Why are fans shitting themselves for barricade spots at concerts?

Concerts are notoriously pungent spaces. I leave every venue reeking of other people’s sweat and spilled beer. But, perhaps because I’ve never seen Olivia Rodrigo or Taylor Swift or BTS live, I can at least say that I’ve never watched someone intentionally poop their pants two feet away from the performer. “I have been to certain concerts and certain festivals where people wear diapers so that they can be front row of the show,” Rodrigo recently told Kiss FM.  “And that’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled. Like the [Times Square] Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve, everyone is wearing diapers, they sit there all day. I think about it kind of often.” (And if Rodrigo can smell it all the way from her onstage perch, imagine how bad it is for the rest of the crowd.)

The Kiss FM hosts, Tyler West and Chloe Burrows, were left speechless by this admission. West insisted that Rodrigo must be pranking them. I wish I could say I reacted with that same shock. But earlier this month, I attended Gov Ball and watched, to my immense displeasure, hordes of Stray Kids fans lay down blankets and set up camp at the main stage barricade—nearly ten hours before the K-Pop group’s set was actually scheduled to start. They stayed there, unmoved and unmoving, through every intervening act: talking shit during Radio Free Alice, rolling their eyes during Wet Leg, seething during 2hollis. If you tried to step in front of them for even five minutes to catch a glimpse of one of the acts you came to the festival to see, the Stays practically bared their teeth and growled—never mind the fact that it was before their beloved boys so much as entered the festival grounds. It was hot that day, too; nearly 95° F. Some of us drank water and sought out shade between acts. Not the Stays. They’d rather die than leave their post. And they almost did; I watched multiple fans faint from the heat and their own dehydration. They had to be carried out.

All of this is just to say: three weeks ago, I might have been shocked and horrified by the revelation that Olivia Rodrigo fans soil themselves in order to maintain their barricade spots, but post-Stray-Kids, I can only muster up a grim sense of resignation. I’ve seen a lot of this self-respect-eschewing idol worship lately: Stays at Gov Ball, yes, but also these absurd videos of Sofia Isella concerts where fourteen-year-old girls shake and sob like they’re being actively exorcised by the mere touch of the singer’s hand. To be fair, this kind of celebrity devotion has existed for a long time: look at how people reacted to The Beatles, Michael Jackson, you name it. But stars of that magnitude, capable of inspiring such fervent devotion, used to be few and far between. I’d never even heard of Sofia Isella before encountering her on my phone, but here she is singing to hundreds and hundreds of weeping, hyperventilating teens, whose phones are raised in the air like a prayer. 

Fandom—or bandom, rather—is complicated. Lonely people of all ages find themselves drawn to cults of personality; this has been true for all of history. But the social media age has made it part of everyday life. Fans have access at all times to both the artists they love and the community that loves those artists just as much as they do. In an isolating time with what feels like fewer avenues for genuine, organic social connection than ever before—only compounded by the fact that involvement in online communities became a near-universal means of survival during the pandemic—it’s only natural that those searching for purpose find it in larger-than-life, Christ-like figures whose music has practically started a religion. And if you bought $3,000 tickets to see Jesus Himself, would you not shit yourself for the opportunity to touch His hand? (Well, I wouldn’t. But maybe that’s just because I’m Jewish.)

The sheer impossibility of getting tickets to big-name acts plays a role in the problem, too. Seeing Olivia Rodrigo might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some, considering how hard it is to actually snag a ticket, and how much debt you might need to go into in order to cover it. People are blowing through their life savings to see Taylor Swift in concert. What’s a little bit of urine compared to a retirement fund? You have your shaky handheld video of Rodrigo singing “Brutal” for life, and that’s what matters. 

We used to go to concerts to lose ourselves in our bodies, or so the old-heads say—to sweat and scream and get crushed and feel, for two hours, like part of some collective organism larger than ourselves. Now, though, the body has become an inconvenience. To hold a barricade spot for ten hours, to keep the phone steady through “Vampire,” you have to start treating your own flesh as an obstacle: a thing that gets hungry, that cramps at the elbow, that needs water and shade and a bathroom. Your concert experience is irrelevant. It’s only the footage that counts, the proof that you were there. Piss and shit can’t be smelled through the screen, after all.

Hey! You know what doesn’t smell like shit? Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. Read our recent review of you look seem pretty sad for a girl so in love here.

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