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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I just don't understand the hate around concert photos/videos.

I always have a bunch of friends who wanted to see the show but couldn't make it. Being able to send them a few photos and a couple 30s clips lets us all enjoy it a bit and have a good message back and forth.

If it's a 2h show, I'm still completely "present" for 99% of it. It's not detracting from my enjoyment.

And I actually think it's pretty cool when there are moments when everyone is sticking up their phone to record -- it's this shared experience where everyone is expressing yes, this is the moment. You see it's not just important to you but to others. And all the glowing screens is aesthetically similar to the way people used to hold up their lit lighters when people smoked.

If I'm on stage and everyone's pulling out their phones to record at a certain moment, that's when I know I'm making magic and we're all sharing it. People are appreciating it so much it's worth saving.

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Quick snap? No problem. Holding up an iPad for a whole song? Go fuck yourself, respectfully.

That'd be better solved by human interaction, not machine learning.

I've been to more shows than I can count in Brooklyn and never in my life have I seen someone with a tablet/iPad.

I'm sure someone has done it somewhere... but it's not a problem that exists at any meaningful scale, as far as I'm aware.

I was referring to the people who criticize the recording people do from their phones.

I saw someone hold up an iPad for an entire Bjork show on the row in front of me, live-streaming the gig to their friends on Facebook. Didn’t totally block my view but was definitely annoying and I thought especially rude as there were notes saying Bjork had specifically requested no cameras be used (it was a gig with just an orchestra so she wanted people to focus on the music). My friend had a word with them at the interval and they did move it out of our line of sight at least, lol

Do you want someone to throw a beer at your iPad? Because this is how you get someone to throw a beer at your iPad.

Or not so respectfully. I don't pay €50 to see someone's iPad for 2 hours.

You kind of do, right? If you had €50,000,000, you could have a private concert. You don't, so the general public is there, doing general public things.

Not being able to afford a private concert doesn’t mean that common decency should go out of the window too though.

It's nice if people are nice, and we should strive to be nice. I am not sure how that translates to a paid camera app that sees your child taking her first steps, runs it through a machine learning model that classifies it as a concert, and then prevents you from taking a video of it. Whatever infinitesimal amounts of concert jackassery it prevents comes with a downside of literally losing a once-in-a-lifetime event. That is the very definition of shitty software, and we should reject it aggressively.

If you want people to not block your view at concerts, demanding that they have a machine learning model control what they can take videos of is not the solution. Hire some guy to say "hey, stop filming on your iPad or you're out."

>I just don't understand the hate around concert photos/videos.

A quick snap and the phone going back to your pocket, sure.

Photos/videos with hands help up to shoot throughtout whole concert/or several songs? For these, the hate is easily understand.

(a) Watch the fucking concert you're present at - don't be a subpar cameraman for it.

(b) Don't obstruct the others' view.

(c) Most likely you ain't gonna watch it again anyway. You barely watched it when it was actually live in front of you (instead you were concerned with taking video).

(d) There are video/photo pros in the concert + at least 100 other regular fans who will post their photos/videos anyway. Why exactly do you need yours? Because 20+ rows back from the stage is such a great position to be filming in the dark with a mobile phone that it shouldn't be mished?

>If I'm on stage and everyone's pulling out their phones to record at a certain moment, that's when I know I'm making magic and we're all sharing it. People are appreciating it so much it's worth saving.

OTOH, it tells me people don't care for the show, they just want to post that they were there too.

Absolutely reverant held silence or heavy dancing / headbanging (depending on the genre) are the things that would make me actually feel like people actually feel they're listening to magic.

You can enjoy a performance, and be in the moment, while still recording it.

Not to mention that there are artists that embrace bootleg recording, like Dead & Company

>You can enjoy a performance, and be in the moment, while still recording it.

Yes, just not as much, and with your mind occupied by another activity.

>Not to mention that there are artists that embrace bootleg recording, like Dead & Company

That's neither here, nor there. Bootleg recordings were just some fans bringing in audio recorders (which you just keep on you). They don't add a screen between you and what you're there, nor have you trying to frame things.

Just to give you a different perspective: in Japan, and before COVID hit of course, I've attended quite a few concerts, and none of them had any person holding up their phones or iPads to record anything, ever. It's completely banned in all the concerts I went to and is illegal: you'll have your phone confiscated and the recorded material deleted by the event staff. Not that I've seen anyone trying to break it. Maybe the ones done by amateurs at small stages don't have that rule, but even then, I've never seen any.

But what we did carry were penlights/cyalium lights. And each song has a set of calls people do at specific parts of the song. And for the rest of it? We set our penlights to the color matching the artist on stage, and we wave them, and sing along and make the screaming calls when it's appropriate. I would feel this crazy emptiness in my hands with one penlight so I'd bring two for both hands. The making of magic moment happens when few thousand fans scream "Encore" at the end, and when we do this penlight waving and all the stuff together. Phones don't even come to the picture. They are in vibrate mode. Can't have it ringing when the MC is speaking and everyone else is quiet, that'd be rude as hell.

I guess it's totally different elsewhere, but I'd be in for a culture shock if I saw that many people trying to "capture the moment" on a device screen, instead of in their hearts and minds. For me, those are memories I treasure.

I do understand that I cannot share the experience with my family/friends, but I get to share the experience with the guy sitting/standing next to me, and maybe the guy I exchanged Twitter details with so we could talk about it afterwards. Met quite a few great people during those concerts, and some I talk with time to time on Twitter even now. :)

That's interesting it's different in Japan.

But I'm precisely pushing back on the dichotomy you're presenting -- it's not an either/or choice about a screen vs hearts and minds, or sharing with friends vs. with the person next to you.

You can have both -- you can have all of it. Record a couple of minutes, share with friends, and make friends next to you as well the entire rest of the concert and have those memories. Plus, you can multitask. Even if I'm filming a quick bit of a song, I'm sure as heck enjoying the music and experience too! It's not like I stop listening or looking. :)

That's not necessarily false, but it is missing the point.

The problem artists and other people have isn't that the individuals recording are having less fun, it's that they're ruining the show for everyone else.

If I'm seeing a band I love live, I want to see the band. I want to pay attention to the way the frontperson interacts with the audience and the expressions they make as they sing. Those are subtle details, and someone holding a bright shiny rectangle above their head and blocking my view is distracting.

OTOH, I spent a night at one of the largest nightclubs in Tokyo with a crowd that was basically standing still, lightly fistpumping while they were recording the whole set on their phones. Really killed the mood.

It's not so much the taking photos/videos that's the problem, I do that on occassion to.

This is the problem that Halide was either trying to or joking about trying to fix:

https://i.imgur.com/QA0hX.jpg

Phones are small, tablets are not. If you're behind this person, your experience is beyond just inconvenienced.

I feel the issue in this case is more a tablet being used to record a show versus a phone. The larger tablet blocks more of the view of people behind you. This does kind of fall apart with the blurred distinction between large phones and small tablets though, so in this case I feel like their decision was the right way to go (in addition to the other issues like false positives, complexity, etc).

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