Zeitgeist: Please stop throwing stuff at people

Bebe Rexha shared photos after receiving stitches for her injury. Photos / Twitter

OPINION:

I know I’m not alone in often feeling utterly baffled by what becomes a “trend” on any given week. Lately, it seems we are getting daily headlines about artists being thrown weird, and often downright dangerous, objects while they are performing on stage.

Last month, Bebe Rexha ended up in hospital after someone (I’m not sure it makes sense to call him a “fan”) attending a gig threw a cellphone at her while she was performing. In the same month, in the UK, singer Pink was thrown a bag containing someone’s mum’s ashes, which is a sentence you probably did not expect to read. Lil Nas X had to interrupt his concert in Sweden after someone threw a sex toy at him (”what’s wrong with y’all?” he asked which, to be honest, is a fair question under the circumstances). Also recently, country singer Kelsea Ballerini had to leave the stage during her gig in Idaho after she was struck in the eye by someone’s friendship bracelet (which is probably the least friendly thing you can do with a friendship bracelet).

STOP. THROWING. THINGS. ON. STAGE. It’s common sense. It’s not funny, it’s not cute.
Kelsea Ballerini, did not deserve this, NO artist deserves to be treated this way. If you don’t know how to act right, you should NOT be at a concert pic.twitter.com/hqmUTjYYd4

— angela (@cryjustalittIe) June 29, 2023

The phenomenon of throwing weird (and often gross) things from the crowd to an artist on stage is not new. In 2012, for example, Harry Styles was hit by some tampons from the crowd at a gig. In the same year, Cher Lloyd was thrown a bottle of urine. Perhaps the most classically famous case of this is the 1982 incident with Ozzy Osbourne when someone decided to throw an actual real bat at him. He reportedly thought it was made of rubber, bit it and had to get a rabies shot. While the more recent examples are not quite as gruesome, they are certainly frequent enough to point to an emerging trend.

Without wanting to get too philosophical about this, I’ve got to ask: what the hell? Also, why the hell?

Some experts do have some theories - and point to social media as one of the things to blame.

Laurel Williams, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, recently told the Associated Press that social media had created a deeper sense of connection and emotional closeness for fans, which could go some way towards explaining these acts.

Also speaking to AP, David Schmid, a pop culture expert at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, said the whole idea of throwing items on stage relates to the etymology of the word “fan” - which is short for “fanatic - which is historically a term linked to religious devotion.

“From that perspective, you can read the stage as a kind of altar and the objects that are thrown onto the stage as devotional objects,” Schmid explained.

Someone gave their Mothers ashes to Pink. I need yall to have boundaries like girl what?! 😭😂 pic.twitter.com/OkL4762fEs

— Andrew (@AsAndrewSpeaks) June 26, 2023

Dr Lucy Bennett, a lecturer at Cardiff University, told the BBC that it is also not entirely unrelated to the Covid-19 pandemic. Bennett says people attending gigs now are doing so after the pandemic restrictions were in place, a time when “we couldn’t be physically present at concerts”, and that has led to a change in behaviour.

The expert also believes people are doing it because they want to get noticed by their favourite artists.

I know it might feel like a stretch to relate this to the pandemic at first but I do believe there is something to be said for this change in the dynamic between fans and artists, with social media and lockdowns making everyone feel simultaneously further apart but also brought closer together by online platforms, only to now have that “closeness” taken away again, to a degree. And, speaking of social media, you do have to wonder how many of these people are doing this in the hopes of seeing themselves as the protagonists of a viral post, for better or worse.

Regardless of the reasons, the trend needs to disappear before someone gets seriously hurt. Artists have been speaking up against it lately. Adele, in particular, did not mince her words when discussing the topic earlier this week. The singer asked her audience at a show if they had noticed “how people are, like, forgetting f***ing show etiquette at the moment”.

“Throwing s*** on stage, have you seen them?” she asked, before giving a word of warning. “I f***ing dare you, I dare you throw something at me, I’ll f***ing kill you”.

She then picked up a T-shirt cannon and shot it into the crowd as she told them: “Stop throwing things at the artists.”

Singer-songwriter Charlie Puth called the trend “disrespectful and very dangerous”.

This trend of throwing things at performers while they are on stage must come to an end. (Bebe, Ava, AND NOW Kelsea Ballerini…) It’s so disrespectful and very dangerous. Please just enjoy the music I beg of you…

— Charlie Puth (@charlieputh) June 29, 2023

“This trend of throwing things at performers while they are on stage must come to an end. (Bebe, Ava, AND NOW Kelsea Ballerini …) It’s so disrespectful and very dangerous. Please just enjoy the music I beg of you,” he wrote on Twitter.

The man who was charged with throwing the cellphone at Bebe Rexha said he did it because he thought “it would be funny” (which, to be clear, it really wasn’t). Rexha was spotted wearing what appeared to be protective goggles at a concert in LA a few days ago.

It’s a weird time to be alive in many ways, including this one, and I don’t mean to sound like anyone’s mum (other than the person I’m a mum to) but these people really risk ruining it for everyone. It’s already annoying enough when they force you to give up your bottle top and walk around the venue with your bottle of water spilling everywhere (is that still a thing? I don’t know, I haven’t been to a gig in a while). If this weird trend ends up leading to changes in the level of surveillance and security at concerts, we all lose.