r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 9h ago

Reading festival 2026

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u/ijmy3 8h ago

The problem is, that excuse used to wash. Now almost everyone knows it's not true.

People are just lazy. The issue here is that you can get tents dirt cheap nowadays from Amazon, temu etc. and there's no reason for these people not to just leave them to save carrying them back to the car. It's not exclusive to reading, it happens at most festivals sadly.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 8h ago

The problem is that, for most of human history, it was hard to make things and easy to destroy them. But we’ve suddenly ended up in a world where it’s easy to make things and hard to destroy them. Combine that with the mindset of the previous world, and the fact 8 billion people all want their own personal everything, and we end up with a bunch of people literally going through multiple tents a year. And all of that just piles up.

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u/VividFiddlesticks 4h ago

a bunch of people literally going through multiple tents a year

This seems so crazy to me. We've owned the same 2 tents (big one for people/sleeping, small one for storing crap out of the rain/sun) since the 90's. They're a little tired and have a couple patches now but both are fully functional and packed full of memories! We have the set up and take down for those tents down to a science. It's really only a pain when we have to pack it up wet and then set it back up at home to dry, but...that's just part of camping. (We don't do festivals, we're more "chill out in the woods" types)

I'm pretty damn lazy but abandoning tents like this is wild to me. (Old woman shakes fist at cloud)

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u/BoozeAmuze 4h ago

Same girl. Same. 

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u/synalgo_12 3h ago

I bought a tent in 2016, still in perfect condition after countless festivals, camping and some bushcraft weekends. I love that thing

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u/Obelisko78 7h ago edited 3h ago

Sorry to say, but it is all now a disposable world being disposed of.

It's not as if planned obsolescence was guaranteed to become the prevalent paradigm, but, homo sapien nature being what it is, the probability was high for it to become so

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u/ijmy3 8h ago

Oh absolutely. And the bottom line is, when it's Monday morning, you've had a 3/4/5 day bender and you feel horrific the last thing you want to do it pack up a clunky tent that almost NEVER fits back in it's bag and is heavy.

But most people these days would rather point the finger at "younger generations", or a "different" demographic to themselves than just admit that so many people cause this issue, and it extends beyond just festivals.

Unfortunately it seems to be somewhat ingrained in human nature to be lazy for some people, and in most cases if people were publicly shamed for it, they'd pack the tent. It's mostly the attitudes that you can anonymously dump a tent, and "everyone else is doing it anyway so why shouldn't I?" that cause this

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u/Leading-Let-5632 7h ago

Also the just general amount of rubbish that's just EVERYWHERE. It's of course down to the people dropping it, but the access to bins is nearly non-existant at most camps.

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u/OrigamiMarie 7h ago

At first I thought it was some kind of tragic weather event when I saw the footage. But nope, just a depressingly human event.

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u/gsfgf 3h ago

Those poles with trash cans next to them sure look like trash drop off spots to me.

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u/pattymcfly 4h ago

I'm tired, boss.

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u/readilyunavailable 2h ago

Not true. There were periods of history where things were easy to make and even mass produced. Pottery in the Roman Republic and Empire were mass produced and people would just chuck them if they didn't want to keep using it. It's why a lot of times you can find huge ammounts of pottery in seemingly random locations.

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u/MuchWow81 7h ago

There is also enshittification. How many of those cheap tents fell apart in a single use? Zipper breaks, a good size tear, pole snaps. Mostly impossible to repair.

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u/Realistic_Way_4565 8h ago

True, you spend more on a hotel and also leave with nothing.

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u/BurningPenguin 8h ago

I had to look it up. Apparently the cheapest tent i can find in German Amazon is 20€. That's cheap af. But still, i can't stop and think that that's ~3-4 days of food for me alone.

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u/Hellraiser_Quadbike 7h ago

It’s probably one meal at Reading though.

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u/BurningPenguin 7h ago

Food is food

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u/ceciliabee 7h ago

When you're in a place you generally tend to get food from that place. Food is food, yes, but you can only buy what's offered and you can't decide your own prices. If you aren't the type to plan ahead and pack food for your trip, there aren't many options, are there?

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u/BurningPenguin 7h ago

The point is, if i pay enough money that i could afford food, i'm gonna make sure to use that thing until it falls apart. It's like an investment. It has to be worth it. I grew up with barely enough money to get basic necessities. So i'm quite careful about wasting money, despite the fact that i could nowadays afford at least 10 of those things.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 4h ago

It's a four day music festival. The whole thing revolves around nothing but wasting money.

I understand you're frugal and all that, but most of the people attending a four day music festival are not.

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u/gsfgf 3h ago

i'm gonna make sure to use that thing until it falls apart.

The Europeans in here at least make it sound like their cheap tents do fall apart after one use. Not that that's an excuse, but it explains a lot.

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u/gsfgf 3h ago

And at least in the US, festival food is part of it. I always brought sandwich stuff to festivals, but foot long corn dogs -- and many other things; I just love a good corn dog -- are part of the fun. Now I want a corn dog.

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u/s00pafly 7h ago

Or less than 5% of your ticket

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u/flyte_of_foot 6h ago

In the UK 20€ is 1-2 hours of work on minimum wage. I don't condone leaving the mess, but I can certainly see people writing that amount off as just cost of entry.

Plus they are bulky and if you're only going to a festival once a year you might not want to store it.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 4h ago

Also, putting up a cheap ass tent is easy. Taking down a cheap ass tent is exponentially difficult.

One of the differentiators of "tent quality" is ease of breakdown and storage with the easiest tents costing more because they're better engineered for simpler deconstruction and minimizing size when stored.

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u/tin_dog 6h ago

At a festival 20€ is 3 bottles of water or 2 hot dogs.

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u/fairyhedgehog167 5h ago

Yes but a 20€ tent is a single-use item. It just won’t last. If it lasts the night, you already call that a victory. The real issue is that these items shouldn’t exist at all.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 4h ago

Because you're responsible. And German.

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u/KevinK89 2h ago

German Festival aftermaths don’t look any different than this.

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u/dbxp 3h ago

£13 here: https://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/products/eurohike-toco-2-person-tent-red-503093?variant=55572638826822

It's common to see deals for sub £20 tents during festival season, they're not meant to last long and it's dubious if they're really waterproof

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u/JoeFTPgamerIOS 8h ago

Happened in my state recently. I ran into someone that went to an event and they said how they tried to upgraded their own tent when they saw so many abandoned but they were all cheap and most already damaged. They got one decent usable tent out of the dozens left.

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u/intentionallybad 6h ago

I could completely see that if a tent got damaged, people would be more likely to abandon it. Especially if it was cheap to begin with.

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u/BWWFC 7h ago

dirt cheap nowadays

this is the nexus of so much wtf anymore

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u/MrsNaypeer 8h ago

Not the festivals I've been to, mate. This would never fly at Grey Fox or Philly Folk.

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u/Nervous-Fennel3325 7h ago

This was a problem at the little festival I went to that was about 10k people.

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u/bobbadouche 6h ago

yeah, you have burnt out/hungover people who probably just want to walk away and go home and get cleaned up. So they leave all their shit for someone else to deal with.

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u/IndependentLog6441 6h ago

Decathlon has even introduced refunds after use to avoid all the waste... still no one cares... they just see it as literally not worth their time to take it down.

I did notice at We Out Here the rental tent section was absolutely massive, so more and more people with the cash can just do that and save themselves the hassle I suppose.

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u/makomirocket 4h ago

"now almost everyone knows it's not true"

You also know the conditions of workers who make everything you buy that is at all cheap, a long with a lot of the kind of expensive ones too. 

You also know the conditions of the animals needlessly raised for food.

You too express your own cognitive dissonance.