The Rotten Scourge of Doof Sticks

Donald Bump, Ketmist Warehouse, Kit Ket, 13CAPS, Rack It Ralph. If you’ve spent longer than 24 hours partying to dance music in Australia, it’s likely you’ve seen one of these phrases or images plastered on a piece of corflute and encircled by fairy lights above your head on the dancefloor.

Originally, the doof stick was an incredible idea as long as it remained a somewhat well-kept secret. A modern form of medieval heraldry, the handheld beacon in a huge crowd of festivalgoers would make it infinitely easier to find your friends post-piss(ex)cursion or in the midst of the Sisyphean refilling of water bottles. If only a blown up Officeworks printed picture of Darren, the 20-year-old “certified legend” who got COVID and couldn’t make it, was a little more subtle and less imitable. 

But what started as a fun and rare sight at music festivals a little over a decade ago, has become a plague of clutter, littering the crowd’s view of the stage and burdening clean up crews.

Doof sticks are, unsurprisingly, almost an entirely Australian thing. One only has to take a look at pictures of any international festival to notice the distinct lack of them. And the almost global bias against them is understandable.

Aside from the clear obstruction to any stage view, the safety hazard they present and the waste they create, doof sticks are another outlet for the worst of Australia’s sense of “humour”.

1. A real-world company or product logo or catchphrase turned into a drug pun
2. A celebrity, pop culture figure or character turned into a drug pun, or,
3. A picture of a person, clearly on drugs

Sure, some are genuinely hilarious and involve real creativity and effort. Maybe they’re part of a group costume or simply an impressive feat of engineering. But is being unapologetically stupid a replacement for actual culture?

Dance music, festivals and “partying” have always been an avenue for escape from the perils and mundanity of the world around us. But partying has also always been political.

These days, however, apathy is so pervasive we chase numbness and use humour all too often to gloss over the outside world. We live in a time where k-holing can act as a chaser to the Welcome to Country. Is a picture of a politician or oppressive dictator with a spoon up his nose meant to be … funny? Worthwhile? 

As an event organiser myself, it’s a relief never to see the things on dancefloors I facilitate. Granted, it’s not hard to find your friends in a crowd of several hundred, but there’s a creeping air of naff that seems to grip the nostrils of punters the second a doof stick is in sight.

For me, my concern isn’t around the view of the DJ or artists as much as it is about the glorification of drug use. Sure, people take drugs, I get it, but being drug fucked on a dancefloor is, in my opinion, the worst thing for it and the people on it.

All the digital fist-shaking in the world likely can’t do a damn thing about our drug culture, and kids will be kids. But maybe if the dancefloor was as sacred, respected and revered here as it was in other parts of the world, I wouldn’t have to prop up some munted 20-year-old and his staff as I try to enjoy the music.

Follow Jack Colquhoun on Instagram.

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