Hippie Chick Interviewed at a Phish Show

Submission 33,866

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About

Hippie Chick Interviewed at a Phish Show refers to a viral video of an MTV interview with a concertgoer named Amy, a young hippie-looking woman with dreadlocks and a brown-and-white sweater and her dog, recorded outside a Phish concert on Halloween in 1996. The video, which has been described by some as having a certain vibe characteristic of the 1990s that is no longer present, went viral on Reddit in late 2023 and on X / Twitter in September 2024, with the public's positive perception of Amy and the video in general inspiring discourse online.

Origin

On December 26th, 2023, Redditor Hahinator posted a clip of a young hippie woman with dreadlocks named Amy being interviewed by MTV outside a Phish concert on Halloween 1996. The woman, who has a dog on a leash during the interview and appears visibly under the influence, answers the interviewer's questions about trying to get tickets for that day's show, with Amy proceeding to share details about how she makes money to follow the band during their tour and about her and her friends' living accommodations, often finishing her answers with a giggle. The four-minute interview (shown below) received over 20,000 upvotes in the /r/OldSchoolCool^[1] subreddit in nine months.

In the thread, a user purportedly identified and doxxed Amy in a since-deleted comment, which said that Amy is currently working as a river tour guide on rafting trips.^[2]^[3]

Spread

The video did not achieve significant spread online until September 2024. On September 16th, 2024, X^[4] user @Wombat_Matt posted a one-minute-and-40-second long clip from the interview captioned, "Woman interviewed outside Phish show Halloween 1996." The upload (shown below) received over 2.9 million views, 310 reposts and 2,700 likes in four days.

Another upload by the X^[5] account @historyinmemes, made on September 18th, received an additional 1 million views, 300 reposts and 4,700 likes in two days.

The upload spawned a viral discourse on X / Twitter as multiple users expressed adoration with Amy and argued that the vibe of the video could not be replicated nowadays for a number of reasons. On September 16th, 2024, X^[6] user @JesusHSchvice quoted the video, commenting, "A literal angel," with the post (shown below) gaining over 860 reposts and 10,000 likes in four days.

On September 19th, 2024, X^[7] user @NewRightPoast made a post about the video, arguing that the public's fondness of the woman was due to her "presenting herself honestly, without a layer of ironic distance" and "speaking in code that she picked up from social media, or dropping pop culture references." The post (shown below) garnered over 1,000 reposts and 16,000 likes in one day (shown below).

The video sparked interest in discovering the woman's identity, with a post misidentifying her as a person currently living in Martha's Vineyard going viral on X^[8] on September 20th.