Put the camera down and enjoy the band

Imagine the scene. You’re standing in front of the stage waiting for your favourite band to come on, surrounded by hundreds of other fans. The lights go down. The crowd cheers as the band step out on stage. And all around you, a forest of hands rises into the air, grasping mobile phones and digital cameras.

With the rise of Flickr and YouTube, people have become so obsessed with documenting every event (significant or otherwise) in their lives that it seems they no longer bother experiencing anything fully first-hand.

Instead of going to a gig and watching the band, they go to the gig and video the band on their mobile phone before going home and uploading it to the internet. I find this incomprehensible.

I’m as wedded to my phone and net connection as the next geek, but that’s part of why I enjoy live music so much. It’s an emphatically real experience. You’re actually there in the moment, rather than one step removed. That's important to me in a world where more and more of our lives revolve around instant messaging, TV, social networking, phone calls and a dozen other things that only seem to separate us from the real world.

Why would anyone choose to be somewhere in real life and still watch events through a screen, even if it is only a tiny one held in their hand?

Stop trying to live your own life vicariously. You’re already there. You don’t need to prove anything. YouTube is packed with grainy, low-resolution gig videos that consist of crowd noise and other people’s arms. Yours isn’t going to be any different.

And in the mean time, you’re blocking my view and getting in the way of the mosh pit.

So please, put the bloody phone down.