Don't be THAT person at the music festival. Here's how

i've been to my fair share of music festivals i think probably none of them even exist anymore but i was going i was going i love to be out with the crowd vibing seeing like 17 different artists in a day but part of the reason i don't like to go to music festivals isn't just because of the fact that you have to use a port-a-potty it's because some people just act so wild out there like even at my wildest i still had a sense of decorum you know my friends over at pop culture happy hour all sound out as this and they've gone deep into music festival etiquette and how to keep your boundaries up while still having a good time without further ado here are their takes steven question what was the last music festival you went to i was trying to remember it was either acl in austin or the all things go festival i think i've been at all things go festival more recently excellent excellent festival with lots of shade which is key okay oh shade from the from the heat shade in a good way shade in the way of not dying of sun poisoning okay gotcha yes yes yes that is very important very key i will throw no shade at all things go it's summer it's peak music festival time which means many of us are going to be braving the huge sweltering heat overpriced concessions they're so overpriced they're so expensive just so we can catch a bunch of the artists we love all in one place and look if you've been to a big fest recently like i have you may have noticed that some people don't know how to be outside but we're each here to share a perspective on festival etiquette that we feel very passionately about i'm aisha harris and joining me today on npr's pop culture happy hour is my fellow co-host steven thompson hey steven hey buddy and also with us is npr music producer steven thompson and steven thompson isabella gomez sarmiento hey isabella hi aisha thanks for having me great to have you so let's get into it steven what is one of your things that you've noticed at festivals that you wish people would just be a little bit better about well i already mentioned the whole every festival should have ample shade but what i wanted to go with is actually what kind of inspired this conversation which is this recent dialogue that has been happening out in the world specifically in the world of pop culture and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's actually the best place to see a concert you are being mashed up against barricades you are resented by many people around you there are sometimes better spots specifically around the soundboard where you have sometimes unobstructed views if you're able to situate yourself behind the soundboard you sometimes have almost as good a view but not around so many people and their awful breath um so to me the first thing that jumped out to my mind is that the front row is like often seen as this like destination where everybody needs to wait 12 hours in order to stand there yeah but i feel there are actually better places to see a show within a festival crowd and if you need to use the toilet you can get back to it without much difficulty i agree i think the most fun festival experiences i have had have been when you're closer to the back or in an open field situation you have lots of room to dance with your friends you can see like you're far enough back that people probably aren't obstructing you the music probably sounds a little bit better and you're not getting crushed i'm a big dancer at festivals and i i think you just have more fun when you're in a part of the crowd where you have a little bit more space to hang out with your people it's less stressful you're not getting pushed and separated by the crowd and that kind of leads into my take which is i think there shouldn't be phones at music festivals or at least you shouldn't be predominantly on your phone at music festivals and i think a lot of times when you see videos of the front row it's a lot of people on their phones filming the festival and i just think it's like put the phones away yeah service is probably bad at festivals like i think a lot of times you don't even need your phone to like communicate with each other because the towers might not be working properly like i just i'm all for leaning into the in-person experience communal experience and i think being on a phone or being in the front row doesn't really facilitate either of those things yeah i will also say that in my experience i've only paid for vip once at one of these things but i know that vip when you pay that extra money they know that the best seats are not in the front you're going to be off to the side usually elevated so i mean look that's a whole other thing because you can definitely see better there steven your point completely holds true which is that who actually wants to be in the front the one time that i did try to get to the front of a festival it was kendrick lamar it was after to pivot butterfly had come out and i remember like trying to get all the way to the front camped out with a group of my friends and then it was so hot in the front that one of my friends actually she didn't have enough water or whatever and she passed out and we had to like make sure she was okay vacate the premises yeah and and i don't think it would have been that bad if we hadn't been at the front smushed with everyone else it's just not worth it and also steven you're a tall person but like as a small person myself it's like even if i'm very very close i'm still probably not going to be able to see anyway because there's just too many bodies and the closer you are and the shorter you are it's like the vision it's basically impossible so why well and as a taller person with somewhat poofy hair i'm also self-conscious about blocking the views of people behind me and so i'm constantly kind of like oh i'm sorry sorry that's very kind of you steven not everyone is like that steven and we are grateful for you okay but i mean it's not about my it's kind of about my virtue but but it's also it is kind of self-consciousness inducing and we haven't even gotten into the volume you know i'm a big proponent in general as somebody who now wears hearing aids because i've attended too many concerts without proper hearing protection that the front row is often you're positioned right under these gigantic speakers you're not necessarily getting the best sound maybe maybe you're getting the best visuals but you're also just having your your precious precious hearing possibly permanently damaged you know the very first festival i ever attended included the band dinosaur junior which is one of the loudest live bands in history and i'm probably still paying the price for that festival more than 30 years later yeah absolutely i mean isabella you've already hinted at what yours is but this does go hand in hand i think is the idea of like being on your phone and this is your take right like yeah no phones band phones i'm anti-phones i think it's like festivals are one of the few opportunities where like you can really disconnect from the people be it your friends be your family maybe you're going solo i think festivals like should encourage the experience of being in the moment exploring the grounds oftentimes when i've been at festivals like especially at camping festivals it's like you just don't need your phone it's way easier to be like i'll meet you at this stage at this time or i'll meet you at this food truck at this time you're often more likely to run into people than you are to find them via trying to text and i do think i mean for concerts in general i have become infuriated with videos of crowds at concerts or festivals where everyone is just standing and recording i don't understand the point of that i don't know how likely you are to go back and watch those videos it's become kind of like a content farming thing everyone wants the best video to post on tiktok and i think that is so far removed from like the communal experience of live music this year for example there were videos of sabrina carpenter's set at coachella where she brought out madonna as a surprise guest and everyone was just standing there holding their phones and it made me so sad and it made my skin crawl because i just don't think that's the point and i can't imagine it's very much fun for an artist to perform to a crowd of people who aren't moving who aren't singing and are just sticking phones in their faces especially in that front row like i don't think that that's a fun thing to look out to so yeah i just i don't think you need it i think for the one day two days three days that you're there you can probably get by without it there's plenty of resources to get to water stations food medical tents like you know festivals are set up to be in solar spaces you can probably get by without it there's plenty of resources to get to you can put the phone away you can log off for a few hours i've often found at festivals that i have a terrible signal yeah basically the larger the crowd the more people are using their phones the less likely you're going to have a signal and the more trouble i'm going to have playing pokemon go and so very often my phone just winds up staying in my pocket anyway because unless i'm trying to text someone hey where are you there's not really a ton of use for it because you're you know just kind of inside baseball you know isa you and i both work around the tiny desk you and i have both you know produced tiny desk concerts phones have been a scourge at tiny desk concerts yeah which is a very controlled very contained space to the point where we have now instituted a policy where when the artist comes out everybody pulls out their phone and snaps a picture and then everybody is required to keep their phones in their pockets and we have security stopping people from pulling out their phones and taking photos because we want people to be in the moment yeah yeah i just think it's like i get wanting to take a couple pictures i get maybe wanting you know a short video of your favorite song having it on you for an emergency like you really can't find your friend you need to know what's going on but overall it's like you just don't really need it for 99 of the time that you're there and i think you're more likely to impede somebody else's experience by having your phone out excessively than you are to like regret not having the 30 second clip of whatever song you were trying to record well that's a thing right at this point so many concerts are so well documented already they have the videographers on stage who are also impeding your view if you are watching because they're like you know chris is like dancing and then like the videographer comes up and it gets in front of her and her like look i'm not gonna knock the videographer from doing their job but because we have that why do i need your really crappy shaky cam video where you can also probably see the professionals do their work right yes and you can also probably see other people's phones in your video because everyone is holding them up it's like what is the point here this is an experience if you're i will say my one caveat to this experience is like if you're filming yourself and your friends that feels different right like i've taken video of myself and it's like i want to be able to remember who was there with me remember this moment but i'm not i'm also doing it for like maybe 10-15 seconds and then i put it away because you want to be in the moment and there is nothing to be gained and when i think about the the videos that i do have from festivals pass uh i don't think i've ever really gone back and watched any of them back when i was still doing that when i was trying to video them yeah it's just seems like a waste absolutely agree well we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back i'm gonna share my pick for a music festival etiquette hill i would die on aisha what is the hill that you would die on when it comes to festival etiquette okay so mine is actually i feel like it's kind of an extension it all comes down to that experience of being a musician and being a musician and being a musician and being a musician and being a musician in a large crowd and the older i get the less i can tolerate it i'm just like i can't i can't deal with this but like i think we've all been here where we're standing we've got our place we've got our people and we're in our spot and we're like this is where we're gonna be this is where we're camped out if we have to go to the bathroom we're gonna go but we're not going to move too much and then all of a sudden you see someone trying to pass through and you're like okay sure you're trying to pass through you can go and then all of a sudden another person is passing through and then another and then another and then finally it's like 10 people are passing through and because it's a large crowd they're taking forever and now you're missing whatever is happening or you're getting bumped or you're getting inconvenience and other people around you are not moving and it turned into like a traffic jam my thing my hill that i will die on is that if you are going to move through a crowd and it's fine if you want to because i've been there i want to pass sometimes sometimes you're trying to find someone but when you were going to do that pass with no more than three of you at a time because three feels like the perfect number it's you know it's going to take probably about 15 minutes to get there and then you're 15 to 20 seconds depending on you know the crowd and who's more willing to let you go by than others but once you get past three people you are inconveniencing everyone this long train that just goes on and on and on until the end of time is so disruptive and i think like the whole cell phones thing like people are like well how am i going to find my friends or like if you're with a large group and at festivals you're you often are with a large group it's like how do i find them it's like well you know what there are ways around this there are analog ways around this i discovered this way which is one of you brings like a big giant plushy animal on a on a stick on a stick or if one of you is really tall you wear a funky hat so that you can find them if you need to and it works or you just you know you separate three at a time three at a time but don't all go the same way do you understand my pain 100 yeah and one reason that i understand your pain i am a person who really does not like to be in a very tightly packed crowd we're talking about like a field full of people i will try to position myself in such a way that there is some space in front of me at all times and some of this is just like a desire for an exit strategy some of it is kind of anxiety about kind of being being crushed or compressed i like to leave some space in front of me this makes me a natural person to not cut in front of like steal a place in line but to yeah but to move in front of i am a natural person to move in front of in part because i'm not going to be like hey man i was here but also because i have left a little bit of space and it's like you said it's fine when it's one or two or three people but when it suddenly becomes between 40 and 11 000 people it can be very frustrating and it can create the kind of anxiety that was the and i think this goes back to steven's point which is a lot of times people are pushing through or passing through because they're trying to get to the front which is like the front's taken people have been up there elbowing each other for hours you know if you're like one or two people maybe you have good chances of kind of like wedging your way in there but a group of more than three you're probably not going to make it to the front you're probably making the people who have been standing here like physically uncomfortable there's too many of you and i agree it's like have a friend with a bandana that can like wave it up and let you know what general area to move in also i just think a part of festivals is like the groups get split off if you're part of a big group it ends up being like three people are in one part of the crowd three people are going to go towards the back like you see each other after the set just like enjoy i think there's nothing more stressful than spending an artist set like struggling to find your friends or struggling to move through the crowd like just pause where you are enjoy the music resume afterwards it's not that serious yeah just be and look i am i'm going to be that person if you try to pull that with me and there's more than three people i will just maneuver myself so no one else can pass and i'll say like nope sorry you all gotta go around i've done it before some people don't like it some people are too drunk to realize what's happening path is closed yeah i'm like no i'm like the troll at the at the bridge like no no more passing no one passes but i think that's only fair because again as isabella said we should not be spending our time trying to do other things we shouldn't be on our phones we shouldn't be trying to make our way to the front just be just exist i think that's really what it comes down to and i think all of these things can kind of coalesce in and be implemented not just in festival settings but in concert settings generally just exist in society exist in society yes yes yes well i feel like we've all made our points and we we hope that this gets out to the general populace and they all practice them in the real world in society just be nice exist that's it right festivals are supposed to be fun and good yes yes not stressful they should not be like miserable camps in which in which we're all getting heat stroke and dehydrating and damaging our hearing they're supposed to be fun also like make friends with strangers you're navigating the crowd like look up talk to the people around you engage that's part of the experience absolutely look case closed that is our story we're sticking to it that brings us to the end of our show steven thompson isabella gomez sarmiento thanks so much for being here thank you thank you yeah i love being cranky about music festivals that's that's my bag that's my bag this episode was produced by mike katziff and lennon sherburne and edited by our showrunner jessica reedy hello come in provides our theme music and thank you for listening to pop culture happy hour from npr i'm asia harris and we'll see you all next time maybe at a festival you