About three years back I was introduced to Psytrance and at first I was a bit wary of getting into it. After a while though I became immersed, fully giving myself up to being a part of the "psy scene". There's just one thing I refuse to accept. I love the music and the feel, the crazy people and how absolutely out of control these parties get, but the one thing I can't buy into is that being out in nature or doing drugs automatically makes me a hippie.

I'm not a hippie. You're not a hippie. After all, the hippies are gone. And the one's that are still here live the life, they don't just pull on the hippie vibes at a party and take them off afterwards.

Psytrance music is hard and fast, dark and loopy. Not exactly the sound I'd associate with free-thinking, nature-loving hippies. I'd expect them to instead be chilling in some forest somewhere, playing flutes and dancing in circles. But dancing to this stuff? Taking intense drugs and generally getting fucked up to what is currently the most insane, irrational music on the planet? Nah.

No, you're not a hippie, you're a kid from the 'burbs, and pretending to be what you're not is something I find pretty stupid. If you were really a hippie, my man, then when I got back to Joburg after a weekend away I wouldn't find you walking around in regular clothes. You'd be off living in the nature you love so much, weaving baskets and living off the land.

Photo by MadCap Productions

Look, I get it. People are tired of commercial parties and being forced to dress in a certain way and look a certain way. Psytrance is about more than the music - it's about the friendliness and happiness that accompanies it. This is why it's so important that you leave your politics and notions about what it means to be a part of "psytrance culture" at the entrance and don't try to tell other people how to act.

That pretentiousness is, after all, exactly why we opted out of the mainstream party scene and now, and unsurprisingly actually, we're being faced with a new sort of pretentiousness.

At Earthdance last year, I went into a "chill" room to charge my phone in the morning because, you know, what if something happens at the party or on your way home? I got dirtier looks than the time I wore slops to Doors. I mean, sorry I didn't know that by buying a ticket I gave up the right to use technology and… wait, where do hippies think the music is coming from? Were they planning on glaring at the DJ later?

On another occasion, I was asked by some kid at Soulstice who looked barely 18 what I was "on". I was holding a beer and pretty drunk so I just lifted it up and motioned to it. This prompted him to lecture me about how I shouldn't drink and that I should rather take the psychedelic (probably acid) that he was on.

You'd think it's enough that we had this festival as an escape, or that we've found this music we really enjoy (although that's debatable - I'm beginning to think most people only really like psytrance because they really like taking drugs) and that you're free to do whatever you want without anybody telling you how you should act. But do we also have to be deluded?

We all know you're in nature and on shrooms and feeling the grass or whatever makes you feel more connected to the Earth, but just because you're basically hanging out in a big garden, it doesn't mean you've found "oneness" and can now lecture other people on it.

You don't litter in nature? That's common sense. It doesn't make you a hippie.

You're on drugs and "rebelling" against society's rules? That's nice but it doesn't make you a hippie.

Yes, hippies took drugs and championed free love and a return to nature, but they also had a deep political ideology driving their counter-culture. We on the other hand have nothing. The hippies are gone. They've served their purpose and, please Tom Cruise, can they never come back?

We've all got better things to do at a party than sit around talking about karma and our feelings. There are many ways to be spiritual. One positive thing I will say though when it comes to the psytrance scene I love so much is that, to all the real "hippies" out there - the children of love and light - I love you, you people are legends. Bless the tech.