If you mean 'big counter cultural event that people brag about having been at" then Burning Man.
Dream on. President Obama, while not without some flaws, has already changed the world for the better, with much, much more good to come. He’ll be a beloved historical figure and future generations, except those unfortunately born to right-wing teabagger-wish-they-weres, will look back and wish they’d been there.
Really? Then who the hell were the 100,000 other people I just saw at Bonnaroo this past weekend?
What’s that? Who is the lovable cartoon bird of this generation?
I dunno . . . That’s a tough one . . . Mother Goose from Mother Goose and Grimm is just too old and stupid . . .
Burning Man and Bonbarroo, while awesome, are also repeating events. Didn’t make it this year? Well, there’s always next year. Woodstock, despite later attempts, wasn’t a duplicatable event. Its mystique is largely because it had a “once in a lifetime you had to be there and there won’t ever be anything like it” vibe in the popular consciousness. Whether that’s *true *or not is debatable, but that’s the mystique.
I don’t think later generations have had something comparable.
I was replying to the snide “kids these days” tone of the person I was quoting more than replying to the OP. Bonnaroo, while awesome, isn’t even on the level of Coachella or SXSW, so it’s obviously not going to be this generation’s Woodstock, even ignoring the whole annual festival point, which is a good one.
There’s no “Woodstock” for this generation.
And that generation didn’t have a Facebook or a Youtube.
In what sense? I think Woodstock was, at best, the beginning of the end of the hippy thing. Nothing that happened there changed the world in any measurable way. A whole lotta people dropped acid and listened to some tunes in a muddy field. It probably was one helluva party, and the talent lineup was incredible, but that’s all it really was.
Frightening hippie sorts?
No. Bonnarroo is more frat party than hippie fest.
I don’t know…doesn’t it involve camping? To me anything that involves sleeping outside immediately becomes scary hippie territory.
Aw, come on. Come camping with me…I’ll show you the scary hippies!
It might be more like a frat party, but isn’t a frat party any more than it’s a hippie fest. I’ve been to three 'roos (and I’m going again next year, to its tenth anniversary) and I’m neither a hippie nor a frat guy. It has all sorts, really, with a fair cross-section of (white) social groups and subcultures.
And the camping is what makes it awesome.
I’ll second (or third) that Woodstock wasn’t the Woodstock of its generation is real terms.
The mystique, over-hyped or not, exists, and apparently 34 million people were there:D.
I’ll go with the Macarena. when the U.S. president dances a stupid group dance, that is a cultural moment.
Woodstock was a large orgy that became popular once the former participants started reliving their youth when they realized how old they were getting to be. I don’t know of any large orgies that have happened on that scale since, but aging people will always think of something that was better when they could party and have sex all night.
It certainly was according to Joan Baez. I distinctly remember her saying, “Hello children of the 80s! This is your Woodstock!” and thinking how stupid that sounded. FTR, I don’t think we children of the 70s had one either. There was disco, but we don’t like to talk about that, at least not in my household.
Wiki backs me up, although it doesn’t mention the “children of the 80’s” bit.