Here is something I would not wish on my worst enemies: waiting in line for Taylor Swift tickets. You log into Ticketmaster with your silly little access code (you had to wait in linefor those too), click a link with a delicate sense of hope, and find yourself plonked in a virtual queue behind 77,000 people who also want tickets, seriously any tickets, to see Swift’s wildly popular Eras tour. There was, according to one cheery friend in my WhatsApp group, a 2.2% chance of landing UK tickets. I did this on consecutive mornings in July; recovery took a few days. A week later, as I was doom scrolling on the tube, watching the 60th TikTok of this tour, I wondered: why bother with tickets when I’ve watched it all on my phone, every outfit change and song transition, safely on the Hammersmith and City line?
There is a pretty obvious answer: nothing will ever replace the thrill of seeing someone you love live. “The thing about social media posts is that they’re only snippets,” Gabriela Serpa Royo, a behavioural analyst at insights agency Canvas8 reminds me. “It’s like free crowdsourced advertising for entertainers, like what trailers are to movies.” But anyone who’s watched a trailer knows their implicit danger: a well-edited clip intrigues, an overstuffed one threatens to ruin the entire thing. And at this point, the trailer for Swift’s tour is running long. On TikTok, the hashtag #theerastour has attracted over 12 billion views. Want to watch Jennifer Garner accepting friendship bracelets at a concert (the tour’s unofficial accessory, a reference to Swift’s lyrics from her 10th album Midnights), or a girl FaceTiming an ex during “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, or a crowd bounce so hard it charted on seismograms? You will find it here.
Other tours have become just as lively online. A TikTok of Harry Styles, in glittery fringe, on the final night of his Love on Tour, the fifth highest-grossing tour ever, has been watched 3 million times. Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour is a mainstay: a parade of celebrity guests and show-stopping outfits. The “mute challenge”, in which the audience falls silent when Beyoncé sings “Look around, everyone on mute”, regularly goes viral. I have not attempted to buy tickets for Styles or Beyoncé – I am sure it is difficult! – but I could outline for you the setlist and choreography. I asked friends who are online and attended Styles’ gigs if seeing so much content ruined their appetite. It did not, though one said she tried not to follow the posts too much. It certainly didn’t stop any of them posting selfies from the concert, wrapped in feather boas (which, if you are not online or a fan of Styles, is the unofficial accessory of his tour).
There are a few reasons why it might feel like content around tours has become louder than the gigs themselves, according to Eloise Skinner, an existential therapist who follows trends in fandoms. “We are trying to re-socialise ourselves after being away from big social situations for a few years,” she explains, and stadium tours are the perfect place to do just that: you’ve likely paid hundreds to see the same singer perform. “Fans can find these really big, existential themes of belonging, community, shared identity, shared purpose.” So, yes, it can be taxing to see a crowd of raised iPhones, but perhaps all those posts could prolong that post-gig high.
And, partly thanks to celebrities’ carefully-curated online personas, we feel closer to them than ever before – the rise of so-called parasocial relationships. “People feel they have more of an ownership over a celebrity in their work than they did previously,” Skinner says, mentioning the alarming trend of concert-goers throwing items onstage at singers (Drake got a phone, Pink got someone’s ashes). “An authentic connection is always a dialogue between you and the other person,” Skinner points out, but this has not stopped fans projecting. When news broke earlier this year that Swift had broken up with her long-term boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn, fans were quick to record footage of the singer performing the song “Lover” (written during the Alwyn years) apparently looking distant. Was that a sign that Swift no longer believes in love? Or a singer preserving energy on a sold-out world tour? It could be both, or neither, but it became yet another talking point, which serves both fans’ intrigue and Swift’s status as the most famous person on the planet.
At least people are doing something with all this content now. I have spent too much time taking photos at gigs, and then even longer deleting them when phone storage is running low. Skinner references “Tube girl”, a TikToker by the name of Sabrina Bahsoon, who films herself dancing to music on the Underground, as evidence of a younger generation’s free-spirited approach to social media. “In the past, people probably wouldn’t have exhibited that behaviour, because they would have thought, ‘Oh, people will judge me’, but now, we’re starting to ascribe more importance in the social and digital world,” Skinner says. “It’s actually more important that you capture the footage at a Taylor Swift concert, even if you are not watching the stage, and then you have it for later.”
I secured four tickets to Swift’s gig in Paris, my greatest achievement this summer, only to learn that the pop star would be bringing a filmed version of the tour to cinemas (in North America at the moment, but surely British venues won’t want to miss out on the chance to sell tickets to 20-something teenagers). My group chat was delighted. “We should go as a warmup,” a friend suggested. Wouldn’t this ruin the entire thing for us? Should we not savour surprise? I’ll let you know in May, because inevitably I will be in line at the cinema. When you are a fan of a superstar, you often just have to go with it. “Musicians have become world builders,” Royo says, and Swift is a once-in-a-generation architect. “Between friendship bracelets, dressing up for the concerts, and now Swift’s takeover of movie theatres to screen the actual concert, social media posts are one of many artefacts that construct the fantasy of fandom.”
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
