Don’t Be That Guy (And/Or Girl)

Hey there.  Ya like going to see live concerts?  Hell yea.  They’re a great time.  Do you also like holding your phone up for 2/3rds of the show?  You do?  In that case, do me a favor and ROT IN HELL, YOU LITTLE A-HOLE.

Here’s the thing… I know it’s neat-o that you have a phone that has the ability to take photos and video, but that doesn’t mean that you need to photograph and record practically everything at all times. First off, more likely than not, you shoot incompetently terrible video footage and photos that are borderline unviewable to anyone other than yourself.  You probably don’t actually know how to frame a shot correctly, make the most of the available lighting, or even realize that the audio from a 120 dB rock concert is going to be unlistenable if you recorded it on your obnoxious little phone.  Realistically, if you actually knew how to record, you wouldn’t be doing it on a cellphone, but rather, would have used some sort of actual quality recording device.  And while we’re on the topic, stop using flash when taking pictures at a concert.  If you’re like 50 feet away from the band, it’s doing nothing but making everybody around you wish that you’d keel over from taint cancer.  Unless you’re trying to get good lighting on the first few rows of the crowd’s heads in front of you, in which case, still contract dysentery, crawl up a clown’s butthole, and die.  If you’re not Ansel Adams, stop taking 9000 photos at concerts, you little mouth breather.  Thanks!

Secondly, more than likely, all the photos and video you shot are just going to sit around on a hard drive, where neither you nor anyone else will ever actually view them again.  If you are actually going to DO something with the footage you take, it’s one thing, but don’t obscure an audience’s view of a show just so that you can have a few sub-par keepsakes.  Assuming you didn’t hold your phone oriented in “I Have No Idea What I’m Doing” mode, i.e. vertically, even lackluster video is fine as long as you actually post it somewhere for other people to see.  Judging by the sheer number of people who actually record at shows verses the content that actually shows up online, this seldom seems to be the case.  In short, unless you’re George Lucus, stop shooting video at shows or else I’ll tornado punch your face into a diarrhea forest.

I was at a show recently, and a girl in front of me was holding her phone up for most of the show.  The problem was, as seems to be the case more often than not with these kids, she had no idea how to properly take usable video.  She was holding the phone horizontally, then switching to holding it vertically to better frame the show, as if she were taking photographs.  This is obviously a problem, because she’s spending the whole show obscuring the view of paying patrons behind her, all the while taking video footage that is going to be completely unwatchable.  At one point I looked over, and she was holding the phone over her head to get a higher unobscured shot, except that she was inadvertantly shooting video of someone else’s camera filming the show.  She did this for at least half the show.  Now imagine like two dozen people in a crowd doing this, and you’ll understand while a lot of these kids need to be napalmed and then slapped in the nipples with a trout covered in Tabasco sauce.  I mean that in a threatening way, not a kinky way.

In short, if you’re going to a show to hold your camera up the entire time, please don’t in actuality.  Don’t hold your camera up and also don’t even be there.  Stay home and finish collecting your Pokemons and watching Spongebob, or whatever it is you little numbnuts do these days.  Thanks for understanding!  Smiley face. 🙂 🙂 🙂