There is a modern ritual that seems to happen sooner or later in almost every social interaction, and once you notice it, you realize it follows an almost perfectly predictable script. Someone reaches into their pocket, pulls out their phone, and with unmistakable enthusiasm says, “Hey, want to see a video from the concert we were at last night?”
The question, of course, is largely symbolic, because before you can answer – before you can even form a polite response – the video is already playing and the phone is tilted in your direction.
Now, let’s establish a few important facts about this situation right away: first, you didn’t ask to see the video. Second: there is a strong possibility you don’t care about the performer and probably have never heard of them. And third: perhaps most importantly, even if you did care about the performer, the video itself is almost guaranteed to be terrible.
Yet there you sit or stand, doing what polite human beings do in these situations, which is nodding with mild interest while a shaky, muffled, partially obstructed recording plays on someone else’s phone.
It’s one of the more curious social exchanges of modern life. The video usually begins with great excitement on the part of the person showing it.
“Look at this,” they say. They press play and angle the screen toward you.
The first thing you notice in many cases is that the performer is barely visible. Somewhere far in the distance, under bright stage lights and surrounded by giant video screens, there appears to be a tiny moving figure roughly the size of a grain of rice.
“See him?” the person asks.
You nod politely. What you actually see is a small dot approximately 200 feet away that could just as easily be a microphone stand.
Then your attention shifts to the camera work. Concert videos appear to be filmed using the same stabilization techniques employed during minor earthquakes. The phone moves constantly – left, right, up, down – as the person recording attempts to hold it steady while simultaneously jumping, cheering, and trying to see the stage themselves.
Occasionally, the camera zooms in dramatically, at which point the performer disappears altogether and the screen becomes a blur of pixels that vaguely resembles abstract art.
At other moments, the person filming remembers they are supposed to be watching the concert and lowers the phone slightly, which means the video now consists entirely of the back of someone else’s head. Concert videos, in fact, feature a remarkable variety of heads: hair buns, bald, ponytails, baseball caps both forwards and backwards.
Occasionally, there is a brief moment when the camera finds a clear line of sight to the stage, but this rarely lasts long before someone in front raises their arms and begins waving them enthusiastically in the air.
And then there’s the sound. No matter what concert you are being shown – rock, pop, country, or alternative – the audio always sounds exactly the same. It’s a distant, muffled roar accompanied by what might be music somewhere in the background. You could show someone a concert video from any performer on Earth, and they would struggle to identify who it was unless you were up close.
Meanwhile, the person showing the video watches your face carefully, as if expecting you to experience the same emotional moment they felt while standing somewhere in Section 412.
“This was such a great show,” they say. You nod again. Inside, however, a different thought quietly passes through your mind.
If the goal was to preserve the memory of the concert, the video probably failed. But if the goal was to prevent themselves from fully enjoying the concert while it was actually happening, then the phone did a remarkably effective job. And that’s the strange paradox of modern concerts.
Thousands of people pay a small fortune to attend live music events and then experience them through a six-inch screen held above their heads. Instead of watching the stage, they watch the tiny digital version of the stage on their phone, recording a moment that will almost certainly never be viewed again. Until, of course, they run into you.
“Looks like it was a great show,” you say, with a hint of resignation. And for the sake of basic social harmony, you and everyone around you pretends that it was.
johnberkovich.com 