Why do people throw things away at concerts?

This concert season may go down in history as the summer of object-throwing: in recent months, a number of music artists – including Harry Styles, Bebe Rexha, Drake and Kelsea Ballerini – have been hit or interrupted by concert-goers throwing objects at them on stage pelted (drinks, e-cigarettes, even mobile phones).

The most recent example? Cardi B, who was splashed with liquid in the face mid-set during a performance in Las Vegas on Saturday. In response, the “Bodak Yellow” singer threw her mic at the concert-goer, prompting a viewer to report a battery charge after the event.

The incidents were so numerous that some artists preemptively warned their visitors to keep their belongings to themselves.

“Have you noticed how people are forgetting frigging show etiquette at the moment?” Adele asked fans at one of her recent Las Vegas residency shows while carrying a t-shirt gun.

“People who just throw shit on stage, have you seen them? I fucking dare. You dare throw anything at me and I’ll fucking kill you,” she joked before tossing a t-shirt into the screaming crowd.

What is this “trend” all about? Jennifer Stevens Aubreya communications professor at the University of Arizona, who specializes in media effects and audience behavior, believes two factors are at play.

First, after a long hiatus from public life due to COVID, people aren’t exactly on their best behavior; There was a noticeable erosion of Manners and etiquette across the board, not just at concerts. (Drinking and other intoxicants lower the inhibition threshold even further.)

Most importantly, she believes this has something to do with the strengthening of parasocial relationships during the pandemic. “Fans and audiences really feel like they know these artists and in their minds they are bound by a friendship,” Stevens told Aubrey.

“Fans are let into the informal day-to-day lives of many of their favorite artists, which makes people feel like they have a more intimate, one-sided friendship with those artists,” Stevens told Aubrey. “After all, they often ‘talk’ about these short videos on their phones. In the minds of the fans, they are Are Friends.”

When fans see these cast members in person, they may be hoping for, and even expecting, actual two-way interaction—even rash interactions with random projectiles.

“Throwing things at an artist can be viewed as violence, but another interpretation is that it’s an act of desperation,” Stevens told Aubrey. “It’s her only chance to get the artist’s attention.” (John Lennon is shot and killed by a fan is an extreme example of this “negative attention is still my idol’s attention” behavior.)

David ThomasProfessor of forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, said the anonymity offered by a dark concert venue and large crowd could encourage bad behavior.

He believes that the pursuit of power on social media also plays a role. People want to go viral and this trend mirrors a number of viral TikTok trends. (The Throw things in the air challenge. from years ago, for example, or recently “Ice Challenge” prank.)

“Many find that attention or media coverage of any kind about bad or good behavior is rewarding,” said Thomas, a former police officer with experience in crowd psychology.

“There’s no bigger stage than a concert in front of 20,000 fans, let alone television and social media,” he told HuffPost. “The attention that the perpetrator receives at the expense of the artist is more important than enjoying the concert or any possible damage that the artist might suffer.”

Since many of the artists who have had objects thrown at them recently are women, some have speculated that misogyny also plays a role.

“Certainly it was more dramatic when fans threw things at women,” he said Paul BoothProfessor of Media and Popular Culture at DePaul University.

For example, during one of Pink’s recent performances, someone threw the cremated ashes to a fan’s mother. (“That’s your mom?” Pink asked the fan. “I don’t know what I think of that.”) And Rexha suffered an injured eye after a viewer threw a cellphone at her during a performance in New York City.

“When this trend is about attention, people feel entitled to get women’s attention and may feel that women are more inclined to give it,” Booth told HuffPost.

Of course, this trend is not exactly new. (Remember how fans used to throw panties on stage tom jones And Teddy Pendergrass concerts? If not, ask your mother.)

The Beatles and their fans at the height of Beatlemania are another good example, he said Martyn Amosa crowd expert and Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Northumbria University.

When they first toured the US in the 1960s, the band gave a series of press conferences designed to show their “human side”. George Harrison made the mistake of saying his favorite candy was Jelly Babies, and on subsequent shows it was The Four Men pelted with the candy of screaming fans.

“It was purely an act of affection, but Harrison wasn’t impressed,” Amos said. “In fact, Harrison wrote in a letter to a fan, ‘Think about how we feel when we’re on stage trying to avoid that stuff before you throw any more at us.’ If you couldn’t eat them yourself, it’s also dangerous. I got hit in the eye with candy once, and that’s not funny!’”

Paul WertheimerFounder of Crowd Management Strategies, a Los Angeles-based international crowd safety consultancy, pointed out that sometimes it is Artist throwing things into the crowd or encouraging such interactions. (In the case of Cardi B last weekend, additional footage showed both the rapper and her DJ urging the crowd to “splatter her pussy.” Cardi was apparently pissed that the liquid was sprayed on her face and not down there.)

“This is not to condone the isolated incidents that endanger the safety of artists, but this is nothing new,” Wertheimer told HuffPost. “The examples used today are disjointed and don’t have much in common.”

“Who started throwing objects first is probably a chicken and egg argument,” he added, before listing all the concerts he’d been to where objects were thrown on or off stage.

“Fireworks were the projectile of choice at a Led Zeppelin concert I attended in Chicago in 1973,” he said. “Also, I was hit in the face by a small trinket thrown by Dita Von Teese in West Hollywood and punched by Faygo, and liter bottles thrown by members of the Insane Clown Posse in Michigan.”

Stephen Reichera psychology professor at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who studies people’s behavior in crowds, thinks there isn’t enough information to speculate as to why this behavior appears to have increased.

He believes that these interactions express the ambivalence and sometimes antagonism that characterize the relationship between performer and audience.

“A lot of that comes down to the question, ‘Who controls performance?'” he said.

“Is it that the performer is in control and the audience is passive – just a consumer of what is given to them?” he wondered. “Or is it that the audience is active and directing the performance, dictating to the performer what to do, through heckling or something.”

Aside from these recent incidents of “things being thrown on stage,” Reicher said, audiences have actually become much more passive and well-behaved of late — at least compared to the more boisterous audiences of the past that Wertheimer described.

He also agreed that the claim could be one of several reasons for this. Sometimes throwing things is an act of personal responsibility, “a ritual where viewers try to impose their opinion on how a show is going,” he said.

That’s what Drake seems to have thought when an e-cigarette stick was thrown in General’s direction last month.

Steam before, or for, An audience? The Canadian rapper was downright offended.

“You’re not taking life seriously if you think I’m going to grab this vape and vape with you at the friggin’ Barclays Center,” the “Hotline Bling” artist said as he twirled the vape around onstage. “You gotta evaluate real life by throwing that frigging lemon mint vape up here and thinking I’m about to vape at Barclays with you.”