We pay to go to a live show. The crowd is excited to see the artist. You can feel it in the air. They appear on stage, plug in, start with a quiet but heartfelt acoustic number.
And 600 people keep their conversations going.
What. The. Hell. People?
Between songs, the artist makes polite but vague statements about how even with the PA, he can't compete with all that noise.
Not that it wasn’t a thing before, but it got way worse after the pandemic. A lot of people really forgot how to act in public after staying home for an extended period.
I still say it should be legal to carry a bottle of lemon juice, and a tiny squirt gun. They start singing, with their mouth wide open, singing horribly, that when you squirt them. Right in the eyes.
I think that it has gotten substantially worse in the last 10 years, but I don't have hard data.
At first I thought it was just a festival phenomenon, where people present might not be particularly interested in that act. But it happens at individual band shows, and not just during the opening act.
Are people more self-absorbed? Or have ticket prices ironically meant a higher percentage of filthy rich people in attendance who don't care all that much?
Get a good quality set of earplugs. I got some Hearprotek ones and I don't know what voodoo they have, but I hear the artist crystal clear and can't hear any crowd noise. Not the people behind me, not my partner right next to me, none of that. But I can hear every note Crystal clear. Oh and my ears are happier at the end of the concert too
There's this shit that younger people in São Paulo do in techno parties that is that they start screaming "hue hue hue hue..." and interrupt the music the DJ is playing and is fucking annoying, but I can't really complain, I love to clap with the folding hand fan, I know some people don't like it but I found that in general it gave good reactions (have never talked about it with DJs to know what they think about it).