Today, you can find most of the community attending a concert at their local stadium when a popular artist is in town.
With almost every person that attends a concert owning a cellphone, this is putting a painful strain on present-day concert culture.
Prior to the 2010s, concerts were a place where attendees could dance and sing without a cellphone being shoved in front of their face.
At a recent concert by The Weeknd, I noticed that instead of being in the moment and watching the show that the artist puts on, the audience prefers to record on their phone and just watch the artist through the recording.
I watched as people in front of me stood still until a popular song known from social media played. When the popular songs were sung, I could see all over the stadium as flashlights from peoples’ phones lit up from recording themselves.
As I am guilty of recording a few seconds of a couple of songs, I find it excessive to let your photo gallery experience more of the concert than you.
I wish my peers could learn to organically experience the concert and create real memories rather than let their cellphone do the job for them and end up giving their cellphone more attention than the artist playing.
Concerts are supposed to be for groups of people who find meaning in being in the moment.
It amazes me that we can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on concert tickets and still do what we already do daily on our cellphones.
Why are we paying for an experience when we can just find a video of it anyway?
With the rise in popularity of recording or taking pictures of yourself at a concert as some sort of “proof” of being there, this makes me think that some people attending concerts only buy tickets to show off on social media.
It has become a trend on social media for people to make a video of themselves lip syncing to a popular song and post it for attention. This trend has spread from taking place in the privacy of people’s homes to the most public outing possible, concerts.
We are seeing that to prevent their content from being leaked to the public, some artists such as comedians, actors and musicians have gone as far as making each person in attendance lock up their cellphones before walking into the venue.
People that have done this include Dave Chappelle, Alicia Keys and Bruno Mars.
People are losing sight of the importance of concerts. With the new trends, concerts are now seen as a social media playground.
Concerts were designed with the intent of allowing people to experience their favorite musicians’ art in person while providing fans with an unforgettable experience they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Concerts were once looked at as a privilege and rare opportunity but are now seen as an average outing that can easily be watched from a social media video.
I believe the world will only begin to enjoy concerts again if people can learn to experience them without their cellphone.
If society can circle back to treating concerts with the respect they used to have, then maybe concerts can gain their initial meaning back.
