But let's talk about the growing trend of Bay Area micro-influencers cold-pitching brands for festival access — because it says something interesting about where we are culturally and economically.

BottleRock Napa Valley tickets aren't cheap. A three-day GA pass will run you north of $400, and VIP packages climb well past a grand. For graduating college students staring down a brutal job market and historically high cost of living, the math doesn't math. So instead of saving up or — radical idea — skipping the festival, the move now is to package yourself as a "content creator" and hope a brand picks up the tab.

As one Bay Area resident put it, there's something grating about influencers who claim to be "from the Bay Area" when they're actually from Fairfield. No shade to Fairfield — it's a real place with real people — but the geographic flex is part of a broader authenticity problem in influencer culture. Your brand is supposed to be you, but increasingly you is just a curated fiction designed to extract free stuff from marketing departments.

Here's our libertarian take: brands can spend their money however they want, and creators can ask for whatever they want. That's the free market, baby. But consumers — that's you — should recognize this for what it is. That "authentic" festival content in your feed? It's an ad. That "spontaneous" brand mention? Negotiated in a DM.

The real issue isn't one aspiring influencer trying to get into BottleRock for free. It's that we've built an entire economy around people pretending to have experiences they can't afford, funded by companies who pass those costs on to you, the actual paying customer.

Somebody's always footing the bill. Make sure it isn't you.