Despite some minor setbacks in the past year, Southern California’s favorite dance music festival is still put on by HARD Events. And after an incredible lineup at last year’s HARD Summer, we’re all wondering how this year will fare. So far, it’s off to a good start.
Just today, all of HARD’s social media began changing to tease the news, and it’s absurdly cryptic.
The main website, http://hardsummer.com/, has turned into a 64-bit login screen from 1992. With options to enter a login and password, there are bound be hundreds, if not thousands, of curious users trying to brute force their way into the site. For other more technologically inclined individuals, hacking might be an option. (I honestly don’t know if it is.)
For those wondering if this is actually the lineup announcement, you can check out the authenticated URL here, though there’s no actual lineup to speak of. One of the URL’s hidden on the site is even “__lineup.jpg.”
The real rabbit hole begins when you check out the number to call at the bottom of their image on Facebook.
Calling the number brings up an automated voice answering machine, speaking of a world without internet. You’re given three options: find out the lineup (hit 4), get tickets (hit 2), or find out how to play HARD Summer in the future (hit 6). We tried hitting ‘4’ first and the response was that the line had reached its daily number of calls. Calling the number and hitting ‘6’ doesn’t really give you any information about the fest itself, though it does have some nice tips about starting out as a DJ. If you call the number and hit ‘2’, it says that tickets will be on sale April 29th, and gives you the URL, http://8444hard16.com/, which is the same as the number you just called.
The really interesting part is when you put the phone number into a browser as a URL, which brings up this page.
HARD is really taking this ‘no internet’ thing seriously… you’d be hard pressed (no pun intended) to find a millennial or anyone born in the past 20 years with their own fax machine. Psst… ask your parents. Or that old dude in your office, maybe?
As far as we can tell, this is where the trail runs dry. After you get to this point, you’ll have to wait for a fax, or more information from HARD. Though the journey was fun, it’s kind of disappointing that we don’t get to keep going, nor do we know when the next part of the journey begins.