Having Sex at Music Festivals Is a Terrible Idea

Festivals are a den of filth, dirt, heat rash, questionable fluids, and drugs. Lots of drugs. Possibly herpes too, though that's being debated. While the appearance of most of these in a individual instance would be annoying but survivable, the combination of all is basically the antidote to horniness. But Tinder is out here trying to get you laid, even amongst the sea of people passed out in their own molly vomit.

On Thursday, Tinder announced their latest innovation in creating opportunities for your soft parts to intimately mesh into another person's soft parts: Festival Mode. Profiles will now include a "Festival Mode card," where users can add which festivals they'll be attending and connect with others who will also be there donning their best Forever 21 crochets. Festival Mode also allows users access to "exclusive VIP upgrades, swag, and more," according to the announcement. Whether "more" includes front-of-line access to the medical tent after getting hit in the head by one of Diplo's stage props is not specified. Among the first festivals to get Tinderized will be Bonnaroo, EDC, The Governors Ball, Hard Summer, and Parklife.

Considering Tinder's foray into the festival game, it seems important to ask a simple, yet important, question: Who actually wants to fuck at a festival?

Festivals are disgusting. They're either 500-degree shitshows where everyone is out of their goddamn minds and wearing cornea-melting neon, or they're a miserable, rainy trash fire and your rainboots get stuck in mud during an attempt at a thot pose, so that's where you live out the rest of your days. Eighty years old, in coochie cutters, stuck in mud in a field littered with empty plastic baggies.

Plus, it is fucking Caligula out there. Some of the most sensible people in the world will find themselves making questionable sexual decisions.

Imagine one day having to look your best friend in the eye after you informed them that whilst rolling on molly you decided to go into a Porta Potty with a much-younger dude and proceeded to get your ass eaten out whilst standing on the toilet hole, then made out with the dude and then also that same best friend and a few others, so your butt juices are on everyone's faces, just seeping into their pores. You know why this picture is so vividly painted? Because it happened to me. I did this. At a festival. We should always aim to create open and free spaces to explore sex and sexuality without judgment or shame, but maybe also getting your sweat-and-saliva-tinged ass juices on multiple unsuspecting people's faces is not the coolest thing to do. Festivals bring the party goblin out of people, and the CDC probably would not appreciate the possible implications of this sort of behavior.

If you do decide it's time for festival sex, and you are not a Kylie Jenner or a DJ Khaled and thus don't have access to a bed in an air-conditioned private plane, then it means either fucking in a field in front of hundreds of influencers, or…honestly, I don't know. There's the Ferris wheel like Issa did in that episode of Insecure, or maybe the medical tent where you may now have front-of-line access. It just seems like a pain to have to find somewhere to get laid while navigating through the extremely wasted and incredibly sunburnt hordes as they drag themselves through the dirt pretending to be alive like a reverse Shaun of the Dead zombie walk and Ariana Grande gets hit by a lemon.

But we all know when the clock strikes horny, nothing matters. We must bend the knee to our carnal instincts, whether that's in a Porta Potty, a dirt field, a Ferris wheel, or DJ Khaled's oral sex-free party cabana.

Plenty of people meet at festivals. Sticky with sweat and getting smacked in the face with wind-whipped dirt, they squint across the metal barriers and see someone who could be the one. Or the one to finger while Weezer plays a cover of a Weird Al parody song. Some even fall in love and get married and pump a future festival goer into existence after a chance meeting in line for $225 Church Clothes at Kanye's Sunday Service. Still, that's gross. I mean, get it where you can, and if where you can get it is at the Gathering of the Juggalos thanks to Tinder, by all means godspeed. Good luck getting the imprint of Shaggy 2 Dope makeup off your butt.

Follow Alex Zaragoza on Twitter but not on Tinder at the Gathering of the Juggalos.