Existential Questions Roared as Adele Tickets Slipped Out of my Hands
Ticketmaster : Adele :: Devil : God
I tried to get Adele tickets last week. I failed.
It was a pre-sale – which is a joke, because it sells out in minutes (I’ll get there), so basically there’s never a sale, I guess?
Anyway. It required me to sign up for a code two days early, then hope that I was selected to get the code (out of six friends, two of us, including me, got the code; the other four did not.)
The day of the sale I sign into a page 15 minutes ahead of sale time, wait in a digital “line”, to wait in a queue, to wait for a page to load, to put in that code, to then see where the seats were on a map, click those seats to reserve them. I did it once, clicking tickets in the third row (third row! Adele!) and then seeing the eye-popping price was like, eh, maybe I go a couple rows back.
That’s where it all dissolved.
I clicked around as the dots rapidly disappeared. Each time I clicked the seats, getting the ones together that I had hoped for, I hit the green “Next” button. A pop-up would come up saying that someone else had purchased them.
This happened maybe a dozen times before the map was entirely grey, all the tickets gone.
It was disappointing, of course, but more than anything I felt … stupid? I was incredibly frustrated, like how I imagine an older person must feel trying to navigate a DVD player or an iPod or TikTok or whatever new technology comes in place after their fingers were trained on the thing before it (VCR, Discman, Facebook).
Also, the older person learning TikTok is me.
I don’t think there’s any good way to manage these ticket sales. And, an infuriating 30 minutes on a computer is much better than hours and hours in person. (Remember when people would camp out for tickets to see, like, Dave Matthews Band? Gather ‘round children, it was another time.) I’d rather yell at my computer blindly than see hundreds of angry Adele fans yelling at each other IRL. (Note: this is not excusing Ticketmaster, who is, I am convinced, evil.)
No one wants to feel totally hosed, and that’s how I felt, even when I spent $0. I got my hopes up and had them dashed in a space where, suddenly, it was clear that there was little chance of success. There was a part of me, some child, that felt like I was waiting for my friends to come out and play and they never did because they had better things to do. It triggered in me this deep feeling of well, of course it would end in disappointment. Why would I assume that I could get tickets to this show … which is a terrible place to start. Granted, there are about 1,932,5902357q37587q43897 larger issues in the world right now than one homo not getting an expensive concert ticket - but the swiftness with which this triggered an existential rage in me was alarming. I’m still processing it, obviously; there’s no point to this draft yet, which is probably pretty clear if you’ve read this far. (Hi!)
The bright side is that one of us was able to get four tickets, so now it’s a game of which four get to go. That said, I’m at peace if it’s not me. I already was reminding myself that I actually sometimes hate concerts and other people as I watched the map turn gray, that reaction starting to peak through as it became more and more clear where the outcome was headed. As I try to answer why I had this reaction, I’ll make some decaf coffee and put on some music to sit in my feelings. Maybe something introspective, performed with deep feeling. Songs that tell stories of pain and resurrection. Preferable a female vocalist. Let me know if you have any recommendations.