r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 9h ago

Reading festival 2026

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u/Adventurous_Emotion9 8h ago

There’s a belief that the tents left behind are taken by charities and given to homeless or those who need them. This has been debunked by organisers time and time again as not being true.

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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