Nearly 25 years after the first Gathering of the Juggalos, Gen Z juggalos have started showing up in force.
That much was clear at the 23rd annual Gathering, which returned to Legend Valley in Thornville, Ohio, this past weekend. The four-day music festival—hosted by Insane Clown Posse and their record label, Psychopathic Records—is a mecca for ICP fans who show up by the thousands for one big family reunion. But thanks to the recent growing stream of leftist memes and TikTok trends, a new crop of Gen Z Juggalos—or Zuggalos, as I’ve decided to call them—have joined the party.
“I think it’s an evolution of technology and social media,” explains content creator and comedian Sean Barrett, who’s behind the popular TikTok character Uncle Juff, an overly earnest poser Juggalo who is eventually accepted into the fold because of his kind heart. “You saw a bunch of ICP songs go viral on TikTok recently and everybody is like, ‘What’s this all about?’ And they don’t have that old stigma. They just think, ‘This makeup is cool, this music is cool,’ and then they kinda find it from there.”
Barrett should know—he himself is a newer Juggalo who’s found acceptance in the community and now considers himself a bit of a Juggalo Trojan horse, bringing in younger fans through his TikTok comedy. “I went to Gathering five years ago and it completely changed my life,” he says. “This newer generation is the next evolution, and it is so exciting to be part of that next evolution of Juggalos.”
One of the leaders of that new generation is Ouija Macc, who, outside of Insane Clown Posse themselves, was the most popular performer at the Gathering. Musically, he might be more similar to a Soundcloud rapper than he is to ICP, but his horror-core lyrics and Dark Carnival mythology keep him firmly in Juggalo territory. His style has rubbed some older ICP fans the wrong way, but he’s beloved by their kids.
“A lot of parents have come up to me and told me they had nothing in common with their teenage sons or daughters until they found my music. They could listen to it in the car together and bond over it. That means more to me than anything,” Ouija says. “I was not a fan of the TikTok portion of the Juggalo world. These new people found a cool TikTok sound and painted their face… but there are people that found the Carnival that way. People who needed this shit just like I did when I heard ICP a bajillion years ago. There are people back then that would have said I wasn’t a Juggalo because I wasn’t down since [ICP’s 1992 full-length debut album] Carnival of Carnage.
“I went to [ICP member] Violent J about it because I felt some kinda way,” Ouija continues, “and he was like, ‘You are kinda being a hater. Imagine if a motherfucker told you that you weren’t down and shunned you and made you feel like this wasn’t a place for you. That’s the opposite of what we are supposed to be doing. We are supposed to be inclusive, we are supposed to be accepting. We are supposed to be that space for them.’”
Juggalos have always been more diverse than people give them credit for; ICP’s lyrics are all about giving outcasts a voice, accepting people for who they are, and, of course, murdering bigots with a hatchet. But over the last few years, the more ultra-hip, gender non-conforming kids have been making their presence felt. And while Juggalos as a whole are very welcoming, no one would ever consider them “woke”… at least not yet.
Case in point: A trans Juggalette named Steph performed in the Miss Juggalette contest at the Gathering this year, and while 99 percent of the crowd was cheering for her, there were some people making transphobic comments. A 20-year-old trans juggalo named Goliath told me that he was really uncomfortable watching it. “At the Gathering, there is the layered aspect of slightly conservative energy from the older folk,” he said. “I have my community that I know and feel good with, but it’s the 30- to 40-year-old crowd that is behind on understanding us.”
Incidents like that are few and far between; nearly every person I spoke with talked about how welcoming Juggalos are. If anything, the friction with the Gen Z Juggalos is based on the same kind of protective gatekeeping that happens in every music scene—the older folks have been there longer, they know more, and they hate what they see as tourists showing up to their family reunion for social media likes. Jordan Kinnear, a longtime Juggalo photographer, said, “I understand new fans are needed to progress and keep the culture alive and moving forward, but much like everything popular, it just seems like it’s a joke to some of them. The culture vultures looking for that online clout can fuck off.”
The fight between the gatekeepers and the “Zuggalos” will undoubtedly continue for some time, but if more young people embrace the “wicked shit,” maybe the Gathering will last long enough to see another generation of Juggalos rise and take up the mantle from the clowns that started it all.
“You don’t hear people really talk shit about Juggalos anymore, you don’t hear them talk shit about ICP,” Barrett observed. “They are finally getting the flowers that they fully deserve. Now, it’s cool to be a Juggalo.”
Below, see more exclusive images from this year’s Gathering of the Juggalos.
