I had no idea who Melanie Iglesias was before today. She's so attractive that you can do exactly two things on her website: Look at her, or purchase items featuring images of her. She was a "Royal Flush Girl" on the World Poker Tour, has played herself in the TV series Guy Code, and was a Miss Education Panelist on Big Morning Buzz Live with Carrie Keagan. She landed on the Maxim Hot 100 list in 2011, and her "WhatGirlsReally" YouTube series with fellow model Lisa Ramos is creeping on 12 million views. All of that said, we can't really find anything from her that has anything to do with anything outside of looking really good.
"Buzzcut" by Bingo Players is a track that's had some legitimate buzz. It's sitting at 100,000 plays on SoundCloud (in nine days), and doesn't officially come out until next week. But this video doesn't seem to be official. It's a clip of the song that's less than two minutes long, and Bingo Players' recent tweets indicate that they had no creative input on this video. It's safe to assume that THUMP created this to aggregate more results for the single, and clicks for their YouTube page.
All of that is well and good. We don't expect models to be Mensa-certified, and companies often make unofficial videos to generate numbers. But my concern with Vice having a sister site dealing with dance music is the lack of information that the masses have in regards to drug culture, and the nonchalant attitude that Vice has had for years when speaking on drug use. After looking past this hottie taking her clothes off, I'm sitting here questioning the imagery depicted in this video. THUMP titled this "The Greatest Lightshow On Earth," and showcases the illuminated gloves that people use to entertain partygoers on hallucinogens. In reality, if i'm not on molly or acid and some guy has gloves on with multi-colored tips and asks me if i want him to wave his hands in front of my face, I'm going to kindly ask him to fuck off.
The mainstream media's perception of rave culture is often skewed. They don't quite understand it. LA Weekly did an interesting piece last year on "Gloving," linked it to drug use, and noted that Insomniac banned the activity at all of their events, stating that it gives "a false message of what the electronic dance music scene is about." And while you can debate the intention of this video, I'd think that anyone that's ever been to a rave that passes by the sweaty, transfixed kid standing by the back wall that's staring at a set of fingers has probably made up their mind already.
I actually like a lot of the articles that THUMP has been putting out, but when you state that you are "set to become a definitive voice for a movement that is transforming culture and uniting young people into a fanatically devoted community," then release a video like this, it makes me wonder how placing a half-naked 25-year-old in a scenario reminiscent of a drug trip is the kind of culture transformation that platforms should be pushing.
