We went to see Squeeze and the guy in front of me was playing games on his phone the whole time. He came alone and barely paid attention. Why did he buy a ticket?
Picture of Difford and Tilbrook playing Hourglass since I didn’t take a picture of the guy who paid an admission fee to sit in a loud room and do crosswords on his phone.
Charitably, could be an attention issue. I've had to start learning about ADHD as I'm basically the only one in my nuclear family without it, and a common thing is needing to be doing something while listening.
It is mildly infuriating at the best of times to have someone constantly fidget and squirm and not acknowledge you while you talk, but listening doesn't always look like listening unfortunately.
Though, I haven't heard of this specific thing while at a concert it's not beyond imagining that it's just a tactic to accommodate their own needs.
If he is accommodating his own needs and those needs involvie being a distraction, maybe he could have bought a ticket for the mostly empty back row so his phone wouldn’t shine in other people’s faces.
It could also be a case of severe addiction; I’ve too often been at (different kinds of) performances where people felt the need to play games or watch sports (at their kid’s school play no less), too often for adhd. And many times it’s a boomer, so the screen goes on max brightness for visibility.
And he will never really watch those videos more than one time. Which means it would have been better not filming and enjoying the performance right there, in better quality.
That would have pissed me off so much if it was last night because Squeeze is one of my favorite bands and I've wanted to see them since I was in elementary school.
There was another guy a few rows down capturing video with his lights on. Thankfully, he only did it a couple of times for about 30 seconds, but I felt bad for all the people he was shining that light on, and another lady who thought no one could see or smell the huge cloud from the vape she was "secretly" bending down and hitting every few minutes. This was in an indoor theater. I'm glad there were no kids around.
We were at a concert recently and i loudly said, "hold your phone in front of your face so you're only messing with your own view." The guy in front of me and his buddy did stop holding it up over their heads for a bit.
I don't mind someone doing whatever on their phone out of sight. But this shit drives me insane. You won't watch that damn video ever again in your life, stop ruining it for everyone else!
Infuriating. I'm thankful honestly when I've been to shows that force you to put your phone in a secured container that you cannot access during the show. Makes it a million times better
In terms of concert distractions that was pretty good, asocial vs hostile. One concert I went to before COVID, some jerk literally elbowed his way to the front.
He took a few punches before getting hoisted over the barrier so w/e
I saw a woman use her phone constantly for a comedy show that she was also more than 30 minutes late for. I couldn't understand why she even came and it was incredibly distracting for me.
Anyone who says the guy was "enjoying the show differently" is an idiot. They were just screwing up the show for the people behind them, and they're probably a sociopath.
As for possible reasons he was on his phone;
Argument with partner/friend - possibility resulting in them not going - spilled into the show via text (should have left)
Planted security, already seen the show a dozen times, just waiting for something rowdy enough to require intervention
Music/event/venue reviewer (seen all kinds of reviewers who apparently have a 5 second memory insist on taking notes in-situ. Movie critics are the fucking worst about this.)
Work "emergency", fixing from phone
Could probably come up with more, but it would be along these lines.
Like I said, he was playing games on his phone, so there was no emergency. We watched him do a crossword puzzle while we were trying to not be distracted.
Okay, yeah, either the security guard thing, or maybe their group was elsewhere and they were the designated driver or something? I dunno, totally dumb that they we in the middle of the audience and not in the back row or in their car.
They did. It’s one of the few songs sung by Chris Difford instead of Glenn Tilbrook even though they almost always get co-writing credits and rarely do other band members (who rotate in and out all the time anyway). Unfortunately, his voice is not what it used to be. Tilbrook, on the other hand, sounded almost as good as he did 50 years ago.
The really funny thing about Difford is that I always heard he was shy, but he spent most of the show so that the lights weren’t on him. Which is fine with me. I could still see him play.
Because having a light shining in my face while watching a band I've waited to see since I was 10 makes me care.
Sort of like I'm guessing you would care if you were in a movie theater and the person in front of you directly in your field of vision was looking at their bright phone the whole time.
B. Considered disrespecting this person you know nothing about by posting a picture of them taken without their knowledge.
C. Lack the empathy or intellectual capacity to imagine a world in which they're justified for their behaviour because you wanted the experience to go a certain preconceived way.
D. Still think you somehow have a point, when in fact your stewing is your own fault.
A: I think you missed the point of this section of the fediverse. Check the name again.
B: OP never said they considered doing that; posts normally come with images, but they didn't have a picture of the mildly infuriating thing itself, so they posted this image instead.
C: This is the worst take ever. The person on their phone during a dark-room performance is the one lacking empathy, and you are too since you can't understand why this would be annoying.
D: The. Whole. Point. Of this community is to vent about annoying things. Is everyone here that stews about some annoying person or thing just incomprehensible to you?
I checked your comment history and all you do is complain about other people's comments (and most of your comments have been deleted by mods). Go back to Reddit if you just want to troll.