Hello readers,
If you’re like me and love Facebook event groups (and expletives) then you are in for a real treat considering this blog has a whole lot of both. Most bad words will be censored, but forewarned, parental guidance is advised for the peanut gallery.
I’d like to start off with a little story that is nothing short of heartbreaking. It all began at the end of October. Pretty Lights, aka Derek Vincent Smith aka an electronic music magician, had announced that he would be playing a New Year’s Eve show at The Fillmore. Incredible. This never happens. This man sells out arenas. Naturally, me and my fellow blaster, you might know her as Anais Cooper-Hackman, made a pact to camp out by our computers and be the first of many to purchase these golden tickets
What happens next may shock you.
The first artist presale drops. Sells out in seconds. Live Nation presale drops. The site crashes, I’m redirected and the tickets sell out within seconds. General admission sale drops at 10:00 AM on October 27th. Tickets sold out at 10:00:01. I was infuriated. The amount of four letter words that escaped my mouth that day would make your grandmother cry.
Now you may argue with me, “Gianna, this is Pretty Lights we’re talking about. Of course he’s going to sell out in seconds!” But no dear reader you must hear me out. Thanks to Facebook event groups, I was able to get to the bottom of this horrendous incident.
There it is in all it’s glory. The event group that started it all.
I like concerts. I attend a lot of them. Even if I have no intention of ever stepping foot in the venue, I always say that I’m interested on the Facebook event page because I like getting updates through Facebook just in case I change my mind. And well, when I tell you that this page blew up –
It BLEW UP.
Apparently we weren’t the only people who couldn’t get tickets. Live Nation doesn’t protect its site against bots. Knowing this event was a big deal, scalpers wiped the site clean and sold tickets for almost triple the face value on StubHub. This left many faithful fans ticketless and incredibly angry, swearing to put an end to this vicious cycle and refusing to give in to the scammers.
Hi Anais.
And those are just a few examples of people being tame. I could show you the real heavy-duty, x-rated stuff, but I’d like to keep my job. Moving on.
The beautiful thing about social media that most of us forget about since we’re too busy instagramming our lattes or trying to take a hot selfie (guilty) is that it connects us in ways that the world couldn’t before technology made it’s debut. Although people are ranting and raving and cursing and calling out organizations all over this page, they’re standing unified against an injustice they believe they have witnessed. These people all have one thing in common: the music they are now being deprived of.
What I thought was pretty incredible was that these people stood together on other platforms as well. They kept pushing for fairness and eventually took their efforts to Twitter where Live Nation, The Fillmore and Pretty Lights himself was mentioned time and time again.
Of course The Fillmore and Live Nation remained silent during all of this chaos. But out of the darkness there was light. Specifically the pretty kind:
Aaaand then of course there was this:
Thanks for getting our hopes up. *sobs
Anyway, even though I was never able to get my PL tickets, the moral of the story here is that when people stand together and make a ruckus, something as simple as a Facebook event page can initiate a reaction and ultimately some sort of change.
Sadly, there was nothing Pretty Lights could do about the scalper problem even though he wanted to, but at least my faith in the internet and humanity was restored due to the connections that were being formed online.
Oh and one last thing.
