Notes on Camp(ing For Concerts)

Recently, attendees have been arriving to concert queues days in advance. The craze is emblematic of the worsening parasocialism of entitled fans, as well as the persistent problem of phones at shows.

There’s an infomercial that plays before Billie Eilish’s concert in Manchester, on the 22^nd of July. It describes her eco-friendly practices on her current tour: merch is made responsibly, via recycled materials and decreased water use; food sold around the venue is plant-based; low-impact methods of transport like walking and buses are encouraged. The focus on eco-consciousness isn’t alien to Eilish; not only has her climate anxiety bled into her art, but she has a history of eco-conscious practices, like making her perfume line vegan. (Though Eilish, as a major-label pop artist, can’t quite escape the clutch of capitalism, she’s smartly engineered its trappings – high prices and huge profits – to align as closely with her values as possible.) A concert tour, an affair rich with travelling and lighting and resource consumption, can never have no environmental impact, yet Eilish’s infomercial demonstrates an earnest, impassioned effort to minimise it.

The scenes outside the arena tell a different story. As I and thousands of other attendees with standing tickets saunter towards the ticket gates, the floor is covered with camping paraphernalia: umbrellas, scarves, sleeping bags, stools, and (perhaps most criminally of all) unopened packets of Digestive biscuits. Most of the items look in decent condition – Reverb, a climate charity, have said that they plan to donate usable camping gear to local homelessness organisations – yet the existence of the waste at all is an issue. For campers, a chance to be close to Eilish – perhaps even interact with her – might well come at the expense of the climate. No bother.

That’s without mentioning the more immediate impact on the other, less dedicated concertgoers who have to trudge through the campers’ rubbish then endure the smell of their B.O. (Many campers, afraid of losing their spot in the queue, will happily go days without washing.) I, for one, was about five rows from barricade on the 22^nd, and was confronted by pervasive smells of urine and sweat. This smell couldn’t even be chalked up to the age of Eilish’s fanbase (most of whom are old enough to start sweating but not to have the wisdom to carry antiperspirant in their concert bags); a friend who sat in the nosebleeds of one of Eilish’s London shows told me that the B.O. smell wasn’t an issue.

In the digital age, concert camping represents a grander, more intense issue. More than a method of uniting fans and making friends (which can easily be done inside the concert) or a logistical nuisance, this worsening trend speaks to the broader shift in concert culture, where shows now double as events for content to be captured. The campers get the best view; the campers get the best content. But at what cost?

A sample of the waste left by campers outside the Co-op Live in Manchester

The impracticalities of concert camping are obvious and multitudinous. Aside from the aforementioned issues of litter and hygiene, concert queues outside arenas are typically in urban areas (at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro, attendees camped in the same tunnel that homeless people were often kicked out of by law enforcement). Owing to safety issues, venue websites usually state that they’ll turn campers away. This, of course, does nothing to faze the modern barricade seeker, and so venue security must be deployed even on days when the headlining artist hasn’t paid for their services. The use of security – alongside other measures like handing out water at the barricade – is not so much an endorsement of the concert camping practice as it is a pre-emptive mitigation of its consequences. These venues, naturally, would rather keep these crazed fans safe and healthy than stick to their guns, leave them to the elements, and have a media scandal when dozens inevitably pass out.

(A friend told me that one particular concertgoer camped for twenty-four hours before the Eilish gig, but slept for six of those hours in a hotel. It’s a paradoxical practice, camping for a concert without putting in the legwork. If you’re so deadset on being a ‘real’ fan, sacrificing comfort, hygiene and health for a good view, maybe you should also sacrifice convenience. Else, why is anyone queuing up this early?)

Venue precautions don’t stop some people from being ill anyway. Most concerts I’ve been to post-pandemic have had someone pass out midway through. An FKA twigs show in Manchester earlier this year had several people be carried out by security in a ten-minute span; during Lizzy McAlpine’s slow, folky set in Birmingham last October, someone at barricade passed out. Predictably, these issues have extended to Eilish’s shows; one TikTok by an irate attendee explained how she camped for seven days and got barricade, only to pass out, have a panic attack, and be rescued by security. It’s unclear, though, what the user wants us to feel sympathy for. Security were doing their job and keeping people safe, and if this attendee felt unwell she had every right to escape the pit. In cases like these, the obsessive fan puts themselves at physical risk – forgetting that, if no-one camped, there would be a far lower risk of danger.

Tellingly, the caption of the TikTok has Eilish, as well as her brother and mother, tagged, as though the user desires a vague sign that she’s appreciated in lieu of the interactions she could’ve had onstage. That’s the key to this whole thing: the interactions.

Eilish performing in Manchester on the 22nd of July

Often, the people queuing for insane lengths of time care chiefly about the artist acknowledging them, singing to them, or – as Eilish does during ‘What Was I Made For?’ – reaching out to touch them. Not necessarily because they have a vested interest in the music (though this is sometimes the case) but often because these interactions make for excellent footage. In our age of social media, concert attendees’ phones tend to view the show before they do, and the resulting videos help fans increase their personal stake in the fandom. The closer you are, the more Eilish might interact with you; the more she interacts with you, the bigger a fan you are.

These days, the value of being at a concert is secondary to that of being able to say you were there; similarly, what good is your idol acknowledging your existence if you weren’t able to document it? The social capital accrued by close-up footage of the artist has become, in the last decade or so, immeasurably valuable; as such, my view five rows back at the Eilish concert was peppered with phone screens, all presumably trying to get that viral video. (That’s not to say my view was a poor one – on the contrary, she was within a few feet of me several times during the concert.)

Another sample of the campers’ aftermath

I turned up three hours prior to doors for the Eilish concert, which was a show in the round (therefore with much more barricade space). If it were most other artists, arriving at that time would’ve gotten me far closer; I arrived an hour before doors for Tyler, the Creator and was second row. For Jamie xx at Lido Festival last month, a two-hour wait at the main stage got me barricade.

Then again, Eilish is not like most other artists. In the near-decade she’s been active, her relationship with her fans has thrived on parasociality, having referred to her supporters as her ‘friends’. Eilish’s lyrics, which often deal diaristically with themes of heartbreak (and, particularly earlier in her career, darker topics like suicide) have naturally been lapped up by every tween who feels they’re misunderstood; one review of the concert claimed that screaming these lyrics was better than therapy. Eilish’s listeners feel like they know her – a brush of the fingertips at barricade is one step closer to being her friend.

It's fascinating, then, that Eilish hasn’t been able to weaponise her fans’ devotion to extend to caring about the environment – arguably one of Eilish’s most passionate activist endeavours. This partial latching exposes the weirdly shallow obsession of some of these crazed fans, and the true hypocrisy of modern fandoms. These fans only appreciate the aspects of Eilish that benefit them – interactions at barricade, good concert footage – but when it comes to making more eco-friendly choices, a lifestyle move that tends to inconvenience the consumer, Eilish’s fans balk. The self-sacrifice of hygiene and health is worth it; the sacrifice of not using single-use plastics is not.

Courtesy of TikTok user @teelmao

During Eilish’s rendition of ‘When The Party’s Over’, she asks for silence in the arena as she layers her vocals in a live loop. The obsessive fans responding to this segment can be split into two categories: some, even before Eilish has asked the audience to be quiet, take it upon themselves to shush people, as though auditioning for the role of her advocate. Others scream during the silence anyway, desperate to be heard. Both types of people demonstrate the overzealous fandom behaviour that dominates modern concerts – the desire to make it known to everyone in the room that you’re the biggest fan of all.

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