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Raver

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Ravers GAYvers.
Ravers GAYvers.
Typical rave DJ.
Typical rave DJ.
Some kind of raver thing.
Some kind of raver thing.

A raver frequents raves, which are large drug-fueled parties where a hippie plays the same song for six hours. They are typically teenagers, twinks or sick fucks who prey on the young'ens. Ravers enjoy listening to house and techno music, taking copious amounts of drugs (most notably ecstasy), and dancing with glowsticks.

Contents

Raver "fashion"

There are several different varieties of raver fashion, and most of them were designed to make people look incredibly stupid.

Kandi
Before Jesus made it big, he was a raver.
Before Jesus made it big, he was a raver.
The most familiar and most obnoxious type of raver fashion is that of "kandi," which involves wearing brightly colored oversized pants, 'kandi' jewelry, wings, and a vacant facial expression. The latter is caused by taking too many drugs, and can last for days.
Nobody likes kandi ravers anymore, due to their immaturity and their insistence on adhering to the ideals of P.L.U.R., which isn't such a bad idea after all.
Jungle
Only hoodies and cargo pants are allowed. Bonus points are awarded for use of "urban camouflage." Junglists don't like anybody. African Americans easily relate to Jungle music because they came from Africa at least 100 years ago. Junglists like to think they're Jamaican, probably because they want to live in poverty apparently.
Cyber Goth
Usually the fat people with the dread falls and way too much makeup that you see at raves. They won't talk to you, because they are 'far too cool'. They wear lots of leather and tight clothes that make their muffin tops stick out floppily.
Stoner
These guys got lost and ended up at a rave. You can identify them by their Grateful Dead T-shirts and look of utter confusion at the sound of drum machines.
Chav
They're wearing polo shirts and khakis. They're not there for the music, they're frat boys looking for drugs. Or alcohol. Or cox. Or to knife you. Or because they think they're British even though they're from Milwaukee.
NORP
Your normal, average joe who probably got coerced by his friends into the scene. He can't dance, he can't glowstick for shit but he likes drugs and probably is more or less there for the music. Given a few months, he will turn into a scene sleaze and go to every party, thus not giving him enough money to pay his bills, and will have his house foreclosed by year's end. Be kind, feed these people drugs in moderation and show them the ropes.
The Heat
Imagine a candy raver gone overboard and remove the drugs. That guy over there asking about where to find some acid? He's a cop. Avoid him like the fucking plague. The man can easily be spotted due to their age, as police departments still haven't gotten the message about "sticking out like a sore thumb". Most ravers are late teens, early-mid twenties. Cops will almost always be in their 40s, balding and in street clothes. If you have "business" to transact, keep it away from them. Sometimes uniformed officers will check on parties, but they're good fun to converse with while rolling face. Just keep it cool and they'll go away at some point.
If he is in fact a candy raver, keep avoiding him.

Rave music

This is not an understatement.
This is not an understatement.

Whenever you go to a rave, don't expect to see any musical instruments at all. Turntables are not instruments either; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The only thing ravers listen to is electronic music, which everyone else calls techno. Never call it that though, as you'll have an hours-long argument on your hands as the raver will try to educate you on the intricate categorizations of electronic music. The general rule is that the worse the electronic music, the more likely you are to hear it at a rave. Even shithead and well-known wigger, Eminem, knows that raver "music" sucks.

Since electronic music does not necessarily equate "raver", the best way to troll a fan of any form of electronic music is to tell them it's raver music and ask them if they have any glowsticks or ecstasy on them--unless they actually are a raver, in which case they probably do. Be sure to ask them the differences between the various forms of electronic music, as there are over 9000 and they will be sure to waste their time listing them all. A short guide follows:

House
Created in the '80s by gay nigras in Chicago (no srsly), this is the music you get when you use the presets on your drum machine to get a never-ending 4/4 beat. Sometimes producers add bass or bleeps to make it slightly less boring. House snobs are the second worst elitists in the scene, only outdone by junglists.
To create house music yourself, dig out your old Donna Summers album and turn the bass all the way up. Then move the pitch up and down. Note: The reason this only works with Donna Summers albums is because they were produced by Giorgio Moroder, electronic music's version of Christopher Walken.
Predictably, rave and house music was very popular in Europe during the late 1980s, where people showed up to fields, took ecstasy and had buttsex every week. This almost achieved the level of a national past-time in Britain until normal people and the police decided they did not like ravers causing anarchy so they they killed all of them by listening to angsty Americans jabbing themselves with heroin needles. Unfortunately the deformed and mentally retarded raver offspring survived and are now known as chavs.
Trance
"DJ" Tiesto
"DJ" Tiesto
House music on ecstasy. It's full of six-minute snare rolls, squeally synth lines designed to make your trip better, and breakdowns which last two days with absolutely no beats. Trance music is the reason Candy ravers exist, since it's as cheesy and juvenile as they are. There are a lot of types of trance, each sounding like its own type of crap (i.e., shit snowflakes), but Ibiza is the worst example of trance available. Nobody likes trance anymore, especially trance DJs, junglists, and you. Oh, and DJ Tiesto likes men.
Techno
Techno is what house music would be if it were made by machines. I mean machines using the machines. It was simultaneously created in Detroit and London, proving that no one who makes electronic music is unique or creative. As techno is the musical form of dog shit, there is a minimalist sub-genre designed to be as stark and soulless as possible--stark and soulless dog shit.
DP wearing their suits.
DP wearing their suits.
Daft Punk
Daft Punk or DP (double penetration), are probably the most noticeable ravers in the known universe. They are said to have a power level of over 9000 by being able to control anyone's body with their music, mostly the penis and vagina. They are fags who are too shy to show their face in public, but love to blow each other and have furry wet dreams.
Basically, they are a really shitty Techno (a mostly redundant term) duo from some faggot country. Seriously, obsessive fanboys claim that it took them 3 years to write Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, when in reality it sounds like they took about an hour (most of which was spent blowing each other in turns). The Daft Punk fanboys are more rabid and obsessed than Nintendo fanboys. It sounds impossible, right? It's the absolute truth. They will defend their band to the death and insist that anyone who doesn't like Daft Punk is 14 and listens to Speed Metal (which they probably also listen to as a guilty pleasure).
The cold hard facts are that anyone with a decent musical background can rewrite most of their songs in under 15 minutes using Fruity Loops Demo Version. It doesn't take a genius to write one loop, and one drum pattern and repeat it for 5 minutes while occasionally adding A WICKED SICK Guitar part and setting it all to a shitty anime video that's supposed to represent the downfall of the music industry. They even won a Grammy for one of their albums, or songs, but that just proves how the music they wrote is equivalent to most shit popular songs in the sense of difficulty and talent required to write.
Maybe their intention was to use shitty repetitive music as part of the metaphor. If so, hats off to Daft Punk, the world's most over rated shit "band".
Aphex Twin's logo from "Selected Ambient Works 85-92".  Makes sense if you are Aphex Twin.
Aphex Twin's logo from "Selected Ambient Works 85-92". Makes sense if you are Aphex Twin.
Fidget
Attracting scrawny PBR-drinking scenesters everywhere, "Fidget" is a made-up genre that paradoxically consists solely of samples from other fidget songs. It is an excuse for lazy uninspired DJs to sleaze on scene girls and "distinguish" themselves from other copypasta garbage that sounds exactly the same.
Breakbeat
Somebody sneezed once while programming a drumloop and breakbeat was born. It's stuttery, midtempo music that has way too many cheesy subgenres to discuss. All breakbeat songs use the same drum rhythm. Burned out Candy ravers and orange skins now listen to breaks. Junglists still don't like them.
Drum & Bass
Mostly ignored genre that swallowed up most of the early 90's Jungle attitude. Mainly adaptations of other dance "genres" unless it is goth shit or influenced by jungle. The center of the Drum & Bass universe is DogsOnAcid which is controlled by DJ Fresh, who is worshiped by people that listen to the BBC too much. Curiously, there are more genres and subgenres of Drum & Bass than there are in all other forms of music combined. This ploy is a desperate attempt to breath fresh air into a dying genre that has sounded the same for 10+ years, thus the "styles" of Drum & Bass are constantly debated, much like labels for emo music were in the days before MySpace, except here there is no end. The name is suspiciously close to "Cum on Ass", which is probably no coincidence. Here is a homemade recipe for drum & bass music:
  1. Sample amen break A LOT (seriously, just keep sampling until I say stop)
  2. Set tempo to at least 180 beats/minute
  3. ????
  4. Profit
Jungle
Although you might instantly assume Jungle is simply rap, Jungle is in fact a fast, aggressive form of "music" with elitist fans. When you get tired of listening to all the other shitty electronic music, you turn to Jungle (in the same way that disillusioned goths turn to Power Noise) to listen to more shitty electronic music. And, just like all other genres of electronic music, every jungle track sounds the same.
Junglists hate all other ravers and each other, and usually are on methamphetamines. They're most frequently found in the back room of raves, as nobody wants to associate with them, shuffling around in hoodies and tweaking. While all the other genre descriptions are parodies, this one is completely true.
Dubstep
The result of stoners having bad trips because Drum & Bass is "too fast man". Dubstep is essentially slowed down, half step, shuffled Drum & Bass loaded with dub and rasta samples and enough wobbly bass to physically melt neurons. The resulting brain damage is evident in that there is only one Dubstep song and the rest of the genre consists of progressively worse versions of it.
Breakcore
The sound your brain makes the moment before you die of a massive methamphetamine and LSD overdose, Breakcore combines a clusterfuck of distorted death metal, grindcore and screams with relentless seizure-inducing blast beats played at over 9000 bpm. It is analogous to the crack-fueled triple penetration of your soul by a never-ending line of undead neo-nazi ravers. Listening to Breakcore grants immortality, but also turns you into a huge faggot.
Hardcore
Hardcore is what happens when you combine brainless dutch retards with your mother. Basically, take any other worthless sub-genre division, amp the bass hits up to the point where they sound like being hit in the head with a board, and add in some annoying high pitched sirens, and you've got some shiny new hardcore. Half of these faggot genre entries, like Gabber and Hardstyle are just sub-sub-genres of hardcore. Get over it, you shits. Also known to attract Weeaboos from all over, due to the "J-Core" group DJ Sharpnel. It's basically the same shit described before, but this time done with even less originality. DJ Sharpnel will just add basshits fucking everywhere and crank the tempo at around 400 BPM to popular Anime songs, with occasional samples stolen from Japanese sub-cultures. Yes, DJ Sharpnel is two people. Yes, this is fucking retarded.
In the United Kingdom, "hardcore" means something completely different. Whilst 90% of the Dutch population were shaving their heads and killing upstanding members of the community for no good reason, the British were enjoying a much happier type of hardcore. Happy hardcore is one of many great things to come out of Britain. Others include Big Brother and a monarch who does absolutely fuck all.
Arguably hardcore is the only true "rave music" left since it will never be played in a real club ever.
A fat raver and her dyke associate.
A fat raver and her dyke associate.
Psytrance
Psytrance was created by white hippies who visited, and then subsequently decided to take over, Goa India in an effort to obtain lulz. The white hippies enjoyed lots of psychedelics and talking to "Aliens" (who turned out to be pedophiles) then created an entire sub-culture of annoyingly similar to shit techno music.
Over time "Goa Trance" evolved into 3981293415.8 sub-genres including, but not limited to: Psytrance, Prog trance, minimal, trauma, France, neuro, Suomi, Aussie, Forest, asshole, scary, evil, morning, shit, fluffy, Raping dead children while forcing your cock down their mothers throat, banging, The Hammer, Israeli, Cult of Gil and most pathetically, something called 'Psydub.' Most of it is unoriginal and spawns a lot of lulz; however, when high on drugs, people seem to dance to it.
A popular genre among English posh kids, who pretend to be hippies after being dropped off at a squat party by Daddy in his Range Rover. Notably distinct from traditional trance because it is not made exclusively by brain-dead gays.
Industrial
This is where industrial music is made.
This is where industrial music is made.
Industrial is an elitist electronic sub-genre with multiple sub-genres of its own, including EBM and more forms of EBM. Although Industrial is not intrinsically goth, goths have invaded it like cockroaches in the slums, bringing great amounts of fail to a snobbish genre. Particularly, cybergoth bullshit has attached itself to Industrial because everyone knows when it comes to music, they gotta play dress-up.
Predictably, most Industrial music is uninspired trash, probably because most of it sounds like the main "instrument" is a trash can.
A typical Industrial fan.
A typical Industrial fan.
Mashup
The only sub-genre with hipster cred. Mashups are freestyle combinations of disparate dance music genres from hip-hop to hardcore to polka in order to create a purposely weird musical collage. It started in England in the 80s when folks had had enough of the pop crap Brits were calling music. Of course the Brits used it's proper term "Bastard Pop" as it is the offspring of two horrible songs that never should have shacked up. Now it is mostly an furious annoyance to serious music fans who think they are going to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" but instead get some hip-hop shit laid down over the guitar riff intern causing them to kill everyone in the club and get arrested. This in turn had caused a dramatic decrease in serious and intelligent music fans out in the real world thus allowing for twats who enjoy this skank to further support it without opposition. This kind of ironic, half-hearted, nostalgia-driven crapart is exactly what fuels the modern hipster movement. Thanks, post-rave culture!
Nu-Rave
A few middle-class emos in the UK decided they were sick of how terrible their lives were so they decided to take ecstasy to dull the pain, made a few shitty songs in Fruity Loops, had the most amazing parties EVAR, pranced around holding glowsticks and wore tight jeans. This lead to the NME proclaiming that a new youth movement had emerged called nu-rave. Unfortunately no one gave a shit enough to listen and rave is still dead. These are the sort of bands which proclaim themselves to be incredible new audiorgasms which mix the best of classic and modern dance music but just turn out to be faggots with clangy guitars and NES music playing in the background.
French Touch
See France and gay.
Other
Anything you can't categorize; it's probably ambient, or IDM, or just plain shit, which is redundant. Within five minutes someone will have devised a micro-subgenre to describe the one song that they're trying to figure out; within ten minutes, a micro-subgenre of that micro-subgenre will form for another song; fans will then smugly declare that their chosen subgenre is in fact the best and the other ones are all emo.

Raver Culture

Plur out!
Plur out!

Ravers don't really have culture. They're just hippies with technology. Except for junglists, who hate hippies. Breaks-heads are just trendy, and aren't bitter enough yet to be junglists.

PLUR

P.L.U.R. is an acronym popular with ravers. The letters stand for: Peace, Love, Unity and Rape, which basically means whatever you do, you have no ill intent. Most ravers are far too drugged and strung out to do anything other than somehow provide a well-meant good vibe, so this is kind of useless; unless it's at a chav rave, in which case you'll probably be knifed by the end of the night.

Drugs

The only thing all ravers have in common is a love for excessive consumption of mind-altering substances. Everyone at a rave is high, even especially the paramedics. The most common drug is ecstasy, followed by acid, cannabis, 2C-I/2c-b's and ketamine et al. Alcohol is sold at raves to people over 18 (or really hot Jailbait), and spilled on the dance floor by drunk idiots so it's too slippery to dance.

Beware however of anyone trying to sell anything at rave as its more liklely to be crushed up paracetamol than a pill.

Recently, the popular drug on the rave scene is GHB. This makes getting laid, the end goal for most ravers, much easier.

Ravers and the Internet

All of these people are on drugs.
All of these people are on drugs.

Since raves are an underground phenomenon, the one way all ravers keep track of where they'll be buying and taking drugs is on internet forums. Typically, half the members of a local raver forum have slept with one another, which usually leads to massive amounts of drama. At least one poster will talk about how much better the scene used to be, and anyone new is mocked, as they are inevitably dirty candy ravers. Junglists talk shit about everyone on the forum no matter what.

Motivated ravers will often begin creating their own music to show off to their cliques on the internet. 90% of this music is made with cracked warez and gigabytes of ready-made loop packages. A rare few will use real synthesizers and talent, but often not enough real skill. The rarest and most elite internet musicians are the ones who make music with old vacuum cleaners (or printers from the 80s) , a shelf full of your mom's dildos, and a desecrated furby.

Glowsticks

Don't leave home without 'em, like this faggot did
Don't leave home without 'em, like this faggot did

The piece de resistance to any rave is a set (or several hundred sets) of glowsticks. These fluorescent plastic-wrapped glass vials of light-emitting chemical compounds produce "trails" to those who may or may not have consumed other chemicals during the night. When spun in rhythm with the so-called "music", they can give other strung out ravers the thought that you have some sort of dancing ability, thus giving you an opportunity to give them what they're asking for later in the morning, probably in the parking lot. LED glowsticks are not good for twirling as they are delicate, though traditional sticks can and have broken upon accidental release into a wall.

The chemical inside is hardly visible in daylight and is easily removed with a washing machine or good old washing up liquid. Colors, sizes and styles vary, thin ones are best left to bracelets/necklaces while thick "lanyard" style ones are good for twirling like a faggot. LED sticks are good for slow lightshows, bringing an airplane into the gate or directing traffic.

Poi

Add fire into the mix of drug fueled twenty-somethings and you've got poi. Poi is, in essence, spinning fire bags around your entire body without scorching yourself. It's good fun to watch and at festivals can be quite a trip.

Fire Poi freestyle

Notable ED Ravers

gallery

See also

External links



Raver is part of a series on Music

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