If you’re on TikTok a lot (or have a proclivity for British crooners), you’ve probably seen clips from these two concerts on your FYP: Harry Styles’ inescapable Love On Tour (which seemed to span years) and The 1975’s At Their Very Best tour. They were cultural tours de force on the app, and attending them became a kind of status symbol.
They also proved nothing is more valuable on TikTok than a viral concert clip, whether it’s a sickeningly sweet interaction with the artist on stage or a funny ad-lib caught between songs. A solid concert moment can garner millions of views and likes, spawn a trending audio, or completely change someone’s perception of an artist just because the For You Page is inundated with their tour’s best moments.
It doesn’t matter if Harry Styles can act. The real question is should he?
The trading of likes for “exclusive” clips is indicative of an evolution in concert culture itself, one that prioritizes individual experiences and content over just about everything else. It’s a digital environment that leaves little room for surprises, but simultaneously urges people to make their shows as unique as possible.
Mashable tech reporter Elena Cavender and Mashable social good reporter Chase DiBenedetto — two zealous attendees of those viral international tours — discuss how the app has changed how concert goers approach live music, community, and making memories.
Throwing out the “viral” moments
Elena: Let’s begin with the most obvious shift in concert culture, as documented on TikTok: the uncouth treatment of artists while they’re performing. Especially with the growing shitshow that is Ticketmaster, concerts are now competitive; fans compete for tickets and for interactions with their favorite artists. It’s created a sense of privilege among concert attendees that’s exacerbated by the fact that concert etiquette isn’t something many young people learned during the pandemic.
Chase: Yes, like you have to prove that you deserved your spot by getting an artist interaction, or by camping for days to get to the front of the pit, or by catching the rarest moment on stage.
Elena: It’s most evident in the trend of throwing objects at artists. It’s all very 15th century, except rather than throwing objects out of disdain, it’s an opportunity to capture a viral clip. At most of Harry Styles’ shows, fans would throw boas or heart-shaped sunglasses on stage, and he’d put them on and prance around, letting the person who threw the objects have their moment and those who recorded it have theirs as well. His leniency with this sort of behavior came back to haunt him when a fan threw a Skittle at him during his 15-show Forum residency in November, and it hit him in the eye. For the rest of the concert Styles held a hand over his injured eye.
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Chase: It’s all being captured for us to consume, whether the artist likes it or not. Clairo was brought to tears by a screaming crowd after someone threw a bra on stage during a vulnerable part of her set. Fans came to her defense, decrying the way the crowd was treating her, and she then told fans herself that shows were becoming overwhelming with this kind of onstage treatment. The moment even trended on Twitter.
Elena: This bizarre trend of throwing objects also made headlines last October when a fan threw a disposable camera at Steve Lacy, another TikTok darling, during one of his shows. He responded by saying, “Don’t throw shit on my fucking stage please.” The R&B singer did what artists won’t and proceeded to grab another fan’s camera and smash it.
Chase: Some artists are trying to get the better of their fans’ attention-grabbing attempts, though, often playing them off as a joke or using the behavior to make meta or self-deprecating commentary.
Elena: Perhaps the most viral of all the concert clips originated from a fan throwing a pack of cigarettes at the chain-smoking frontman of The 1975, Matty Healy. I am, of course, referring to Healy singing in auto-tune, “Please don’t throw menthols on this stage. Don’t like menthols.” The virality of the clip spurred Healy to make an improvised auto-tune verse part of their set. He has since taken advantage of the portion of the show’s popularity by using it in political ways to knock Tories and praise labor unions, but it’s also the part of the show where he sets his boundaries with fans.
Chase: Are people attending concerts for the music or the memes? Combined with clips of artists like Healy kissing fans and sucking on thumbs, and meme-worthy moments — like Spanish pop star Rosalia’s chewing gum stage sequence — it seems like the gags are what trend these days.
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Front row but behind the phone screen
Elena: In order for the internet to have access to this kind of content, someone has to be behind the camera. Concertgoers are sacrificing the in-person experience of being at a show by recording it.
Chase: I’ve been to hundreds of shows in my life, and something has definitely changed. Fans new and old are navigating what makes up “proper concert etiquette” in the new age, and it’s invigorating a debate about how people should comport themselves at shows, and what is owed to concert attendees.
Singer-songwriter Mitski faced the ire of fans online and off, after she requested no phones at her 2022 Laurel Hell tour. “When I’m on stage and look to you but you are gazing into a screen, it makes me feel as though those of us on stage are being taken from and consumed as content, instead of getting to share a moment with you,” Mitski wrote. The internet was divided between respecting the artist’s request and capturing their own personal moments, but TikTok users still snuck in their clips of Mitski’s experimental stage performance, especially during her opening set for the UK leg of Harry Styles’ Love On Tour shows.
Elena: It’s an interesting shift because this isn’t the first time artists have made requests like Mitski’s. At Childish Gambino’s tour in 2018 at each show he asked that fans “Put the phones down. Don’t commodify this moment. . . . This isn’t a concert. It’s an experience.” Which feels more relevant now than ever.
Chase: Somewhere along the way, in the last few years of reintroduced live events, concert attendees decided that the social aspect of concerts is entirely online, that shows are no longer just about the music but about creating content.
Elena: Susan Sontag wrote about the obsessive need to photograph in her 1977 work On Photography. In it she said, “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” She also wrote about how taking a photograph became a response to encountering an unfamiliar feeling. In the years since Sontag published her essay collection, the compulsion to document and profit off that documentation has only increased. In the TikTok era, it’s not just a need to photograph, but a need to record.
Instead of sitting in the feeling of being at a concert and processing it after, attendees are quick to record their experience, relive it on their phone screens, and then commodify it on Twitter and TikTok. Instead of reflection, they flex and let the comments section dictate how iconic it was to bear witness to the moment behind their phone screen.
Credit: Burak Cingi / Redferns for ABA
Chase: That reflexive urge to document feeds a new, social media-based concert culture, as well as an intense competitiveness among attendees. There’s a little bit of the age-old “I’m the true Number One Fan!” mentality, but I think it’s even bigger than that now. It’s more like a competition with the entire internet.
Elena: I don’t know if it is conscious at this point, but on TikTok, concertgoers need or seek validation for every concert they go to.
The pressure to perform as an attendee
Chase: There’s also a new set of “goals” for ticket holders — a picture for the gram, a viral clip for TikTok, a funny moment to post about on Twitter so that it blows up and your fave likes it. It’s almost like the attendees themselves are putting on a performance for the rest of the crowd, their followers online, and even the artist on stage. The spotlight has kind of lost its intended purpose, if you know what I mean.
By inverting the normal concert expectations, I think many young people (who are attending their first shows with this anxiety to perform) aren’t getting the same kind of anonymous, emotionally-cathartic community experience.
Elena: Definitely, I’m thinking about the rise of the concert outfit specifically. With Love On Tour a huge culture grew around explicitly dressing up like Styles for his shows or adhering to an unofficial dress code matching the album’s vibe. On TikTok, it manifested in outfit transition videos and attendees going up to other fans and posting their outfits as well. While that specific fan culture was organic, the pressure for a good outfit that’s tailored to the artist has become the norm. The 1975’s Healy wears a white dress shirt and a tie, and now if you look out into the crowd at a The 1975 show you see hundreds of white dress shirts…and even more Doc Martens to honor the band’s Tumblr roots.
Chase: Fans do this with the signs they bring to shows, as well, spending the days before a show perfecting the ideal copy to get the crowd and artist to notice them — not new behavior, but something that has become a main focal point of shows across genres. For example, at Love On Tour, Styles reserved sections of the show specifically for sign-reading, even going so far as to help announce proposals and baby gender reveals, and make phone calls on behalf of audience members. I’ll admit I brought my own sign to Love On Tour, but the pressure of the pit was too much — I barely held it up, and when I did, it felt like a deeply embarrassing and rude thing to do that close to the stage.
What I’m really wondering is, can you call a moment like that “unique” or personalized if it’s expected by thousands of concert attendees and millions of online viewers? What do you lose when you spend your whole show chasing after that “singular” experience?
Credit: Jake Lindley / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Elena: Unless Healy literally kissed you, it doesn’t count.
Chase: The TikTok clip economy isn’t just reserved for videos of artists, either. There’s a new wave of content produced by people filming themselves during a show, vlog-style. These people are throwing around their cameras — the flash on, mind you — in concert pits to document them singing or dancing in the back of the crowd, to get a selfie-style moment to add to a TikTok montage.
Elena: There are influencers known for attending concerts and their concert footage. Then fans create parasocial relationships with them and experience concerts through their TikToks. The fans performing on TikTok then spend so much time getting ready, filming transition videos, getting b-roll of the concert, and documenting the entire concert instead of just enjoying it. Going to a concert is such a production on TikTok.
Chase: Filming only yourself to the annoyance of your neighbors, holding up a sign for hours blocking people’s view, yelling at an artist during inappropriate moments of a show… These are things that violate an age-old understanding of concert behavior.
The concert clip demand is a symptom of a deeper problem
Chase: I think a lot of this is learned behavior from the early days of post-quarantine social outings, when people were still navigating how to interact with each other at live events. So many people went to their very first shows in the last two years and experienced an entirely different world, surrounded by people in the same position without the guidance of older or experienced fans who could relay what to do and how to act.
These folks were also battling the effects of a lack of socialization and emotional support during quarantine, especially young teens and adults. TikTok was the only cultural lifeline they had, and it’s only churning out a single view of what concerts are like.
Elena: TikTok is a cultural force in the music industry. The visibility of shows on TikTok makes attending a concert the ultimate activity and once your algorithm knows you’ll watch clips, you’re constantly served them.
Chase: My FYP was always doomed to feature whatever It-Boy is top of mind. My friends, on the other hand, have made it very clear that they never signed up to join The 1975 fandom, even though that seems to be TikTok’s sole mission these days.
I think someone with access to TikTok’s “Heat Button” loves Matty Healy.
Elena: There’s also a fear among fans that their fave will get popular on TikTok or “TikTok-ified,” like The 1975 did. The fear stems from how hard it is to get tickets and the annoying behavior at shows that’s become more common.
Chase: TikTok has also skewed how the artists that get FYP stardom are treated at their shows and what attendees expect from them, regardless of the music genre or particular brand. You knew it was bad when people were camping overnight for a midsize-venue Phoebe Bridgers show like their life depended on it and throwing up huge signs with “Mommy!” plastered over them. Why are you all barking at Bridgers? Shaking in my boots for Boygenius.
Elena: Well, as Bridgers so wisely put it: “I want to normalize talking shit about fans,” says Bridgers. “There’s a way to [be a fan] without filming me without my permission behind the back of my head, chasing me down the street.”
Credit: Tim Mosenfelder / Getty Images
Concerts are more than just content
Elena: TikTok isn’t going away, but we need to move away from commodifying every experience you have and churning out content. Appreciate a concert for what it is, a piece of art. At your next show try putting your phone down and saying hi to the people next to you.
Chase: It’s really easy to forget that the internet is supposed to be a communal experience, too. The way it has grown and shifted towards social media content building and influencer-based markets can easily make you think otherwise. This misconception of digital connections is now bleeding into the real world, into spaces specifically designed to foster community like concerts.
Elena: We’ve moved into an internet era defined by thinking of yourself and posting yourself as the main character, much to the chagrin of anyone else at a concert with you.
Chase: I think it would also benefit audience members to listen to the artist themselves. How do they view their own show? Why did they make these choices? What are they trying to say? At the end of the day, it’s performance art. It has a meaning.
Elena: Yeah… Matty Healy isn’t eating raw meat so you can go viral on TikTok.
Chase: But he sure is feeding off our attention.
