The sheer volume of Warped Tour cancellations led MTV to look into some possible theories for the mass defections.

According to tour organizer, the normal drop off rate is three bands per summer, while there have been at least eight high profile acts in the past few months, with many coming in the past few weeks.

Thursday's Geoff Rickly, who is about to finish his third Warped, says the friction largely amounts to a battle between the old school and new school:

The number of younger bands is much higher, and they seem to think they're the shit and all the older bands are has-beens or whatever. I think there's an attitude of entitlement. Like, 'All these old bands don't even sell the amount of records we sell' and 'We should maybe be getting better slots' and 'We're the new shit.' I kind of get that attitude from some of the younger bands, and that's too bad,

Fat Mike, who has spent eight of the last 11 summers on Warped with both NOFX and cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes added:

The thing is, a lot of bands sign up for this, and they have no idea what it's about, and how difficult it is if you're a smaller band," he said. "If you have to do this tour in a van, it's really, really difficult. Our whole goal on this tour is to have as much fun as we possibly can -- that's what it's all about, so if you can [accomplish] that, it's a really great tour

Punknews.org mentioned the high number of young acts dropping off earlier this week.