"Warped Tour is a place for teenage kids to go and hear all their favorite bands in one day," says Rob Pasalic, guitarist for the Saint Alvia Cartel. "It wouldn't make sense for it to be the same tour in 2007 as it was in 1997. These are the bands that kids like, and the tour is smart enough to grow and adapt to that. You still get bands like Bad Religion playing, so it's not like it's lost all its roots."

Joe Queer of The Queers stated that:

You play music because there's something inside of you that says you have to play music. Now you get bands like Fall Out Boy that are basically created in the studio. The Warped Tour changed it. F**k it. I just don't like that s**t. All the guys in the bands remind me of the jocks I hated in high school. To me a punk gig is a small sweaty club with the audience right in your face knocking over the mic stand and boogying off the energy.

Anberlin preparing for a meet-and-greet at the MySpace tent on the 2007 tour. Performers often meet with fans and sign autographs at the various artist and sponsor tents. Keith Morris has stated "These kids that are on the Warped Tour, they should have no choice but to go into the military, and go off to some desert somewhere and spend some time in the desert, rather than having some big, ultra mega record company giving them lots of money and paying for their hotels and buses, making sure their hair is trendy, and that they are wearing the proper clothes that all the kids like and wear, and all that fun shit." Morris' band the Circle Jerks would later appear on the 2007 edition of the tour.

In 2013 Oliver Sykes, lead vocalist and occasional guitarist of Bring Me the Horizon took to Twitter to pronounce that he was no longer allowed to start a mosh pit or wall of death. Kevin Lyman took to Twitter as well to say that audience members can create mosh pits and wall of deaths but that someone in the audience has to be the initiator and not a band member because then they are taking responsibility for any injuries which can then lead to costly lawsuits.

On July 1, 2015, it was announced that Front Porch Step would be playing the Nashville, TN tour stop, despite allegedly sexually harassing numerous young girls through explicit text messages, nude photographs, and phone sex. Many bands, including The Wonder Years, Senses Fail, Handguns, and Beartooth asked attendees to not go to Mcelfresh's set. The Wonder Years' lead singer Dan "Soupy" Campbell, who was supposed to perform after Front Porch Step on the Acoustic Basement Stage, asked fans to go see Man Overboard at 1:15pm, the time the acoustic set would take place. Lyman responded by saying,

He was only supposed to be here long enough to play his show but the weather today has been putting us behind schedule. He wasn't added to the tour, so those claims that he was 'added to sell tickets' are completely groundless.

He also said because Mcelfresh had still not been formally charged with any misconduct, he agreed to have him perform. "If he was a legitimate danger to anyone, he simply would not have been here."

On July 11, 2016, Vans Warped Tour announced that Virginia pro-life organisation Rock For Life would be one of the vendors on their 41 tour dates. Rock For Life are known for co-opting punk aesthetics with their logo of a fetus playing a guitar, t-shirts with the phrase "All Lives Matter". Bands such as Safe To Say and Old Wounds have spoken out against the organization, with Safe To Say, replying to Rock For Life's tweet, saying:

Years. Everyday. We are a pro choice band. A tent telling young women what to do with their body has no place here.