A personal thank you to the people who Snapchat their entire concert experience
Allow me to paint you a picture: It’s a brisk spring eve. The familiar scent of stale beer floods the air, while the floor beneath your shoes is faintly sticky from the same.
Strangers from all walks of life surround you, beads of sweat forming on their brow. A generously illuminated stage lies ahead. Its inhabitants play a familiar tune. You know this tune. You all know it. It’s your favorite. Everybody is singing along. What a moment this is.
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You suddenly feel a desperate urge to document it. You pull out your phone, open Snapchat and hold the record button. You see the red progress bar fill to its capacity and watch as it becomes successfully added to your story. For 24 hours, close friends and people you went to high school with will be able to see that you were at this concert, and they will think you are extremely cool.
Enter me: your old acquaintance from high school. In bed. Phone to face. 9:59 p.m. Friday night. Absolutely loving those ten seconds.
Do you remember me? I have watched your ten second video of Cage The Elephant so many times. We were in calculus together. Too many times to count. I haven’t spoken to you since then either. I just want to appropriately digest the contents therein. I do not remember if we were ever friends. You have captured the concert's soul in that Snapchat. It was too long ago to recall. It is like I am there at the show with you, yet I am also comfortably in bed. You were right to post it.
This is my sincere thank you to those who charitably Snapchat their concert experience. I understand the sacrifice you made. You took yourself out of this extraordinary moment to broadcast a small part of it to your Snapchat family — to me.
It's magic. Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers, seemingly miles away from your out-of-focus iPhone 5S camera, but now — against all odds — in my bedroom. In my soul. Yes, the video starts jarringly in the middle of a song. And some might say the quality is "bad" or the clip is "so removed from context I can barely tell it's even music." But they are wrong. They are reprehensibly wrong. This is art. This is beautiful. This is everything.
I no longer feel the need to buy concert tickets. Instead, I rely on you and my Snapchat friends to transport me there via ten second video clips. And as a result of that patronage, I have saved enough money to buy 117 "Bazinga" t-shirts on Amazon.
Thank you. Again. The shirts are in the mail now. They are all for me.
Without your Snapchat prowess I would be completely out of the loop.
Though it may be shrill, disorganized noise to most, it is a serene blissful soundscape of immeasurable splendor to me. I am sad when it’s over and I always wish it were longer. Won’t you Snap again? Has the next song began? Please share it with me, won’t you?
