Hello my fellow smartphone addicts,
It’s Mo aka DJ Gay Panic, and this(!) is The Deviant Dispatch. I’m blogging from my corner of the NYC “underground” to bring you subcultural musings, scene updates, and queer shit. There will be typos.
This newsletter is by far the longest one I’ve written, so strap the fuck in. If you make it to the bottom I have discounted rave tickets for you. : )
Everyone is complaining about how club culture is dying. The New York Times just ran a piece about Paragon closing despite being successful (packed dancefloors, industry respect, ect). People are clocking that gen Z is less interested in drinking and going out. The shaky economy also means that most people are skipping the expensive ticket or bar tab in lieu of supper clubs and crafting nights.
But I have an easy way to improve the clubbing experience. We need to restore clubs as a place for release and play. For messiness with less judgement.
Venues need to start covering phone cameras.
TBH no phones allowed period is the more cunty option, but covering the camera is a easier fix that gets to the root of the problem. Clubs are not keeping people engaged + the people who are engaged feel watched by the phone-holders. Instead of dancing with each other, people are focusing on grabbing footage. In the quest for showing they had a good time, they are foregoing the actual good time. You cannot dance wildly while capturing a good image. And everyone forgoing the former for the latter is a large part of why the vibe is off. The solution is as simple as two stickers: one for the front-facing camera and one for the back.
This is not an idea I came up with, or even a new idea for clubbing. The famed Berlin techno club Berghain covers your phone cameras with stickers, with NYC club
Basement following suit. Nowadays has a no phone on the dancefloor policy. When 3 Dollar Bill first popped off, it was due to circuit parties where you had to check your phone like a coat. Even a soho nightclub that hosts mainstream DJs like Diplo have instituted the policy without much pushback.
Parties like TOSSD (more on that below), The Carry Nation’s They Went On Forever, and MERGE say no cameras on the dancefloor. And it’s not just New York and Berlin: Roving parties like Book Club Radio are marketing their anti-phone stances as a selling point, taking it one step further and telling people to face each other1. IG graphics about no phones on the dancefloor go viral regularly
Even celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow are weighing in on this. The former party girl turned health influencer (tale as old as time) talked about the joy of clubbing pre-camera phone on James Corden. “Talk about doing cocaine and not getting caught!” she quipped at one point.
But how will sticking phone cameras actually help things?
Because the appeal of nightclubs is to uncork. A responsible person has to delay gratification to provide for their basic needs (society as a whole certainly won’t). You have to get out of your warm bed and go to work so you can have the bed in the first place. You have to brush your teeth or risk loosing them all together.
But going to nightclub or a rave is saying “fuck that, I’m choosing to just go do something FUN, something maybe even reckless. I’m going to go dance to sounds that make me happy, that inspire me to move my body and give me those exercise endorphins gym bros keep talking about.”
That’s why alcohol / drugs are so intrinsic to nightlife: they give you shortcuts to the responsibility-free mindset. Places sell booze to make money, but we buy it cuz we’re looking to relax. That’s the whole premise.
But how can you relax when you’re constantly posing for photos? How can you uncork when you know that someone will video you dancing on that couch or that table? It’s hard enough to let go from simple social judgement without the spectre of social media judgement hanging over you. Take it from this Gen Z guy on Tik Tok:
“Cameras killed the club. If you go to the club and dance for more than three seconds, a circle of strangers will form around you like Lord of the Flies," Fields said in the video. "And they're all gonna pull out their flash and put it on you... Either way, they gonna post your [expletive] on Twitter and they're gonna roast you."
There’s a countless TikTok users lodging the complaint. Here’s another quote:
“every single problem that we have on a night out, everything that leads to us crying, everything that leads to us having a bad hook-up, everything that leads to us having a bad time, stems from our phone while we’re out”
When I think about phone cameras in the club, I think of a classic philosophical conundrum: the panopticon. It’s an 18th century idea by this english guy Jeremy Bentham about a prison design. Instead of staffing a prison full of guards to monitor everyone, what if the prison was a giant arena with cells on the outside and a watch tower in the center? The prisoners are on display for anyone in the tower. Since prisoners know the single guard in the tower always could be looking at them, they are forced to act as if they’re always being looked at. Instead prisons full of guards controlling each person, inmates start to control themselves instead of risking intermittent punishment.
In the modern age, the weight of social media virality is the modern panopticon. A photo / of video of you acting silly in the club (your god given right) always COULD go viral and be judged. Therefore, people are acting as if they’re always being watched and judged by the entire quick-to-hate internet.
Take away the phone camera, and you only have to worry about being judged by the people in the room. And thank goodness that everyone in the room is there to act silly in the club alongside you! Even if a square is freaked out by you dancing like a fool, they’re way less likely to say something about it without a screen in between y’all. Their possible judgment becomes less important.
No phones in the club goes beyond just feeling comfortable: they’re a shortcut to better club behavior. The Substacker Magical Dance Floors described this scenario at Berghain on an night where the door policy is less enforced and non-regulars storm the club:
I observe that many of those who selfishly drive to the front (of the dancefloor) don’t know what to do once they get there; they’re like dogs who finally catch the duck they’ve been chasing. They grab onto the rail and look around like, “now what?” In any other club they would’ve reached the front and pulled their phones out to film the DJ, film themselves performatively dancing and being "sexy" near the DJ, and film the crowd. All this filming provides content for their Instagram stories to prove that they'd been there, that they were at the club, proof of their cool raver identities.
…
At Berghain, these people are lost because the whole underlying motive of pushing to the front had been decoupled from the payoff of being able to create social media content once there, thanks to the photo ban. These folks don’t last long. Without their phones to occupy their minds, they constantly sip their drinks until they need to go in search of another drink. They’re even ruder as they push their way back to the bar.
These unpleasant dancefloor dynamics gradually dissipate as the night wears on.
Asshole people abound everywhere and a simple phone sticker won’t stop them completely. But if you take away the motivations the MDF outlined, eventually people will learn. If they are bored “Watching” the DJ, they will eventually turn to each other instead of turning to a phone. The ADHD-pilled brain will still need stimuli. If you’re not blinded by blue light, the club has plenty of things to delight.
Most people are happy to forgo phones when given the chance. Even people who get unexpectedly confronted with this tend to go along with it. The couple of times that Elsewhere covered camera phones at the artist’s request, the patrons all did so without much of a fuss. Ravers on discord even applauded the choice. Same for the nightclub in soho. No one actually LIKES being glued to the phone anymore. We all feel the blegh after being on Tiktok or reels for longer than the span of a movie. But like all addicts, we’re addicted to the dopamine rush and can’t put it down.
But who wants to be a cop about anything, even something as annoying as phone use? Many people trying to run a party think less rules will result in people feeling freer and more relaxed. “We don’t want to have to police people’s phone use, that’s not a good party vibe” people might think. Like many assumptions, this isn’t true. The facilitator and author Priya Parker talks about the importance of rules in a gathering to create a liberated alternate world. In her book The Art of Gathering, Parker theorizes that setting rules and expectations actually encourages people to relax, because they know the unspoken rules she calls etiquette aren’t in play.
“Whereas etiquette foisted a kind of repression, gathering with rules can allow for boldness and experimentation. Rules can create an imaginary, transient world that is actually more playful than your everyday gathering. That is because everyone realizes that the rules are temporary and is, therefore, willing to obey them”
The modern etiquette (or lack thereof) around phone use is simple as it is horrid. Anyone is allowed to whip at their phone at any time to film someone. This can be someone bitching out a customer service rep, a candid shot of an eccentrically-dressed person on the train, or a couple breaking up in the street. It’s all potential content.
Lots of what gets filmed is non-normative behavior or breaching the social contract. We film someone acting out, breaking the rules. We believe in the power of the panopticon to enforce good behavior if we remind them people are watching. It’s not foolproof, as we’ve seen with the recent filming of ICE agents unlawfully detaining people. But’s its our instinct to film regardless.
But clubbing, raving, and nightlife is supposed to be about small doses of bad behavior. You’re supposed to dance sexually at a club in a way puritan America doesn’t let you do otherwise. You’re supposed to be goofy as you bob to the music. Its the liberation and the fun. But the premise falls apart if we allow our modern phone etiquette into the picture.
When we tell people to cover their phones, yes we’re encouraging people to live in the moment. But more importunely, we’re telling everyone that you won’t be judged for acting a fool. That’s what going to the club is for. If we temporarily topple the panopticon, it’ll be easier to have the kind of night in the club people are currently fantasizing about on Tiktok.
Ok that’s my rant. I’m getting off my soapbox soon, but first here’s a good party to go feel liberated at.
XOXO
Mo
TOSSD
When: 4/20 6am-7pm
Where: secret location (buy a ticket to get the address)
What: Girls, let’s wake and bake! It’s the return of the party I previously described as “the only afters that I would encourage non-party girls to attend.” The vibe is hedonistic but without being messy. The early start time means it’s totally possible for a dialed diva to rave the day away and mingle with the party goblins still out from the night before. Now THAT’s community! Plus the floor is padded for easy extended dancing and the music is TOP NOTCH. Take a listen to Sevyn Love’s set from the last TOSSD to get a taste.
TOSSD is known to bring DJs from across the scene together, and now it’s time for their first out of town guest in Succubass. She’s from the pacific northwest but just popped out to play Bossa Nova, and will be in Atlanta this weekend as well. I’ll let the party speak to her appeal: “Whether she’s throwing down peak time techno or playful and wobbly dubstep, she’s known for connecting sounds together in ways that most are too afraid to try.”
Local faves include DJ Deadname2 and TOSSD residents Will Jack & Perfect Health. The former was kind enough to provide a 20% off link for readers of the newsletter, so grab ur tickets below!!! Just remember to keep it cute and the phone cameras OFF.
How much: $36.56 via this discount link
this newsletter is tooo long but other honorable 4/20 weekend party mentions go to The Spiral Sisters, + Miss Woman’s SATC shadowcast, + clubSOIREE,
Despite thief anti-phone policy, Book Club Radio ironically films all their parties and posts them on Youtube. So it’s not the kind of liberated surveillance free zone I’m talking about, but for the attendees it FEELS like one, which is the point.
This is the third time I’m putting DJ DEADNAME in the newsletter.
posted this one to https://www.reddit.com/r/dancefloors/comments/1k2ecip/excellent_article_on_why_parties_are_better/