Why Gen Z Is Going Broke for Coachella

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Oh, Coachella, a place where you have to pay over $550 just to get through the gates. Being crowded spaces where the smell is unbearable. Want food? Well, you're going to need to spend around $50 for a burger. If you're ever thirsty, water bottles are going to cost around $10.

[00:00:18]Gen Z has completely changed the meaning of music festivals. Coachella was once a simple music festival against the status quo. It has now morphed into a social currency, if you will, for Gen Z, a sort of status symbol. In this video, I want to dive into some of the horrors that is Coachella, the ways it continues to pull in Gen Z, regardless of Gen Z's poor economic situation. We'll see how Coachella represents key traits of Gen Z, ultimately what all this means for Gen Z and her society. We cannot talk about Coachella without talking about the absurd ticket prices. Many might find it ironic that Gen Z has been classified as one of the most broke generations, yet they're spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on tickets. Make no mistake, there are still many Coachella goers who are still not able to even afford the ticket prices. So, they're using a buy now, pay later options like a firm or CLA to fund their experience. They're just going to kick the can down the road. You know, something Gen Z loves to do. Or more broadly, Americans. Just look at the credit card crisis that's going on right now. We're talking about 60% of Coachella attendees using platforms like CLA to fund their $600 plus ticket. Some would say you're getting pretty crazy value here because you're going to see a whole bunch of artists and huge headliners. If you look at the lineup, there is kind of something for everyone.

[00:01:49]In theory, it sounds like a lot of fun.

[00:01:51]It's going to be a blast. Get your buddies together, pack everyone up in a van, and go camp in a huge field with likeminded music goers. Seeing Sabrina Carpenter one night and Justin Bieber the next, that's a dream come true for so many people until reality hits and you're unable to get in because that $600 ticket you bought using a firm or CLA or whatever, Yeah. It was a fake ticket the entire time >> doing this.

[00:02:19]>> So, we went up to the guy that works the gate over there and asked him if we can he can help us. And we're like, we bought it from the hotel website. He says you can still get scammed if you buy it from the Coachella website.

[00:02:27]>> Yeah, that's what the other guy >> So, you've been waiting here for an hour. You've been waiting an hour.

[00:02:33]>> Two hours. Two hours.

[00:02:34]>> Just scammed out of 3K. I don't understand because we bought the tickets through the Coachella resale site and somehow they were still reported stolen.

[00:02:41]like we paid through Coachella and somehow Coachella's system still allows the original reseller to them report stolen and pull it out, but the whole point of going through Coachella's website is to make sure that it's vetted and make sure that this doesn't happen.

[00:02:55]Um, so I'm really confused.

[00:02:57]>> This is one of the many inconveniences this festival in the middle of the desert will do. Once you're finally there, be prepared to be in mega crowds of people singing horribly all around you. They're going to stink and sweat, all of it. Yeah, I personally don't get the hype. Don't get me wrong, I love going to concerts. I've gone to over like 30. But a festival, it's a whole different beast. And this one in particular, it's totally different. A beast that starves your bank account and takes your dollars at every direction.

[00:03:27]>> How much did you pay for your Coachella ticket?

[00:03:30]>> I paid for two GA wristbands, 12,000 USD, and I got scammed for two that I paid 2,000 each for. So, >> I actually don't pay for my ticket. $600 for a 3-day and too much for Airbnb.

[00:03:42]>> Face price tickets. It's like $700.

[00:03:45]>> I paid $800 because my parents helped me.

[00:03:48]>> It was like5 or 6 G's. I don't remember.

[00:03:50]>> I actually cloned my tickets. I paid $20 down and I have to pay it off in the next 10 years.

[00:03:55]>> $0. I actually got a brand deal.

[00:03:58]>> Free. My son bought it for us.

[00:03:59]>> I paid for them. 225. We love Coachella.

[00:04:02]>> Let's say you want some coffee. Well, be prepared to fork over $20 for a tiny subpar iced coffee.

[00:04:09]>> I'm at the Coachella Camping Hub and the food prices are absolutely diabolical.

[00:04:14]Okay, even Spicy Pry up their prices.

[00:04:16]It's $12 a slice. No, we have Dave's Hot Chicken and one slider, no fries, is $19. Okay, yay. This is the most diabolical though. One matcha being $175 for the strawberry and the double match.

[00:04:29]>> $20 coffee.

[00:04:31]>> Okay. What if you're hungry and you actually want to eat a meal? How about some regular tacos and nachos and a drink? Something you'd probably get at like a Mexican restaurant for like $30 to $35.

[00:04:42]>> Okay, I'm starving. So, let's come get nachos. The one thing I didn't want no tacos. The one thing I didn't want to do and now I'm doing it. It's okay. So, while I wait for the tacos, I got another How much is it? $17.

[00:04:56]>> $17 lemonade. It's mostly ice, but it's so good. $120ish dollars worth of food. Guys, I'm not going to lie. It's They're not good.

[00:05:07]They're not good at all. The tortillas are like freezing cold. Like freezing.

[00:05:11]>> Well, it's going to cost you over $100 at Coachella. I'm pretty sure outside food and drinks are also prohibited. So, you can't bring like sandwiches or Gatorade or any of that. They're just going to have you throw it out. Maybe you're going to spend a bit less at the venue if you find a cheaper place or something and you don't get a drink.

[00:05:29]Well, the night has ended. You're all super sweaty and tired, and you just want to shower. Be prepared to wait in line to take a shower for around 1 hour or possibly longer. The water pressure is going to suck, and the temperature is also going to be pretty cold. So, come mentally ready. And if you want to use a toilet or a portaotty rather, you're going to have to wait another hour and it's going to be like a portaotty that's been baking in the hot desert sun all day. Oh, that's that's just gross.

[00:05:58]disgusting. Like you're paying over $600 to not even have clean restrooms nearby.

[00:06:04]Oh, but hey, there's a solution. If you want to spend more money, you can get the VIP experience. That's an option, too. And there's also a whole bunch of Airbnbs. It can be yours and your friends for a few nights, and it's just going to cost you around $30,000, $80,000, maybe $250,000 for that Airbnb. Okay. So, Coachella, they're also going to offer their special safari huts, a beautiful rental fit with two beds or sometimes one. And it's going to be way nicer than sleeping in one of those gross tents cuz it's going to actually have AC. You're going to be given a special place, less crowded. What a great value to sleep in a tiny home. That's going to cost anywhere from $11,000 to $15,000 for the time you're there. Okay, so all this nonsense leads us to the big question. Why would Gen Z put themselves through all this torment? Let me introduce you to the sociologist Irving Gooffman, who had a theory that feels almost perfect for something like Coachella. He believed that life isn't something that we live, it's something we perform. In his book titled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he explains how people act differently depending on who's watching. almost like we're just all on one stage. There's the front stage where we present the best version of ourselves to the world. And then there's the backstage where we can actually be real. We can be ourselves.

[00:07:34]Well, the goal for being on stage, well, he called it impression management.

[00:07:39]Basically, controlling how other people see you. This is exactly what we've been seeing at Coachella. FOMO, the fear of missing out, is driving much of Gen Z's decisionmaking. We see this across all of society in regards to Gen Z. Now, I'm well aware that much of Gen Z and the viewers out there think that Coachella is ridiculous or really not interested to spend that much money. But there's still a large portion that will go out and do it. And if you go to Coachella, you'll see phones everywhere. It will seem like everyone is trying to be a videographer, photographer, or a social media influencer. People are going to be posing at every corner, spending hours in a day to take hundreds of pictures only to post a few of them on their Instagram. Although some people are genuinely going and having a great time and they love the artists there, but there's a huge portion of people that spend hours making their outfits and putting it on Instagram. Like that's cool and all. There's nothing wrong with that. But the issue I think I have is that you're just doing it for the clout.

[00:08:42]You're just doing it for the Instagram, if you will. I would argue that more than half of the Coachella goers are going for the experience and are going for the social capital that's involved in going and saying that you went.

[00:08:54]Coachella has now become a sort of status symbol, a symbol for Gen Z that is used to gain followers, attention, and social currency. And when you step back and think about Gen Z as a whole, it makes sense why they completely turned Coachella from a renegade rock festival that was once affordable to a glorified money pit like it is today.

[00:09:16]Now, it wasn't all Gen Z's fault, right?

[00:09:18]There's a lot of corporation stuff involved, and we'll dive into that later in the video. And if we take a look at the bigger picture here, a decent portion of Gen Z is not married. They don't have kids. They lack strong hobbies or career passion. The stats, they kind of tell us that it's not all a Gen Z, right? It's a decent portion. So, take that as you will. It's going to make sense to gravitate towards this once in a year holy grail, if you will.

[00:09:44]A time for Gen Z to feel on top of the world. Forget all about the societal and generational struggles and just spend all their money or in many cases credit cards on this event. This is the idea of Irving Gooffman's impression management.

[00:10:01]An idea from a book essay that is over 70 years old and it cannot be even more truthful today. On this channel, we compare generational differences and Coachella is the perfect embodiment on how a large portion of Gen Z varies heavily from the previous generations like older millennials or Gen Xers. If we flash back to Woodstock 1999 and let's not focus on the crazy events or failures that happened there, but let's focus on the people that actually attended that festival. Tickets were pretty cheap. People showed up covered in mud, sweating, screaming, just completely letting go of themselves, but it was a way for them to just be themselves, to not really worry about anyone judging them. There was no perfectly curated outfits, at least not really. No retakes, no let me take a picture of that, let me take a video of that. It wasn't really about how you looked or how you documented it and posted it on Instagram cuz well, social media didn't exist. It was more about how you felt. Nobody was trying to go to Woodstock to build a personal brand or gain followers. There was really no hustle culture involved there. It was raw, chaotic, and honestly kind of insane, but at the end of the day, it was very real. That was the backstage.

[00:11:22]Gooffman talked about people just being themselves with no audience watching their every move. Now, if we compare this to the Coachella music festival, it's going to be pure front stage. Every outfit is planned, every photo is intentional, and every moment is documented. You're not just there, you're performing to be there. You're creating a brand. You're going to document your every move. That's the biggest shift here. And this translates across society.

[00:11:50]>> A lot of people were pretty mean.

[00:11:51]Everyone's just there to say that they were there and to be like, "Oh, I'm at Coachella." And it's less about the music and more just about like kind of showing off. It felt like when I've been at other concerts, everyone's pretty nice about letting you through and stuff. But at Coachella, everyone can get pretty mean and be like, "No, you're not coming this way." And stuff, you can't go through. So, it's like harder to work your way through the crowd or to reconnect with your friends or anything if you lose them. It's not as easy to take cute pictures as you think.

[00:12:15]Literally, everyone's taking pictures.

[00:12:17]It's like a field of cow, but instead of cows, it's people. And so, everywhere you go, when you try to take a cute picture, someone will bump into you.

[00:12:23]They'll run into you. There's like 500 people behind you in your photo. So, it's like harder to get those cute pics that you see.

[00:12:29]>> We didn't just go from one festival to another. We went from an experience to more of a performance. from being present to being perceived and judged and listened to. And when you look at it through a Gothman's lens, Coachella really isn't a music festival anymore.

[00:12:48]It's a stage where thousands of people are all trying to manage themselves, trying to create a brand and and at the end of the day, show off for whatever purpose or end goal that they have. And trying to go to Coachella has led many Jenzers broke or even asking people online for money. Like this one Reddit post said, "Hey, Coachella fam, can you please bail me out?" That's basically what they said. Give me a $100 just for me to do this all over again next year.

[00:13:16]You even have so many people going to the full extent of faking that they're actually going to Coachella. They'll post fake pictures of themselves, maybe having a Coachella sign or a picture, all for the gram, all for Instagram, so they can boost up their social media engagement and kind of improve their social capital like we talked about. But they're lying. It's insane that people are willing to lie and go to this extent just so people can kind of know or see that they are a part of the party, if you will. I don't know how people do it because in my opinion, it's incredibly tiring and stressful to perform. You even have many brands out there doing their best to persuade Gen Z to buy their products. So, everywhere you look, there's going to be an advertisement, a billboard, a promotional event. You just can't really just enjoy the music anymore. What if someone just wanted to go to watch Sabrina Carpenter or something? And when you finally see some people's favorite artists like Justin Bieber, you will sit through a YouTube video presentation. Low energy, not many instruments, just him playing a YouTube video. This is a complete shift from previous festivals, full of energy and full of liveless. And look, can you blame Justin Bieber? I mean, he has to travel to the middle of nowhere to perform the same songs he's done for 15 years. Justin Bieber is probably like, "Hey, why is everyone just going to be on their phones and not actually listen to my music?" So, I'm just going to play all these YouTube videos cuz you guys are just going to be on your phones anyways. So, this person wanted to show just how many people took out their phones and recorded Justin Bieber at Coachella. And practically everybody is recording the show. I see more phones than people. Now, to me, it's like going to a fireworks show on Fourth of July and recording the fireworks. Like, the quality is going to be absolutely awful.

[00:15:01]So, isn't it just to brag that you're at the show? Like, is it really that serious? It's gotten so bad that we have artists like Bruno Mars banning phones from his shows where he even says if people don't put away their phones, he's not going to do the show. And can you honestly blame him? Like, as an artist, it probably feels so wrong to perform for these cell phones. You are performing for people who are recording to show their friends that they went to your concert rather than actual fans who are there to enjoy the experience.

[00:15:29]>> Like, not everything has to be recorded.

[00:15:31]Oh my gosh, when you go to concerts, people are just recording and recording.

[00:15:35]I'm like, you spent how much money? Just please enjoy the concert. Um, don't record it off your ashy phone for a video that you'll probably never ever see. One of the more overlooked parts of this happens to be when everyone leaves.

[00:15:48]The festival itself takes place in the Coachella Valley, an area where many residents aren't exactly benefiting from all this money coming in. And once the music stops and everyone heads home, what's left behind? Well, trash, trash, and trash everywhere. Tents, food containers, plastic. It just piles up everywhere. And it's not like the influencers or the people that spent thousands of dollars are going to stick around and clean it, it's up to the local community and volunteers to basically clean it all up. So, while Coachella looks so glamorous in a once-ina-lifetime experience, in reality, it leaves behind a mess that someone else has to deal with. And when you really think about it, it starts to say a lot about who's actually benefiting from all this and who isn't benefiting. And then you got the music festival itself. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is pulling in massive revenue. It's not just from tickets, but from brand deals, VIP packages, food vendors, exclusive experiences, all of it. This is a full-on business machine. Brands are paying thousands of dollars to be there.

[00:16:55]influencers are getting paid to promote it and actually go and the entire thing just feeds itself. Like I said, it's all performative. The more hype there is online and the more demand goes up, the more money they can charge next year.

[00:17:09]And I believe next year ticket prices are also going to go up. It's honestly a genius business model if you think about it. But it's also kind of messed up that Gen Z is also the one that's going to rack in all the debt. And when you start asking who's benefiting from all this, then you start to ask even more questions.

[00:17:27]>> Did you know that Coachella actually started because of a protest against Ticketmaster? Earl Jam didn't like how much ticket master was charging for their tickets with their fees. So they decided to cancel their tour, boycott any venues controlled by ticket master and they even sued the company for monopolizing the market.

[00:17:41]>> Our concern is are we entitled to use a different company other than ticket master? And right now, so far we haven't been able to, you know, find an alternative. They did lose, but they were still committed to not working with Ticket Master. So, some promoters found some polo grounds in India, California for them to perform at, and it was a success. So, this company called Golden Voice, they wanted to do it again, but it was too expensive just to have one artist perform. So, they started putting them back to back and that's how Coachella was born. The first one took place in 1999 with artists like Beck, Morrisy, Rage Against the Machine, Tulle. They said everything went super well, but they did lose close to a million dollars, but said so many of the artists were so kind about it. Some of them said, "Don't even worry about paying." And now through the years, we've seen Coachella turn into what it is with some truly memorable and historic performances.

[00:18:26]>> You got companies like Ticket Master and StubHub that have completely taken over the ticketing and marketing side of things. Between service fees, resale markups, and limited supply, prices just keep on going higher and higher. service fees, convenience fees, payment processing fees, facility fees, handling fees, shipping fees, ticketing fees, just pay us cuz we told you fees. That is the price we pay for their control.

[00:18:56]>> Ticket Master and Live Nation have lost a critical legal battle over how much you pay to see concerts. After four days of deliberation, a federal jury in New York ruled that Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, illegally operated as a monopoly and overcharged customers in more than 30 states.

[00:19:14]>> And the craziest part to me is that Gen Z is still paying for it. People even spend double or triple sometimes from scalpers to get their tickets. Not much is really done about those scalpers because at the end of the day, these ticket companies are still going to make even more money from scalpers reselling the tickets. It's a whole web of unfair fees. And when you think about it, a Coachella ticket is not just a ticket anymore. It's access to something that feels socially valuable. So, you got Jenz, a generation that's already struggling financially. They're turning to things like CLA and affirm just to be able to afford a weekend at Coachella.

[00:19:53]It's like the system knows how to squeeze even more money out of everyone every year. For a generation that statistically struggles with connection, whether that be platonic or romantic connections, going to Coachella and experiencing it, or rather performing in it, if you will, the event feels like the most rewarding thing some Jenzers can ever do. And when you really step back and look at all this, Coachella starts to feel more than just a music festival. It feels like a reflection of something much larger. Not all of Gen Z, but a large portion of Gen Z. A generation that is willing to spend thousands of dollars on a weekend with overcrowded spaces, overpriced food, and barely any real comfort just to get a glimpse of maybe their favorite artists or unfortunately capture a few moments for social media. Yeah, that one picture, it's going to cost them thousands of dollars. And look, there's nothing wrong with going to these festivals. I've been to a bunch of concerts. Like I said, concerts and music festivals can be some of the best experiences you'll ever have. But what we're seeing here is different. This isn't just about music anymore. It's about playing a role. It's about being seen. It's about what Irving Gooffman called impression management. shaping how the world sees you, even if it means sacrificing the actual experience itself. Sacrificing you actually enjoying the event and putting your phone down. Because at the end of the day, Coachella isn't just selling tickets. It's selling an identity. It's selling status. And finally, it's selling the idea that you're there and you're part of something bigger. And for a generation that feels uncertain about the future, this can be incredibly powerful. But it leaves you with a bigger question. Are we actually living in these moments or are we just performing them? Well, guys, let me know what you think about Coachella in the comment section below. Have you gone?

[00:21:51]Did you enjoy it? Did you spend way too much money than you needed to spend? Let me know in the comment section. Be sure to hit that like button, hit that subscribe button. It really helps us out and most importantly, it shines a spotlight on topics like this. And like always, we'll be back with another video.