Jackasses we love to hate: part I
There are plenty of ways to demonstrate that you are a complete jackass when attending a show. The list of things that people do to piss me off is endless. Slam dancing, throwing up the horns, and talking loudly about how like totally drunk you are are only few. However, I stumbled upon one last week that I hadn’t thought about before and it’s something I’m sure we’ve all encountered. Some of you might even be involved: I’m talking about obsessive cell phone videographers.
We’ve all seen them standing near the back of the room, clearly too far away to get any good footage but close enough to the front to block someone’s view while they take ten to fifteen minute videos of a performance. They don’t work for anyone. They don’t have a blog. They’re barely paying attention to anything but the screen. Hell, some of them probably don’t even know who’s playing. But they feel the need to capture every second of the show on some low quality video format that is sure to sound like nothing but white noise. Now I’m not referring to people who whip out their phones for a minute or two to snap some pictures. We all of us do that. I’m speaking of the people who have their phones out for so long that they practically need to run to the back before the show ends to recharge.
Not only are you ruining the ambiance of the show for a lot of people but you’re also dividing your attention towards the actual music so you can have a crappy little video to post on facebook so everyone knows where you were last night and how cool you are. Nothing is more of a buzzkill than having a mind-blowing show interrupted by a sea of little, glowing, distractions. Why am I so keen on bashing these people, you ask? Well, a long time ago I used to be like this and now realize how much more I could have gotten out of many past shows if I hadn’t shot a bunch of useless cell phone videos. Concerts should be an opportunity to hear the unique character of live music you’ve loved for so long on CD or mp3. A good concert should make you forget where you are, what you’ve been doing all day, and all the problems on your mind but that cannot happen if you don’t just stop what you’re doing and listen. If you don’t know what’s going until you watch the replay as you’re walking out to your car, you’ve completely missed the boat.
