SLIST started because two women in Mexico City wouldn’t put me on their guest list.
That’s one version. Here’s another: I started it because some kids banned me from a 30-person group chat in January 2023 and I decided to build the biggest rave community in CDMX out of spite. Here’s a third: I discovered techno at a basement rave in Brooklyn during the March 2021 lockdowns, moved to Mexico a few months later as a tourist who couldn’t speak Spanish, and started an anonymous flyer blog because I wanted to get on every guest list in the city.
All three are true. The through-line is the same: someone told me no, and I took it personally.
The Brooklyn rave was the seed. A friend invited me to an underground party during the pandemic. I liked that almost no one was wearing a mask. One night I threw up on the dance floor from chain-smoking cigarettes. A group of ravers rushed over — got me on the ground, poured water on my head, brought me to the chill room, wiped off the vomit, offered to call an Uber. I was back on the dance floor 30 minutes later. Started going out three times a week after that.
A few months later I went to Mexico during lockdowns. Despite sticking out as a tourist who couldn’t speak Spanish, I kept getting invited to afters — usually by DJs. The scene was eclectic, dark, experimental. I wanted to give back by helping them with promotion. So I started SLIST as an anonymous blog for recommending events.
The original motivation was self-entertainment. A stranger at a party told me the website looked techno. Some people actually read the unedited brain dumps I wrote on the Speed List page, which I wrote hastily (figuratively on speed). The manic style worked.
But the real engine underneath all of this was spite.
I started the CDMX community because I was banned from a 30-person chat. The plan was explicit: build my own chat, make it the biggest in CDMX with all the cortesias, then expose the people who excluded me when I had the platform. I ruined a few careers. Got my revenge tenfold. (Probably have to wear a bulletproof vest when I return to CDMX, but that’s a separate issue.)
Then in NYC, a different trigger. Grandmother’s death, accumulated regrets, and getting turned away at Basement’s door. The rejection produced a shitpost that triggered a cancel war. The cancel war became a tribal formation mechanism. I found my real tribe through people who stuck around when the scene tried to push me out.
The gatekeeping that tried to exclude me created the motivation to build something that excludes the gatekeepers.
People keep asking for the “real” origin story like there’s one clean version. There isn’t. SLIST was born from toxic desire, a backpacking trip, and an introversion problem. A DJ friend told me my Spanish was terrible and I’d need to bring tourists to parties if I wanted to play. I wasn’t social enough to do that in person. So I started the IG account as a proxy for social capital I couldn’t generate face-to-face.
Before SLIST, I was teaching kids in middle and high school. After returning from CDMX, I was crashing at my mom’s and sister’s places while restarting that business. The PR and flyer-sharing work was entirely unpaid. All of it was to build a following and get on guest lists.
I never wanted to do events. I just wanted to make flyers and book people. The events were forced by the trajectory, not chosen.
SLIST was born out of a toxic desire to own the people who wouldn’t put me on their guest lists. The future and vision are wholesome, but they grew from something dark. People hate being excluded. A person excluded by a village will burn the village down to feel its warmth.
That’s what happened. I burned the village down. Then I built a better one.