Talk:Concert abuse in the 2020s

Article title

user:Launchballer, I came here from DYK. This is an interesting article, but your title move confused me a bit, even though it’s probably technically accurate. I’m curious if you have any other article title candidates in mind. As someone who has gone to somewhere on the order of 300 concerts or so (which is not many considering I stopped going when I was younger), I think this kind of thing is incredibly common, but for some reason is receiving more media attention than normal. Any idea why this is the case? I just don’t see it as a trend; this has been going on forever. In fact, one of my first memories about this kind of thing was seeing tens of thousands of people throw crushed, empty wax paper beer cups (which became flattened flying discs at that density) at bands during the run up to The Police concert which they were headlining in 1983. I’m a bit perplexed why this is even considered a thing. Viriditas (talk) 23:44, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Update: after thinking about this for an hour, something just occurred to me. I wonder if staffing, stage layout and capacity changed dramatically post-pandemic, leading to an increase in performers getting hit more than normal. For example, it is common knowledge that in the wake of the 2020 pandemic, job losses in this industry were off the charts. It is not beyond the realm of the impossible that when the live concert industry roared back for business, many of the old timers in charge of stage setup and design had permanently left the industry. With this in mind, one can imagine that the institutional knowledge held by a small, tight knit group of people had been lost, and that the new hires who replaced them did a poor job, leading to an increase in stage incursions. I would encourage the primary contributor to look into this and see if there are additional sources about this kind of thing. Viriditas (talk) 03:09, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Update. It looks like Billie Eilish agrees with me about this being a very old phenomenon: "Singer Billie Eilish also addressed the hail of objects being thrown on stage in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "I've been getting hit on stage with things for like, literally, six years, I don’t know why this is like new," Eilish said. "People just get excited and it can be dangerous."[1] Viriditas (talk) 03:32, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

A few more things per the sources:

1. One of the earlier examples is the famous Ozzy Osbourne incident when someone threw a bat on the stage at him.
2. David Bowie also famously was hit by a projectile and he got so upset he allegedly played one of his best concerts out of spite
3. Harry Styles has dealt with this problem for many years and there are several stories about tampons and kiwis.
4. David Thomas, professor of forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University frames it as a social media trend, but it clearly has a long history
5. Paul Wertheimer, concert security expert: "Fans throwing projectiles at artists is as old as rock ’n’ roll, but there’s still no excuse for it. The line between the stage and audience, and the sense of decorum around it, has really faded."
6. Wertheimer "says it should be seen as part of a pattern that includes such grim episodes as Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell’s onstage murder in 2004 and the after-show killing of singer Christina Grimmie in 2016..."The industry has learned nothing since then." Wertheimer argues that things have deteriorated in recent years, as he points to "the mass shooting at Las Vegas' Route 91 Harvest festival, the deadly crowd crush at Houston’s Astroworld concert and [the] fatal shootings at Beyond Wonderland in Washington."
7. The Guardian argues that this is more of a trend in 2023 because performers are known to take phones from fans, film a video, and give the phones back; "impatient fans are flinging their iPhones in hopes that their favorite singer will leave them a little gift."
8. The Guardian and Wertheimer also blame performers for throwing objects into the crowd at fans. Wertheimer: "It's a two-way street: if artists don’t want to be hit by projectiles, they shouldn’t throw projectiles themselves. There’s mutual respect there."
9. So while this aggressive behavior by fans has a long history, there's also a sense post-pandemic that concert etiquette has declined
10. Carla Penna, psychoanalyst and crowd researcher, blames social media and fan culture, and also points at misogyny and the increase of impulsive behaavior and aggression in the post-pandemic era.
11. The phenomenon itself isn't limited to object throwing but also includes stage rushing (Ava Max, etc.) This is another good reason why the hook should be changed.
12. Discussion of concert etiquette rules are being revisited. Meredith Holser posted three: Respect others people's space, don't record the entire concert, and engage with the artist appropriately. The third one concerns this topic.
13. There is an element of sociomusicology as a larger narrative at work.
14. Note, we already have a list-class article on this subject:Bottling (concert abuse).

Viriditas (talk) 10:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Note: I didn’t mention the socioreligious aspects (which are discussed in the sources) as they could be controversial. There’s long been this popular idea in the literature (almost cliche at this point) that the audience and the artist are interacting in a very deep, almost cult-like way in the veneration and exalting of the performer, and in a very real sense, there is a tangible measure of this at a visceral level as a willing participant that is almost mythological when you come face to face with it. The point is, this does go some way at explaining the bad behavior under discussion, because in such cult-like contexts, there is a feeling of intimacy established by throwing things upon the altar (stage) that goes way back into the deep past. Again, I don’t think it’s necessary to mention it at this point, but I do note it here because it’s a very old idea with almost nothing written about it on Wikipedia. Viriditas (talk) 20:44, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I’m leaning towards two contrasting ideas that I hope can coexist under one topic. On the one hand, the topic of concert etiquette has been ongoing in the press since at least the 1970s. The WSJ published a major article on it in 2016. On the other hand, there is a newer idea that concert etiquette has recently experienced a sharp decline as it came out of the pandemic lockdowns and industry shutdown and emerged into the post-pandemic era. I think both are true, and a single article could cover both. However, one could also make the argument that this current treatment of the topic should mostly focus on the decline of concert etiquette in the post-pandemic era, and perhaps that (or something similar) should be the new title. There’s an enormous amount of material here that goes way, way beyond the simple X artist was hit by Y object. At the very least, the current version should briefly touch on the theories and reasons for the uptick in disruptive crowd behavior and recommendations from experts for remedies looking towards the future. The lead should also make this larger context clear. To close, I think the current article title doesn’t work for several reasons: 1) this post-pandemic phenomenon started before 2023, perhaps 2022 or earlier. The reason 2023 is receiving more attention is because experts only realized it and began paying closer attention to it in that year. Social psychologist John Drury at the University of Sussex who studies crowd psychology says it started in 2022.[2] I recommend getting rid of the year in the title altogether and sticking with the term post-pandemic instead. Viriditas (talk) 22:06, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

D7 (completeness) criterion

I wanted to split this out and make it a separate section. To fulfill the D7 criterion for DYK, the article should very briefly note in both the body and lead summary:

• This is part of a larger concern about concert etiquette that has been raised for decades
• However, researchers have noticed a new decline in concert etiquette since the industry emerged out of the pandemic lockdowns
• It isn’t known why this is occurring but there are several theories
  • Lax security; industry not taking concerns seriously
  • Emergence of new concert audiences unfamiliar with etiquette
  • Influence of social media trends and behavior caused by performers and audience
  • Other theories
  • Proposed solutions

That about covers it. Viriditas (talk) 22:58, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 08:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that "2023 has been a good year for pop stars being thrown things on stage"? Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/05/throw-wheel-of-brie-at-pink-fans-extreme-gigs
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017

Created by Launchballer (talk). Self-nominated at 11:55, 11 July 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Concert abuse in 2023; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Comment: article title is somewhat unusual, as is the proposed hook (good year?) which sounds off. Recommend the possibility of a page move to a new title (or the old one) and submitting alternate hooks. Also, the article lacks a strong narrative about the overall phenomenon and reads like separate pieces of trivia linked together simply because they happened during the same year. I think there is a potential to fix these problems and salvage both the article and the hook, but it would require a few hours of work on the part of the nominator. Viriditas (talk) 00:14, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

• Note, I’ve made further comments on the talk page. Nominator may want to do some more research. This is not a new phenomenon as Billie Eilish told the Hollywood Reporter. Separately, I’ve speculated on talk as to why this might be treated as something new, but nominator needs to dig a bit more and reframe the article. The USA Today source I provided on the talk page goes into a bit of the explanations for this phenomenon, which aren’t found in the current article. I would be inclined to be more favorable to this DYK if the nom did a bit more work on it and proposed a new hook. Otherwise, I wouldn’t support it at this time in its current form. I would encourage the nominator to perhaps think about this in a simplified way: every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This article has a beginning, but reads as a list of trivia because there is no narrative connectivity to a middle and an end (explanations, reasons, suggestions for ameliorating the problem). Viriditas (talk) 03:42, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

• Per the above; D7 (completeness). Viriditas (talk) 04:18, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I actually tried to go to a piri concert yesterday and ended up missing it after seeing noah ajc in one part of the building, assuming it was there, and not clocking it was somewhere else until it was over. I'm not inclined to go too long on the background section on the grounds that bottling (concert abuse) exists, though I have done some work on it, and I'll expand it further later.--Launchballer 13:51, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Good work, Launchballer. I think you’re very close to finishing this up. I would like to see the lead rewritten for generality and for you to consider the article re-naming suggestion (or your own), and proposing a reworded hook per my concerns about the date on the talk page. Do that, and I think we are done and I will support at that juncture. Viriditas (talk) 09:04, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm on the fence when it comes to renaming it. Yes, concert abuse has been on the increase over the last couple of years, but seems to have spiked over the last couple of months. I've mentioned the history in the middle of the lede, since it seems to make sense to start the article with a sentence about its topic. As for the hook, I propose the following:

ALT1: ... that prior to having bracelets thrown at him in July, Harry Styles had been the target of Skittles, chicken nuggets, kiwi fruit, tampons, feather boas, cowboy hats, Pride flags, and Dr. Simi dolls?

ALT2: ... that in July, Cardi B reacted to having water thrown at her by throwing her microphone into the crowd?

ALT3: ... that since 18 June 2023, the female musicians Bebe Rexha, Ava Max, Sexyy Red, Kelsea Ballerini, Taylor Swift, Latto, Cardi B, and Kelly Clarkson have all had objects thrown at them while performing?--Launchballer 15:41, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

ALT4: ... that in July, Lil Nas X changed his Twitter name to "Pussy" after a fleshlight was thrown at him on stage?--Launchballer 10:32, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I understand your reluctance about moving the title. However, you are still focusing on 2023 as if this is the locus of the phenomenon, when our sources say it is not.[3] I also explained on the talk page how this is both a long-term issue (as you have acknowledged) as well as a newer resurgence of bad behavior attributed to the end of restrictions from the pandemic, in other words, this is a post-pandemic behavioral problem specifically. I understand you are focused on communicating all that has happened in just 2023, and I think in some respects that is a justified, valid argument for a narrow article about the bad behavior in just the year 2023, which is what you have tried to do. But what you have produced is just a list of artists being hit by objects, with a valiant attempt to try to intermesh the larger issues at work. What needs to happen is this narrative needs to be fluid and story-like so that it fits the encyclopedic framework of what our readers and editors expect to see and read. I can show you an example of what I am talking about, but you have to be open and willing to change things around. Another helpful way to reframe your perspective is to consider what kind of model you are using to write this article. There are any number of models you could use, and we generally use the Wikipedia model. But it also helps to look at how models work. Two models that might spark some ideas as to how you can fix this article include the BLUF or inverted pyramid model. Take a quick look. You may get some sudden insight into what needs to be done here. Otherwise, I can provide an example of a refreshed model for your consideration. Viriditas (talk) 22:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Launchballer: I spent some time pondering this problem, and I may have created an interim solution, however it exists only in my head right now. When I return from work, I will give it a try in a sandbox and ask you for your input. Viriditas (talk) 04:08, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Comment: this article topic is justified IMO, by the intersection of multiple topics, such as concert etiquette, bottling (concert abuse), and health problems of musicians, as only three examples. I only say this and provide this justification, because the current form of the article is a borderline listicle, and all lists on Wikipedia must be based on encyclopedic topics that already have its own articles. With that said, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and should not be based on lists of miscellaneous information or excessive listings of unexplained statistics. The explanatory text providing context is key to keeping this within policy. The explanatory text providing context is the decline of concert etiquette and attacks on musicians, particularly (but not exclusively) in the post-pandemic era. and secondarily in 2023 (IMO, there can be disagreement on this since there are general and narrow approaches that are both valid). The lead needs to make this (or portions of this idea) crystal clear in the first lead sentence. It should most certainly not start off by telling the reader that Bebe Rexha was hit by a cell phone in June. First, this had already been going on for several years, so the spate didn't start in June. Second, the context must be explicit to the reader in the lead and summarize the entire article in a general and less specific way from the get-go. So please, focus on writing a WP:LEAD. That's a good first step. Viriditas (talk) 10:08, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

This should probably be moved to post-COVID-19 pandemic something, possibly Post-COVID-19 pandemic concert abuse, though this could do with a wider hearing. I've made a start on the lede, but I need to expand the beginning of #Incidents before doing any more work on it.--Launchballer 16:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Some clues about the wider topic from Paul Wertheimer: Wertheimer, a concert security expert, believes that live concert etiquette has always had its issues, but has diminished in recent years. "Fans throwing projectiles at artists is as old as rock ’n’ roll, but there’s still no excuse for it. The line between the stage and audience, and the sense of decorum around it, has really faded", he told the Los Angeles Times. Wertheimer believes the decline in concert etiquette since the pandemic is part of a larger pattern that was already playing out since Christina Grimmie and Dimebag Darrell were murdered, and that the music industry failed to learn and take precautions, especially in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, the 2021 Astroworld Festival crowd crush, and the 2023 mass shooting at the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance festival. Viriditas (talk) 02:49, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@Launchballer: check out Rachel Soloff's (University of Pittsburgh) 2022 run down of the issues post-pandemic,[4] and Madison Heydari's incredible, in depth, deconstruction of the impact social media has had on the phenomenon.[5] Both of those articles really tie the phenomenon into the post-pandemic frame. Viriditas (talk) 10:10, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the article is good to go, as everything checks out (length, age, no copyvio or plagiarism, reliable sources, QPQ); I'm not personally happy with the page title or the lead, but those two things aren't it isn't a large enough issue to stop this DYK from going forward. I crossed out your original hook, as the notion it has been a "good year" doesn't make much sense to me. These incidents are generally escalating levels of assault in many cases, so that kind of thing should not be referred to as "good" on that main page, despite the inherent sarcasm or irony; that's not going to play with all readers, as I myself found it troublesome. In addition to the original hook, I also crossed out ALT2, as there was some controversy over that incident that makes it disputed in some sense (the story about the water and microphone have different takes) and probably wouldn't be a good fit for the main page. So that leaves us with ALT1, ALT3, and ALT4, which all check out. My preference would be to see a hook that focuses more on the scholarly side of the issue, with importance placed on the causes and possible solutions, but that's my own POV. Viriditas (talk) 00:16, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

ALT5: ... that post-COVID-19 pandemic concert abuse has been variously attributed to the effects of social media, misogyny, status symbolification, and artists' own on-stage behaviour? (Given that the article is no longer about just 2023, it had to be moved; a better title can be found later. I'll do some more work on the lede in the morning.)--Launchballer 01:02, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Works for me, but you have to fulfill WP:DYKHOOKCITE by making the source explicit next to the hook, and as far as I can tell, that specific hook needs to be sourced in the lead. Viriditas (talk) 09:51, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I've added them, although I can tell you that the minute this is off the main page they're coming out; they're all cited in the main body, and it's my personal opinion that ledes should not contain cites (they should summarise what's in the article).--Launchballer 10:12, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

My dude, I completely agree with you; it's been a while since I approved a DYK, but back when I did, it was a requirement. If that has changed, let me know. Viriditas (talk) 10:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:DYKCITE: "The hook fact in the article should be cited no later than the end of the sentence in which it appears." I could rewrite the whole Reactions section so that every paragraph consists of one very long sentence but this feels easier. I expanded the lede, by the way - might put this up for GA but I want to focus on getting Piri to FA first.--Launchballer 11:30, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Is this even a thing?

Has there actually been an uptick in poor behavior at concerts post-COVID? Or is poor behavior just being discussed more, or discussed differently? If this question is addressed at all in the article, I missed it amidst the long and tedious list of (mostly less-than-trivial) incidents. The article is also rather marked by a failure to distinguish between, say, throwing panties on stage and firing bullets at a musician. These are qualitatively different, to say the least. There may be something worthwhile in the article, but if so it is overwhelmed by excess trivia. CAVincent (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

I do somewhat agree: A very interesting read, but rather more of a list of incidents than an exploration or explanation of the subject. Why "in the 2020s"? As CAVincent says, the question of the newness of the phenomenon (which would justify the title in mine opinion) isn't addressed ~ other than to say that it used to happen to Liszt, at an opera, to the Beatles, to Tom Jones.... In addition, the Manchester Arena bombing should be removed: The fact that it was at a concert is not central to it other than it was a prime occasion for a terrorist to find a lot of people gathered together. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 08:13, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

We have an article for bottling, which seems to be about very much the same thing. Perhaps this article could be listified and moved to something that suggests a split from that article? AviationFreak💬 15:37, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Written in the context of the DYK nomination, Viriditas's comments above can be more broadly applicable. I find Artaxerxes's inclusion a bit baffling because it cites a primary source that doesn't mention concert abuse in the 2020s. (I have not checked the sources for Lizst, etc., but they pass a spot check.) Why go any further back than secondary sources do? As others have said: without a clear scope of inclusion, we can include all manner of things (Shakespeare's audiences throwing apples or furniture) of dubious use to readers of this article. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:23, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Pinging Viriditas. This is the article's sixth title; it started at Concert abuse in 2023, before being moved to 2023 concert abuse spate, before being widened to Post-COVID-19 pandemic concert abuse and then moved to Post–COVID-19 pandemic concert abuse, widened again to Concert abuse and then narrowed to Concert abuse in the 2020s. There should definitely be a Background section, per WP:AUDIENCE; my inclusion criteria was 'early, well known, and injurious incidents', although perhaps the Incidents section could be siphoned off to Bottling (concert abuse) (I'm not keen on merging that article into this one as swathes of it are unsourced).--Launchballer 09:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Both of those titles were recommended by the music project. I moved it to the first one because it seemed like the best idea to have the widest, broadest topic that could contain all the daughter articles when it came down to it. But right as the DYK hit the main page, an editor slapped a recentism maintenance tag right on the top. Although it is discouraged to move an article when it hits the main page, I did so as a preventative measure and as the only way to get the recentism tag off a highly visible article. Where it goes from here is up to you. I’ve left my thoughts on the talk page up above and I would prefer to see it as a broader topic, rather than the narrow one I was forced to move it to in order to get the tag off. Viriditas (talk) 09:52, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Frogs

CAVincent: Per Brighton and Hove News: "Various blow up beach balls and green frogs were added to the set’s decoration in order to add to the party vibe."--Launchballer 06:37, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

The larger problem for CAVincent is the source. I will open up a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard to resolve it. Viriditas (talk) 09:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually, the larger problem is not the sourcing. Partly, it was that "had their frogs stolen" was an unexplained, seeming non-sequitur. (I supposed it's better explained now, so there's that.) There's the additional problem that a claimed theft of stage props is trivial, and dubious to describe as "concert abuse", and would be so even if NME and Guardian citations could be had.

Also, repeating points I tried to raise above: 1) This article makes little to no effort to support any claim that popular music concert behavior in the last year or two is meaningfully different than it has been for more than half a century. The closest it gets to backing this notion is by presenting readers with an avalanche of largely trivial "incidents". 2) The article, and not just "Incidents" section, remains marked by failure to acknowledge any qualitative difference between benign gifts of dolls, claimed theft of props, physical assault, and murder. CAVincent (talk) 06:07, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

These are reasonable questions. The closest answers we find in the sources (and I've presented some of them up above on this page), is that experts in security and academic areas think there has been an increase after the pandemic shut the industry down and reopened. Is the reported increase demonstrable when we compare reports pre and post-pandemic reopening? Nobody knows at this point. Viriditas (talk) 07:41, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

There's a few sources that are happy to put the claim in their own voice; Dazed is what I replaced the tag with, plus Rolling Stone mentions that etiquette has "unquestionably gotten worse post-pandemic".--Launchballer 08:27, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and that's the best we can do. I feel like CAVincent wants you to publish an academic paper. That goes beyond what we are doing here, but Launchballer, if you're interested, you should data mine the news indexes for such reports over time, run an analysis, and publish the results. Then, I will add it to the article with the edit summary: "updating sources, per CAVincent".  :-) Viriditas (talk) 08:31, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Dunno. I might ask for peer reviews.  ;-) Yes, this comment made me smile when I first read it. I suppose I should accept that "there's a bad article on Wikipedia" in the same spirit as "someone is wrong on the Internet". I'll just note in parting that the Dazed article is pretty bad as well, and try to ignore this article ... at least as long (and probably longer) as the threat to try to promote it to GA doesn't come to pass. CAVincent (talk) 10:31, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I am sensing an upcoming collaboration between a software engineer in Seattle and a mathematician in London on this research topic. Make it so. Viriditas (talk) 10:57, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Title/scope

I dislike the move of this page from "Concert abuse" to "Concert abuse in the 2020s" per WP:BROADCONCEPT. The title makes it a subtopic of concert abuse overall, so if this is a topic that warrants an article, then Concert abuse overall should too, rather than redirecting here. Either that or abuse should just be covered in concert etiquette and this should be concert etiquette in the 2020s. The current structure makes resolving the recentism issues difficult. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:20, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

There is technically an article about concert abuse, but it's at bottling (concert abuse), and only covers one aspect of it.--Launchballer 06:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)