GIG ETIQUETTE

Is it rude to whip out your mobile? Are you allowed to barge through to the front? Why are people streaming Netflix? Louis Chilton looks at the unspoken rules of concertgoing

- Louis Chilton

We live in a society of rules. Mostly, these are the big ones, the hard and unwithering dicta written and codified by men in oldtimey judicial wigs. You cannot steal; you cannot burn down a police car; you cannot bludgeon your landlord with a trowel. These we know. It is the law. But beneath these, nestled discreetly in our psychosocial cortex, is another set of rules: that slippery, malleable thing we call etiquette. And for all the hullabaloo made about the supposed Great British politeness, nowhere is the dubious and disposable nature of this etiquette more apparent than at music concerts.

To use a particularly egregious example: last weekend, at the London day festival All Points East, photos emerged of young revellers who had arrived early to see the headliner (indie sensation Mitski), only to spend the afternoon camped out on the floor by the frontal barricades, watching Netflix on their phones while the lesser-known support acts took to the stage. How these people avoided being buffeted underfoot or soaked with the “accidental” spillage of a reproachful pint is a mystery. (Many would say they were asking for it.)