Boy Band Concert Experiments

Introduction At boy band concerts, the general admission standing floor is an open space in front of the stage; concert attendees buy tickets at a single price and try to get as close to the stage as possible by lining up in front of the concert venue as early as two days before the doors open. During the concert, the general admission crowd, constituted by at least a hundred members at even the smallest of venues, is often a fertile spot for pushing, hair pulling, hitting or other types of physical violence. The vast majority of the concert attendees have the same intention: 1) to get a clear view of the stage and 2) to be as close to the front as possible. In the midst of a boy band concert, the general admission floor often sees widespread
It is never clear who exactly begins pushing. It is also never clear if the concert attendees behind a member of the crowd are actively pushing them, or if the seeming “pushers” themselves are being pushed by people further behind them. The impossibility of singling out a single instigator and telling them to stop, leads to a sort of binary response by the person being pushed. 1) They can go with the forward motion and push the people in front of them. If this option is chosen, then the crowd will become more densely packed, and people are more likely to invade each other’s personal space and have uncomfortable interactions (using each other’s shoulders as armrests to take videos, stepping on each other’s toes, pressing up against each other) that could lead to irritation. This irritation could escalate into physical violence. Alternatively, as a direct result of pushing 2) the person being pushed could retaliate verbally and then physically against whoever appears to be pushing them. As a result of back-to-front pushing throughout the general admission floor, the system as a whole experiences an intense at best and violent at worst squeeze towards the front of the stage. In a more peaceful general admission floor at a boy band concert, there might just be some intense pushing. However, on more violent days, the increasing density of the crowd, increased unwanted physical interactions between members and the irritation of individual members could cause escalation into physical violence that dampens the excitement and happiness of the crowd and the concert as a