A Devolution in Concert Etiquette

Published: Monday, October 5, 2026

by Jack Reed

Recently, I attended Loathe’s A Stranger to You headliner tour that stopped by the Brooklyn Paramount. It was a show that a ton of my peers and I were very excited for. We had a great time overall, and all of the bands, especially Loathe, sounded so good. Leaving the concert, however, there was one thing all of us collectively agreed on: the crowd was awful. Now all of us have been to high energy shows before; Loathe last year (at Warsaw) is a perfect example of this. The actual physical aspect that usually comes with these types of shows doesn’t bother us. What did bother us this year was the lack of awareness for others, and overall selfish actions that hindered a person’s experiences best, and got people seriously hurt at worst.

 

 

Recording during shows has been a very big discussion with not only the metal space, but music in general. My take on it is that I don’t think recording by itself is inherently an issue. I certainly don’t love it and personally, I try to record as little as possible. However, at big venues, for people in the back, or short 15-20 second clips, it’s something that I find okay and totally understand. The issue I do have with, however, is people in the front recording entire songs, without a care in the world for what happens around them. A lot of people did this at Loathe and this caused these two main issues.

 

 

1) It does restrict other people’s view of the show in a way that could be prevented. Height is something that’s already tough at concerts, and while I understand that it’s obviously not something you can change, you also will have a good view of the stage from wherever you’re standing. It doesn’t hurt to sacrifice your five inches to the stage for someone that could help greatly. On top of that already, by desperately trying to get a video of the front, you then take that drawback I just mentioned and make it ten times worse for the people around you.

 

2) Those people won’t be aware, nor do they care, that crowd surfers are coming, and then those crowd surfers fall and could get hurt. This happened more times than I could count, where people just would not care that a crowd surfer was coming. Some of them even fell on their heads and needed to be helped up and potentially taken to the medic.

 

 

These two points show just an overall selfishness and a lack of social awareness that a lot of concert goers, specifically a lot of younger concert goers, have started to inhibit. It is a thing I like to refer to as a “content-ification” of concerts: the idea that being in the moment just simply isn’t enough, and you need to have proof that this experience happened. This leads to people doing stupid things for a video that, quite frankly, looks like garbage after the fact. It ruins other people’s experiences, and it’s honestly a waste of your own, if you’re going to record a set the entire time instead of getting involved.

 

 

Instead of harping on just the bad, I wanted to share my personal thoughts on how I believe this can get better. If you’re going to record for most of the night, simply go to the back of the room. That way, the people that want to get involved with the music and live in the moment can not only help out other people, but you both get a full experience of the show. I also think more bands should do shows where you’re not allowed to record. The band Static Dress did a lot of these where, when you enter the venue, they give you a patch that you put on your camera that you can’t take off until you leave the venue. This created a more fun experience for the crowd and allowed everyone to just get involved and have a good time.

 

While I feel as if concert etiquette is a thing that a lot of newer concert goers still lack, I believe it’s an issue that will eventually be solved, and concerts will become a fun experience all around again.

 

For more information reach out to Jack Reed at jack.reed@student.shu.edu 

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