Sort of off topic, but almost the same can be said for music concerts. During slower or softer songs, people can be heard talking and laughing loudly. I get it, they paid their money, same as us, but we didn't pay to hear them.
A couple of years ago, I went to see Echo & The Bunnymen open for Violent Femmes. I had seen the Femmes multiple times, but was really excited to see Echo. These two old biddies that sat in front of us talked the entire show. In between bands, one of them dropped their purse without noticing. I picked it up and offered in exchange for the purse if they wouldn't mind talking through the next act. They were shocked at the nerve and said they didn't talk that much. I then told them all about their kids and their school work and other nonsense that I had to endure. The looked at each other like "oops". To my luck, the show was not sold out, and we moved down our row to get away from them. I obviously gave the purse back
People call the classical music audience prudish for demanding quiet during performances, but IMO when you go to a concert it should be ok to shush people who talk during the quiet parts.
On the one hand, you're at a social experience. On the other hand, aren't you supposed to have your senses engaged in a shared experience? The interpersonal conversation diminishes that. On the other other hand, as long as you're having fun and not doing harm, do whatever. As the Master of Ceremonies, I love it. On the other other other hand, talking pushes up the noise floor, making louder concerts a necessity. A louder concert is more dangerous to your hearing.
There is a difference between us all experiencing a shared artistic experience and us hearing about your kids while we are trying very hard to share an artistic experience.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
I'm so split on this. Ultimately I think I land on: "if there's chairs, engage in the shared sensory experience. If it's GA standing room only, it's a party and do whatever."
As a musician I ask if the music is so fragile it can't stand up to some extraneous background noise, is it really worth listening to?
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It really depends on the music and the background noise? Talking (more likely yelling) in the middle of a rock concert? Probably not an issue. I’m wearing earplugs anyway. Holding a conversation in the middle of a quiet passage during an orchestra performance? Everyone near you wants you to shut up.
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
Curious if you have a sense of how long this has been going on. My perception is that various sorts of rudeness and inconsiderateness have been on the rise for a while, but really jumped post-COVID.
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
Definitely post-COVID. I remember going to see bands in between or just after lockdowns ended, and even the bands were taken aback by the change in audience behaviour, commenting on it. Lots of self-entitled behaviour, talking and even yelling out during quiet moments, people walking up to the stage during a seated Nick Cave concert demanding to hand him stuff or shake his hand - I remember him saying "wow, you guys really forgot how to behave over the last couple of years". Now it just seems to be normalised that crowd behaviour is worse, more self-entitled. I'm not sure what's driving it - whether people who previously weren't going to gigs decided, during lockdown, that they wanted to go out and do stuff more, but just had never learned the etiquette, and/or social media making the experience about the individual rather than the performance.
> many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I went with my daughter to see Taylor Swift in Tokyo. It was an amazing experiences. Swift fans prefer recording Tokyo performances because fangs don’t sing along to the music or talk during the performance.
I saw Avatar 3 here in Tokyo where I live. It was great! I saw the Dolby 3D version. Popcorn was pretty cheap, tickets were reasonably priced, the audience was as quiet as the dead.
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
Audiences in Tokyo aren’t quite to make it easier to record. It just so happens that audiences in Tokyo tend to be quiet, so the recordings of the Tokyo shows tend to end up the clearest.
A couple years ago I went to a county fair because someone said the pie judging was worth seeing. I’ve been to fairs before but never really watched the judging part. They had all the pies on this weird low table, like not quite a kid’s playset table but close, so people leaning in to look kept bumping it with their legs and thighs without noticing, and after a while one of the pies just slowly started sliding toward the edge every time the table got nudged until it eventually tipped off and landed upside down on the floor while the judges were busy debating crust integrity on another pie.
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
Just went to a very small show, 200 tickets but lots of no shows. Maybe 100 people there total. The folks at the bar were so rude to the talent just loudly talking over them. I just don’t get it.
Couldn't disagree more. It's a social experience, it's so unfun and antisocial to have some go to a large gathering of humans and get annoyed when their presence is detectable. Go listen to the song by yourself in a room
