena, stadium, or amphitheater. You want to see Angel Olsen in an intimate theater. You want to see King Krule in a dingy club.

If you add up the cost of seeing every act individually on the lineup that you really want to see, I guarantee it will be cheaper to see them in your local city than it will with all Coachella expenses combined. It'll be easier, it'll sound better, it'll be less of a pain in the ass.

Now, if you want to be privy to these shows as they're happening, if you want to avoid the insane FOMO, you can just watch this live stream that Coachella puts online every year. I guarantee, it'll be the best decision you've made, and when your friends come back broke and beaten down by stress and the elements, you can talk with them about seeing the same exact performances.

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