Filled with people dressed as their favourite ‘Shrek’ characters smashing back swamp juice and getting a groove on, Shrek-themed raves are touring across the United States and they look friggin sick.
Ka5sh, a ‘rich and famous person’ according to his Twitter bio, is the mastermind behind the ogre-iffic raves. He threw the first rave back in March - where Rico Nasty made a surprise appearance - to fundraise for his family, promising “a party for you to really let loose, turn your brain off, and just have fun”.
Shrek’s reputation in pop/meme/internet culture is unique in that it is made up of a delicate mixture of cheesiness and 'sentimentalness', which, according to Ka5sh (real name Jordan Craig), makes him the perfect candidate to base a night out around.
“I feel like Shrek is the right amount of cringe, but also the right amount of nostalgia,” he told Narcity.
“It’s dumb enough, but still also fun. There are not a lot of pop culture references that you can put the word ‘rave’ in that you’d want to attend. Even ‘Spongebob Rave’ sounds a little childish, but something about ‘Shrek Rave’ just works.”
Don’t know why he had to poke holes in Spongebob’s rep, he’s got enough as is, but he does make a fair point about the ogre we’ve come to know and love over the years.
The hype around the raves has exploded since the first one, they’ve been selling out, New York Times did a piece on them, more and more clips are emerging of the ravers lit up in green have a mental time, and now established artists have piqued interest in performing at the parties.
Diplo commented “put me on” on one of the @Shrekrave gram posts, Whatsonot said he’s keen to run a b2b on the same post, and the band that is forever linked in memeology with Shrek, Smashmouth, commented a bunch of fire emojis, which is an obvious indicator of interest.
We hope and pray that these raves one day make their way onto our shores, but until then we can rest easy knowing that there is still good in the world.
