There are plenty of ways to have fun at a gig but whipping out your phone should not be one of them.
Over the last few years, almost all of the gigs I’ve attended have presented one increasingly annoying problem for me: I haven’t been able to see. And no, it’s not because of my height. I’m not alluding to the struggles of peering over six-foot giants donning hats ahead of me in the crowd.
What I’m referring to – and what has been my biggest foe at concerts and gigs – are mobile phones. More specifically, people who ‘need’ to capture the night for their social media.
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Without fail, at every gig I’ve been to in recent years I find myself surrounded by people more focused on curating their social media presence than on experiencing the show.
I’m inevitably left to struggle for my view, navigating a sea of raised arms each grasping a device with frantic determination to snap some content that will make the ‘perfect’ concert TikTok or Insta post.
Being in an environment like this is overwhelming and unrelenting. In these situations, I often have no choice but to acquiesce, pick a phone screen I think has the best view, and catch glimpses of the performance through a stranger’s device a row ahead of me.
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Then, I’m taunted for weeks by the succeeding deluge of reels and TikToks that flood my feed. I can’t help but let a bitter resentment take over me as I watch the very videos that caused my view alongside the crowd around me to be obstructed.
Here’s the truth about posts like this: once that perfect video is taken and that ‘candid’ concert TikTok is secured and uploaded, all that effort is quickly forgotten, becoming nothing more than a fleeting moment lost in the digital void.
This stuff is pervasive, and these days, bordering on dystopian. It feels like something pulled straight from a Ray Bradbury novel. I paid for a live experience, so why doesn’t it feel like I actually got one?
The normalised behaviour of persistent social media posting and consumption has created an endless stream of content, readily available at our fingertips. Worse still, it’s conditioned us to expect this constant influx, to believe that at the literal flick of a finger, there will always be something new to consume.
It is undeniable that social media has oversaturated us with content. I mean, take a look at the stats: in just 60 seconds, 625 million videos are viewed on TikTok, and 65,972 photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram.
Our access to tools for both content creation and consumption has cultivated a culture where staying connected – which really means staying ‘relevant’ and entertained – feels almost compulsory. We’ve become a society of abundance, where more is never enough and the desire to consume is insatiable.
Naturally, this has also deeply impacted the music industry and dictated trends of production. Artists now face a new kind of pressure, as they’re now expected, both by their labels and their fan bases, to maintain a prolific output that can keep up with society’s endless doomscroll.
In an interview with DJ Suss One on Power 105, vocal diva Mariah Carey was outspoken about this shift in the music industry. Comparing music to “fast food” she asserted, “It’s hard to have a classic because the next day, there’s a new song.”
She also lamented that the sheer volume of music being made makes it difficult to create meaningful, longstanding work. “There are so many options. You could just get whatever [song]… live with it for a moment, and then move on to the next one,” she said.
Indie singer-songwriter Mitski echoed this sentiment in a 2022 interview with Vulture: “I put my most intimate feelings into a song and sold it,” she said. This level of demand not only dehumanises artists but reduces their creations to mere commodities.
Social media has conditioned us to be relentless consumers and artists face immense pressure to churn out content as a result, often at the expense of the deeply personal processes that define their work. “You have to be a product that’s being bought, sold and consumed,” Mitski affirmed. It’s a bleak reminder of the toll that our modern consumption habits take on an artist’s humanity.
Social media has reframed the way we engage with the world. These days, we consume life through 15-second clips, sound bites and viral moments, and it’s desensitising us to the incredibly human process that making art is.
So, at your next concert, try something radical: put your phone away and enjoy the moment for what it is: raw, real, and most importantly, live.
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