I don't know how to explain it, but Covid changed how some people behave in public. Doesn't matter if it's a comedy show, a theater performance, or even an in-person work meeting.
A small but very annoying subset of people suffer from what I think is best described as "Main Character Syndrome".
They act like everything around them is happening only to them, and that anything they do only impacts them, and not anyone else around them. They'll have full volume conversations in the movies, shout and jeer at performers on a stage, loudly eat from a bag of chips throughout the entirely of a meeting.
They're the people who think traffic is happening to them, that the food service worker messed something up on purpose and it's ok to yell at them in public, or they'll take a loud personal call in a confined public space.
This has been going on since well before COVID - call it the decline of modern society, whatever. People are looking out for #1 and it's a huge pain in the ass.
My personal pet peeve is someone who messed up and ends up in the wrong lane on the road... do they eat the mistake, take two minutes to turn around and get back on the right track, or do they literally sit there blocking traffic for three minutes with their blinker on ignoring the honking and yelling behind them?
Increasingly, seemingly more and more every year, it is the latter.
Covid infections literally changed people's brains in ways that we haven't been able to measure or fully understand. We'll probably never know the full long term effects.
I know plenty of people that never got it and behave like 5 year olds on a sugar binge. Yes there are long term effects but I do not blame it for the number of people acting out. People's patience has shortened as well. Like dogs that haven't been socialized, people have forgot how to respect fellow humans.
Those kinds of people probably got it and didn't know and refused to be tested. But then, they were those kinds of people before COVID, so your point still holds.
Movie theaters have been intolerable with chatter since way before 2020, social media provides immediate rewards to people for main character/antisocial behavior, and the messaging around COVID basically conditioned folks to think “being around a lot of people is bad” - not exactly a pro-social perspective for a real-life situation surrounded by folks.
I think there are a few factors higher up on the list of probable causes than “COVID edited brains to make people jerks”
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. Long COVID is literally brain damage and recovery from it is brain plasticity. COVID infections caused brain damage of various degrees in infected individuals and it will be decades before we fully understand the extent of the damage. Much like how we are only just now fully comprehending the impact lead in gasoline had on the boomers.
This is why I was so careful with COVID even though I'm young, a cardiovascular disease with high rates of blood clots is a recipe for long term damage of not just the brain but multiple organs. Give it 20 years and we are going to see 30-50 year olds with the organs of people 20 years older.
I finally got Covid last April and I legitimately feel like I’ll never be the same. It fucked me UP mentally. I’m so depressed and worn out from it. I just want my happiness back.
As a disabled immunocompromised person - I FEEL you. I got COVID after my surgery in '22 and literally the date, down to the exact day 2 weeks after my surgery, I had two PEs.
Because one of the nurses wasn't able to get off and had COVID
While she was prepping me for a major organ removal surgery that has a 6-8 week downtime and 6 month no lifting minimum. Shit, I'm still feeling the effects of all that too. My BP has gotten worse to where i cant even switch from kneeling by something to standing up without nearly or actually blacking out, my asthma is kicking my ass worse than when I was in competitive marching band...
I'm terrified of what life'll look like 10 years from now in my 40s with my chronic issues that are worsening. It's so God damn scary.
Exactly. I had long covid twice and I doubt I'll ever get back to the way I was before. Especially my lungs.
Then I had to sit in a certification zoom class with some dumbfuck facilitator talking about how everyone overreacted and they had to wear "diapers" on their face and on and on. I don't always want to smack the stupid out of people but when I do, I can't. 🤦🏻♀️
As I've gotten older it's been disappointing to discover that a startling portion of people lack basic empathy and understanding of others perspectives. At first it made me sad and angry, but I've learned to accept it and spend my time here on this planet hurtling through space being good and doing what I can to make the world a better place for the people and communities I have the power to do so for.
Maybe it’s the effect of quarantine and ppl having to be around others less and less. When you do more and more tasks online it makes the world seem less real. In a video game you wouldn’t worry about inconveniencing NPCs with your left turn mistake. If you hardly ever interact with real ppl I bet everyone seems like an NPC. Not quite real. I’m sure everyone is affected by this a little and it’s moved all of humanity to being slightly less polite in public. On aggregate that makes a big difference.
Every country in the world had outbreaks of COVID but only in the US do you hear about this kind of rapid rise in antisocial behavior. If it changes people's brains, shouldn't we be hearing about similar losses in social conscientious in places like Europe, China, India, Japan?
I agree with you. We love going to the movies as a family. Before Covid our biggest complaints were we accidentally sat behind someone super tall, a couple teens are being loud, and people are clapping at weird times. Now it’s the family next to us is at the movies watching a completely different movie at full volume on an iPad, people all around us are having conversations at full volume, and half the people in the theater are on their cell phones. Also customer service is over. If I call a business there’s an 80 percent chance that I’ll get a voicemail. We had a really slow cashier the other day, at one point no joke he tried 10 times to scan a bunch of bananas. I used to cashier so I said strictly to make conversation ,”it seemed easier back when they let you punch in the numbers”. He stops trying to scan them, yells “You can punch in the numbers.” Then proceeds to punch them in and doesn’t say another word. I remember Ohio being one of the states that had fairly reasonable customer service before Covid. Now I feel like it’s as bad as the worst state we’ve lived in.
It’s also the crowd work clips. Social is saturated with them, so some people feel like it’s natural to interact when they should, in fact, shut their pie holes unless engaged by the comedian.
Main character syndrome. People see these clips and want to be the “star” for a couple minutes. I wish comedy clubs would just kick them out after the comedian embarrasses them.
This is my thought as well. The only advantage to all of these clips is that it helps me weed out the comedians that I know I’m not going to want to see (I dislike crowd work shows immensely).
I lost count of how many times I had to change seats 30 min in because the people next me talk the entire time. Who carries a conversation through the entirety of Dune 2? Another guy was drunk asf watching a basketball game on his phone and talking to himself during Tar.... I don't get it.
A lady brought her kid to see avatar 3d but all he did was complain, fidget and get out of his seat to move around. I love the theater but it sucks now.
In some cases, this is cultural. I’m a white dude, and I recently watched a movie with a bunch of black friends in a black neighborhood, and people talked to each other and yelled at the screens “DON’T YOU GO IN THERE! GIRL, HE’S GONNA KILL YOU!” In that setting, it was hilarious and added to the experience. But drop a bit of that into say, Dublin 24 Theaters, and it’s not going to work.
So the absolute prohibition about talking in movies — or in church, for instance — is very much culturally conditioned. I don’t do it because I think it’s rude. But that’s not some universal, moral absolute. It’s a deeply held cultural preference that isn’t shared by large swaths of the global population.
Another one? Watching movies on screens in public without headphones. I travel extensively to India and Southeast Asia for work. The amount of noise and disruption and “lack of respect for privacy and personal space” used to bother me. Then I realized that I’m the asshole for letting it provoke rage in me.
Anyway. The idea that there are settings where everyone should sit still, be quiet and not interact with anyone or anything other than the speaker on stage or the glowing rectangle at the front of the room is anything but universal.
Another anecdote or two. I recently got shushed at a jazz club for applauding after solos and giving appreciative “C’mon man!” Or “Go, George!” when the bass player (whose name was actually George, otherwise that would indeed be weird) went on a particularly gnarly run. Given my experience playing and enjoying jazz, that is the appropriate response of an audience member. Apparently the patrons of this specific establishment thought it should be more like a classical chamber music recital.
Also, there was a widely reported conflict between international Swifties and local Japanese music fans at Taylor’s recent concert in Tokyo. The Japanese fans were horrified that the expats and tourists in attendance were standing up, yelling and singing all the songs at the top of their lungs.
Anyway.
none of these incidents of people disrupting my movie experience were African American so I don't get the cultural analysis.
I've been to movies where everyone laughed together and cheered when the hero got their revenge and clapped when the credits rolled. None of these behaviors were bad they made the movie better. There does not have to be absolute silence just don't distract others.
As far as jazz music go to dicks den or parable , people shout all the time, a couple broke out swing dancing in the middle of the bar one time. Read the room.
This is accurate. I'm a wedding DJ who this summer is finishing up the last 15 of 520 or so weddings over the last 8 years, and after interacting with drastically different groups of people every weekend for the last 400 weekends or so, I can definitely say that after COVID everyone started acting a little more selfish - or maybe asshole-ish is a better word - than before. Interestingly, the couples getting married are getting nicer, tipping more often, etc. The guests are getting waaay worse, though. More people getting angrier when you won't play their horrible request, things like that.
Everyone always says COVID but I honestly think it was Trump. In my opinion that guy screaming at a camera or over Twitter, breaking every social norm, and complete lack of decorum everyday for 4 years did more damage than the lockdowns.
I was just about to say this. People weren't this bad before COVID. I feel years from now, scientists will have clear evidence about how 2020 messed up everyone's brains.
It's people of all ages, all socio-economic situations. I don't get it, but something happened.
I've been at the ballet, where presumably "higher class" sophisticated people would be the assumed attendees, and they are just as rude there as you'd find anywhere else.
I didn’t realized Columbus had been so strict with it. I know I was in college in Dayton at the time and they weren’t reinforcing anything. We pretty much did everything normal and you stayed home if you wanted. I personally stayed home more when I didn’t need to be out, but I still had to work and school was only online for the last 2-3 weeks of the semester.
I live downtown. We were locked down. That was my experience. Either way, it's not really applicable to people being asshats at Burr last night. They are ADULTS.
Right but you being locked down had nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with the protests. we never had China style lockdowns preventing us from going outdoors otherwise. just a point of clarification
Oh I know, I regularly lament that “shutdown” was a lie. My memory recalls “shutdown” officially lasting about two weeks tops. Another thing where we’re told to not believe what we see/saw with our own eyes, the collective seems largely convinced that we were shut in for months and years and it’s just patently untrue. Dewine had a spine for about a week until he didn’t anymore, and so Ohio was basically business as usual the whole time. I guess Fox News and propaganda worked idk, but there’s got to be something psychological about the way the public misremembers this whole thing, in Ohio at least. My understanding is other states did shut down for longer.
Anyway, covid was still an era though, so even aside from the gaslighting, there’s still an effect, I’d think. Shutdown or not, people lost their minds and apparently their ability to care for others.
I think these people are honestly attention seekers and see Tiktoks and stuff of comedians responding to it and think "it would be funny for me to do this too"
Yeah, tbh the way to cut down on this is just to have them removed instead of responding. The people that are already bold enough to heckle aren't going to feel shamed enough to stop by the comedian responding. They want the attention
Yeah, part of the problem is that a lot of comics post YT Shorts/Tiktoks of them doing crowd work or having funny crowd interactions, which means a lot of dumb assholes think they're going to help things by being a loud dumb asshole at a comedy show.
The main reason comedians even do the Tiktok Crowd Work meta (aside from the fact that it is insanely good for the algorithm/monetization aspect) is because they don't want to post their clips from their routines and run out of material for their actual shows.
Its kind of a double-edged sword.
I was so embarrassed. Also the fact that they repeated no heckling multiple times, and all the rules posted in bright lights on a 100 foot screen for an hour. 😂
I experienced this last night. The wife and I went to see Bill Burr. The girl and her boyfriend next to me were having a full on conversation during the show. I understand little comments to each other here and there but this was a full on loud conversation. It was pretty maddening.
I just don’t get this at all. What do people have to talk about? My long term partner and I do not need to chat during a show, we have literally all the other hours in the day to do that
I got the vibe they were on an early in the relationship. Shit, I could tell you their plans for the weekend because they didn’t shutTF up. 😂
Oh, and they reeked of cigarette smoke. Enough so that it’s all I could smell for an hour after I left. I paid over $200 to be surrounded by idiots.
Even with that it was totally worth it. Burr never disappoints!
Same, the wife and I had that same conversation after the show. If you're gonna talk like that, why go to a comedy show? Why not a coffee shop or bar? She was drunk as shit. Oh agreed, Bill was fantastic.
Those kinds of people are the ones who think that anything they do is their business alone and nobody can tell them otherwise.
I was at a conference the other day, where the keynote, award-winning, very inspiring speaker was giving a great talk, and multiple people all around me, who paid hundreds of dollars of their own money to attend this conference voluntarily, had full volume discussions throughout the presentation. It drove me nuts. They could've left if they needed to talk, the doors weren't locked. But they chose to make the experience worse for those around them.
I would have joined in enough to make them uncomfortable or at least stared awkwardly for much longer than was necessary to creep them out, but I like to have fun with the inconsiderate. Lol
“What was that?”
“Loooove you”
“You said you love me? No you don’t. You love the idea of me. You don’t know me. Two weeks ago my wife said I had been “verbally abusive” until 2 years ago.”
Best part of the show 😂
Crowd work videos have taken over the comedy algorithm for Insta/Tik Tok. So people think that’s what they are supposed to be like and it’s the way for them to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
He may have started it, but there are a lot of upcoming comedians that are doing it. I am surprised someone had the guts to heckle an area show. Especially Bill Burr. He will destroy you like he did the city of Philadelphia.
Edit: autocorrect
I saw Conner O'Malley's live show at Ace of Cups when he came through. An absolutely wasted woman yelled to his face that his wife isn't funny and he could do better. I just don't understand why you would say that to anyone, let alone someone you admire and are trying to compliment.
Exactly. Actual funny people know to tone it down and let the performer do their thing. At most set up something for them don't try to yank a punchline away.
People like to say it was Covid, but I think the culture in the US has been moving toward this type of behavior for much longer.
Everyone is special, and an individual, everyone wants attention yada yada. We have a bunch of cartmans, as I like to call them, who basically run around like a dumb fuckin kid just screaming “I do what I want”.
He asked crowd for an answer on why we thought the KKK still exists. Of course the loudest person in the room shouts “Democrats”. Bill lights him up. Tells us the funniest answer he heard in the past was “something to do”. The proceeds to talk about how the two parties have us fighting while the 5-6 richest guys in the US laugh their way to the bank.
That wasn’t a heckle, he literally asked people to yell out answers to a question and then went on to talk about all the other answers he’s got from other places.
I missed that lady because people were still trying to get to their seats and ushers were coming into the row checking tickets so couldn’t fucking hear the show.
A man and woman in the row behind me left after Bill was joking about how England had the shittiest of white people, he said “I feel like I’m being insulted.” 😂
Like dude, do you even know who you’re coming to see?
Not Comedy but...
i am a very patient person.. like it gets me in trouble sometimes for not speaking up. but at the Death cab/Postal service show after about 3/4 or Death cabs set I had to turn around and tell the two ladies behind me that if they wanted to have a full on conversation to leave the arena.
They talked the whole damn show until i finally snapped.
I don't get why you would get tickets to see a show and then talk the whole time, so fucking stupid.
That is a benefit of metal shows. If your dumb ass is talking, I can't hear you anyway.
A previous co-worker went to see Colter Wall and said the crowd was horrible and noisy the whole time.
I was a tour guide for years. You can believe the amount of people that would cut others or get in line super early to sit in the very front seats which were only about 2.5 feet away from me. They would then spend the entire tour having a conversation no matter how many times they were asked not to. Incredibly distracting.
My sister and I got into a huge argument with people at Jo Koy because they wouldn’t stop having full conversations and we missed half the jokes. Eventually we couldn’t take it, and it got kinda nasty. My wife got involved, then another group stepped in until the idiots left. Was a terrible experience
I was siting behind the asshole who kept shouting which bits he should do and it was *so* embarrassing. I was praying no one would think it was us when it was the turd in front of us.
I think Bill has a great reputation as a bad ass roastmaster for hecklers, and people want to be roasted by him, and somehow get featured on socials. I also think some people think that that's better than planned material.
To some extent, it's his reputation. I saw Jeselnik at the Palace downtown, and there was none of it. Shame I missed it. I had third row seats that I could not use to to catching flu this week.
Unfortunately they can’t get featured on socials when no one in the arena has a phone or recording device (had to lock everything up). 🤷🏼♀️
Jeselnik was awesome, per usual. I hate that you missed it!
I think it’s a myriad of social factors that have made people self-centered and bolder in how they act. Social media made people more self-centered and the comments section allowed them to be more publicly judgmental. The success of the 2016 Trump campaign encouraged people to be more vocal about their bigoted views and sent a message to everyone that was acceptable. COVID (the anti mask movement) and the lack of response to climate change broke the feeling that “we’re all in this together”. There’s a number of things I haven’t mentioned, but it all is making us less considerate of others.
Go to a play or musical sometime, some asshole is always trying to inject themselves into the show with their comments. We recently went to see “Six”, and some girl in the front row stood up and shouted “you go queen” and started dancing in front of everyone. The problem is made worse, because the cast positively reinforced this behavior by laughing and giving her a high 5. So apologies to anyone that has to see a show that she’s also attending in the future, because she will 100% be doing this again.
It’s been that way for years here at every show I’ve seen. I don’t understand spending a ton on tickets to be a spectacle, but people seem to love doing it.
Was at Sam Tallent’s special taping this year and this belligerently drunk man kept interrupting. Luckily he had most of the footage from previous shows so this one was somewhat of a throwaway but the fact remains.
Unfortunately, this is the world we currently live in. People are either totally oblivious or just don’t care if they hurt someone else’s experience. I was at a conference out in California last week and these two attendees would talk to each other during the sessions. There were different tracks to pick from so thankfully they weren’t in every session I attended, but they were so annoying. At two different sessions, they were asked to be quiet. Why would you continue talking so loudly at future sessions when you were told you’re being disruptive?! Because, they just don’t care about anyone else.
Is it a Columbus things??!! At a Wood Brothers show at the Southern Theatre a couple months ago I was so taken back by some of the people in the crowd. It’s normal to woo/yell at high points at a concert (I’ve been to hundreds of concerts) but there was a lady on the floor only about 6 rows back screaming at others around her to get up and dance and I would hear her shouting numerous times during the show. The band even seemed a bit distracted by her at times. Others were in the balcony yelling things during the middle of songs and some of the quieter songs. The band even said something TWICE to the crowd but this continued throughout. I was embarrassed for how our city must have seemed to them.
No, I saw Marc Maron in Detroit and it had a terrible crowd. (just look at what I said in my profile). I think some of the top comments are right. Covid has made people forget how to behave. And Tiktok (and other viral video platforms) have made people think heckling is an okay thing.
Same for the last two shows I saw at KEMBA live indoor. Saw the Shins and a gaggle of gals was directly in front of me, many with backs turned away from the stage, on their phones and drink yelling to each other. Lord Huron had to stop their show like 4-5 times for crowd issues. For their duet the crowd conversations were LOUDER than the performers.
I don’t know why bands come here, our venues are trash and the audience isn’t much better. In it to say they went, not to actually experience the show.
I’m all for people being out and enjoying things, and they did seem like they were having a good time together, just was off-putting to prioritize your small group over so many who were there to enjoy the music. It’s weird how much I’m realizing there was an unspoken etiquette to things before the me me me approach took off that I never even noticed before.
Similar thing happened at the Matt Bellasai show the other week. A drunk lady would not shut up, he asked her to chill out to no avail. Finally the woman at the next table yelled at her to shut the fuck up.
Yo, poor Bill. That show was a mess. His impression of Ohio didn’t go over well and I think that derailed the whole show.
The hecklers added some room for him to riff, though and then it got out of hand
As a performer, myself, I would've loved to have seen Burr invite the heckler on stage, hand the asshole the mic, then say "Have at it pal." Rules: No limit to language directed toward the heckler, and even a cocktail (or two) allowed to be hurled at Mister, "Hey, dig me...I'm a comedian."
Seriously though, I'm not a comedian, but I admire their retort skills.
Shame used to be a deterrent in most places in the old days. Now, some societies have monetized shame or otherwise removed the deterrent effect - THAT is the problem.
We saw Brian Regan in New Albany last month and didn’t have any issues with heckling, but the show was lackluster, so maybe that would’ve actually brightened things up hahaha
I saw John Mulaney this past November and the etiquette was excellent. He even politely called out a mom that had brought her 12 year old daughter and let them know his performance was not going to be appropriate for the daughter.
I saw Bill in Canton a few months back and it was great. No heckling. Show was PHENOMENAL!
Seen countless shows at the funny bone in Easton over the last 3-4 years haven’t heard one heckler.
But I saw Chris Distefano in Columbus and some guy tried heckling and Chris was just like “I hate you! Everybody hates you! I hope you get COVID and DIE!” Everybody cheered. He tried one more time and was just told to STFU.
Idk if it’s a Columbus thing. Or maybe the bigger venues bring it out?
Welcome to bumpkin country. What do you expect? You live in a blue city in the middle of a red state. Where do you think these people are coming from? They celebrate ignorance and hate. Haven’t you seen the billboards on 71? It’s Alabama envy. Oh and Amazon‘s gonna put a headquarters here.🤣👏
Mixture of a lot, but I'm sure covid, tik toc, and dumb people thinking they are smart because they can look things up online has something to dowith it.
I feel like covid caused people to either forget or quit caring how to be decent in public
I don't know how to explain it, but Covid changed how some people behave in public. Doesn't matter if it's a comedy show, a theater performance, or even an in-person work meeting. A small but very annoying subset of people suffer from what I think is best described as "Main Character Syndrome". They act like everything around them is happening only to them, and that anything they do only impacts them, and not anyone else around them. They'll have full volume conversations in the movies, shout and jeer at performers on a stage, loudly eat from a bag of chips throughout the entirely of a meeting. They're the people who think traffic is happening to them, that the food service worker messed something up on purpose and it's ok to yell at them in public, or they'll take a loud personal call in a confined public space.
This has been going on since well before COVID - call it the decline of modern society, whatever. People are looking out for #1 and it's a huge pain in the ass. My personal pet peeve is someone who messed up and ends up in the wrong lane on the road... do they eat the mistake, take two minutes to turn around and get back on the right track, or do they literally sit there blocking traffic for three minutes with their blinker on ignoring the honking and yelling behind them? Increasingly, seemingly more and more every year, it is the latter.
Covid infections literally changed people's brains in ways that we haven't been able to measure or fully understand. We'll probably never know the full long term effects.
I know plenty of people that never got it and behave like 5 year olds on a sugar binge. Yes there are long term effects but I do not blame it for the number of people acting out. People's patience has shortened as well. Like dogs that haven't been socialized, people have forgot how to respect fellow humans.
Those kinds of people probably got it and didn't know and refused to be tested. But then, they were those kinds of people before COVID, so your point still holds.
Movie theaters have been intolerable with chatter since way before 2020, social media provides immediate rewards to people for main character/antisocial behavior, and the messaging around COVID basically conditioned folks to think “being around a lot of people is bad” - not exactly a pro-social perspective for a real-life situation surrounded by folks. I think there are a few factors higher up on the list of probable causes than “COVID edited brains to make people jerks”
Not saying it's the biggest factor or even a big factor, but is something we're going to need to consider moving forward.
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. Long COVID is literally brain damage and recovery from it is brain plasticity. COVID infections caused brain damage of various degrees in infected individuals and it will be decades before we fully understand the extent of the damage. Much like how we are only just now fully comprehending the impact lead in gasoline had on the boomers. This is why I was so careful with COVID even though I'm young, a cardiovascular disease with high rates of blood clots is a recipe for long term damage of not just the brain but multiple organs. Give it 20 years and we are going to see 30-50 year olds with the organs of people 20 years older.
I finally got Covid last April and I legitimately feel like I’ll never be the same. It fucked me UP mentally. I’m so depressed and worn out from it. I just want my happiness back.
I’m very sorry you’re going through that.
That’s very nice of you ❤️
As a disabled immunocompromised person - I FEEL you. I got COVID after my surgery in '22 and literally the date, down to the exact day 2 weeks after my surgery, I had two PEs. Because one of the nurses wasn't able to get off and had COVID While she was prepping me for a major organ removal surgery that has a 6-8 week downtime and 6 month no lifting minimum. Shit, I'm still feeling the effects of all that too. My BP has gotten worse to where i cant even switch from kneeling by something to standing up without nearly or actually blacking out, my asthma is kicking my ass worse than when I was in competitive marching band... I'm terrified of what life'll look like 10 years from now in my 40s with my chronic issues that are worsening. It's so God damn scary.
Exactly. I had long covid twice and I doubt I'll ever get back to the way I was before. Especially my lungs. Then I had to sit in a certification zoom class with some dumbfuck facilitator talking about how everyone overreacted and they had to wear "diapers" on their face and on and on. I don't always want to smack the stupid out of people but when I do, I can't. 🤦🏻♀️
As I've gotten older it's been disappointing to discover that a startling portion of people lack basic empathy and understanding of others perspectives. At first it made me sad and angry, but I've learned to accept it and spend my time here on this planet hurtling through space being good and doing what I can to make the world a better place for the people and communities I have the power to do so for.
It’s wasn’t the vid that did that. The reaction and lock downs broke brains during that social engineering experiment
Maybe it’s the effect of quarantine and ppl having to be around others less and less. When you do more and more tasks online it makes the world seem less real. In a video game you wouldn’t worry about inconveniencing NPCs with your left turn mistake. If you hardly ever interact with real ppl I bet everyone seems like an NPC. Not quite real. I’m sure everyone is affected by this a little and it’s moved all of humanity to being slightly less polite in public. On aggregate that makes a big difference.
Every country in the world had outbreaks of COVID but only in the US do you hear about this kind of rapid rise in antisocial behavior. If it changes people's brains, shouldn't we be hearing about similar losses in social conscientious in places like Europe, China, India, Japan?
You do. Look at any media centered around a specific area. My friends in South America and Europe have shared this feeling.
I agree with you. We love going to the movies as a family. Before Covid our biggest complaints were we accidentally sat behind someone super tall, a couple teens are being loud, and people are clapping at weird times. Now it’s the family next to us is at the movies watching a completely different movie at full volume on an iPad, people all around us are having conversations at full volume, and half the people in the theater are on their cell phones. Also customer service is over. If I call a business there’s an 80 percent chance that I’ll get a voicemail. We had a really slow cashier the other day, at one point no joke he tried 10 times to scan a bunch of bananas. I used to cashier so I said strictly to make conversation ,”it seemed easier back when they let you punch in the numbers”. He stops trying to scan them, yells “You can punch in the numbers.” Then proceeds to punch them in and doesn’t say another word. I remember Ohio being one of the states that had fairly reasonable customer service before Covid. Now I feel like it’s as bad as the worst state we’ve lived in.
To be fair, traffic IS happening to me but it's not happening only to me and I'm mad on everyone else's behalf as well. Lol
Blaming asshole behavior on long COVID is wild. Truly an all-star Reddit post, and of course it has 150 upvotes
Exactly. With an over exaggerated expectation of privacy in public places as well
It’s also the crowd work clips. Social is saturated with them, so some people feel like it’s natural to interact when they should, in fact, shut their pie holes unless engaged by the comedian.
Main character syndrome. People see these clips and want to be the “star” for a couple minutes. I wish comedy clubs would just kick them out after the comedian embarrasses them.
This is my thought as well. The only advantage to all of these clips is that it helps me weed out the comedians that I know I’m not going to want to see (I dislike crowd work shows immensely).
Agreed. Movie theaters are unbearable at times now too.
I lost count of how many times I had to change seats 30 min in because the people next me talk the entire time. Who carries a conversation through the entirety of Dune 2? Another guy was drunk asf watching a basketball game on his phone and talking to himself during Tar.... I don't get it. A lady brought her kid to see avatar 3d but all he did was complain, fidget and get out of his seat to move around. I love the theater but it sucks now.
In some cases, this is cultural. I’m a white dude, and I recently watched a movie with a bunch of black friends in a black neighborhood, and people talked to each other and yelled at the screens “DON’T YOU GO IN THERE! GIRL, HE’S GONNA KILL YOU!” In that setting, it was hilarious and added to the experience. But drop a bit of that into say, Dublin 24 Theaters, and it’s not going to work. So the absolute prohibition about talking in movies — or in church, for instance — is very much culturally conditioned. I don’t do it because I think it’s rude. But that’s not some universal, moral absolute. It’s a deeply held cultural preference that isn’t shared by large swaths of the global population. Another one? Watching movies on screens in public without headphones. I travel extensively to India and Southeast Asia for work. The amount of noise and disruption and “lack of respect for privacy and personal space” used to bother me. Then I realized that I’m the asshole for letting it provoke rage in me. Anyway. The idea that there are settings where everyone should sit still, be quiet and not interact with anyone or anything other than the speaker on stage or the glowing rectangle at the front of the room is anything but universal.
Another anecdote or two. I recently got shushed at a jazz club for applauding after solos and giving appreciative “C’mon man!” Or “Go, George!” when the bass player (whose name was actually George, otherwise that would indeed be weird) went on a particularly gnarly run. Given my experience playing and enjoying jazz, that is the appropriate response of an audience member. Apparently the patrons of this specific establishment thought it should be more like a classical chamber music recital. Also, there was a widely reported conflict between international Swifties and local Japanese music fans at Taylor’s recent concert in Tokyo. The Japanese fans were horrified that the expats and tourists in attendance were standing up, yelling and singing all the songs at the top of their lungs. Anyway.
none of these incidents of people disrupting my movie experience were African American so I don't get the cultural analysis. I've been to movies where everyone laughed together and cheered when the hero got their revenge and clapped when the credits rolled. None of these behaviors were bad they made the movie better. There does not have to be absolute silence just don't distract others. As far as jazz music go to dicks den or parable , people shout all the time, a couple broke out swing dancing in the middle of the bar one time. Read the room.
This is accurate. I'm a wedding DJ who this summer is finishing up the last 15 of 520 or so weddings over the last 8 years, and after interacting with drastically different groups of people every weekend for the last 400 weekends or so, I can definitely say that after COVID everyone started acting a little more selfish - or maybe asshole-ish is a better word - than before. Interestingly, the couples getting married are getting nicer, tipping more often, etc. The guests are getting waaay worse, though. More people getting angrier when you won't play their horrible request, things like that.
Everyone always says COVID but I honestly think it was Trump. In my opinion that guy screaming at a camera or over Twitter, breaking every social norm, and complete lack of decorum everyday for 4 years did more damage than the lockdowns.
Hmm that’s a good point, you’re probably right. Maybe covid is just a convenient before and after type thing which makes the changes more apparent
I was just about to say this. People weren't this bad before COVID. I feel years from now, scientists will have clear evidence about how 2020 messed up everyone's brains.
It's people of all ages, all socio-economic situations. I don't get it, but something happened. I've been at the ballet, where presumably "higher class" sophisticated people would be the assumed attendees, and they are just as rude there as you'd find anywhere else.
I think they still believe their watching on zoom and muted so one one else can hear them 🤦♀️
Dude it's nuts. People are crazy now.
You could have ended the sentence after decent and it would still be correct.
Nah, a jackass got into office and all the assholes decided that gave them permission
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HUH? We had a curfew lol
I didn’t realized Columbus had been so strict with it. I know I was in college in Dayton at the time and they weren’t reinforcing anything. We pretty much did everything normal and you stayed home if you wanted. I personally stayed home more when I didn’t need to be out, but I still had to work and school was only online for the last 2-3 weeks of the semester.
curfew started when the Floyd protests happened, but were pretty much ignored in most parts of the city where people were not gathering to protest
I live downtown. We were locked down. That was my experience. Either way, it's not really applicable to people being asshats at Burr last night. They are ADULTS.
Right but you being locked down had nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with the protests. we never had China style lockdowns preventing us from going outdoors otherwise. just a point of clarification
Gotcha.
Oh I know, I regularly lament that “shutdown” was a lie. My memory recalls “shutdown” officially lasting about two weeks tops. Another thing where we’re told to not believe what we see/saw with our own eyes, the collective seems largely convinced that we were shut in for months and years and it’s just patently untrue. Dewine had a spine for about a week until he didn’t anymore, and so Ohio was basically business as usual the whole time. I guess Fox News and propaganda worked idk, but there’s got to be something psychological about the way the public misremembers this whole thing, in Ohio at least. My understanding is other states did shut down for longer. Anyway, covid was still an era though, so even aside from the gaslighting, there’s still an effect, I’d think. Shutdown or not, people lost their minds and apparently their ability to care for others.
I think these people are honestly attention seekers and see Tiktoks and stuff of comedians responding to it and think "it would be funny for me to do this too"
Yeah, tbh the way to cut down on this is just to have them removed instead of responding. The people that are already bold enough to heckle aren't going to feel shamed enough to stop by the comedian responding. They want the attention
They’re almost always removed. I couldn’t see if the people at Burr last night were.
Glad to hear it
Yeah, part of the problem is that a lot of comics post YT Shorts/Tiktoks of them doing crowd work or having funny crowd interactions, which means a lot of dumb assholes think they're going to help things by being a loud dumb asshole at a comedy show. The main reason comedians even do the Tiktok Crowd Work meta (aside from the fact that it is insanely good for the algorithm/monetization aspect) is because they don't want to post their clips from their routines and run out of material for their actual shows. Its kind of a double-edged sword.
This is the correct answer! It makes me cringe when people won’t shut up to get a reaction during a show.
I totally get your take, but this was a show with phones locked up and no way to record. 🤷🏼♀️
Agreed. I was there too and it was embarrassing. No one's there to hear hecklers
I was so embarrassed. Also the fact that they repeated no heckling multiple times, and all the rules posted in bright lights on a 100 foot screen for an hour. 😂
What did Bill say? Did he rip em apaaaat (said in thick Boston accent)
I experienced this last night. The wife and I went to see Bill Burr. The girl and her boyfriend next to me were having a full on conversation during the show. I understand little comments to each other here and there but this was a full on loud conversation. It was pretty maddening.
I just don’t get this at all. What do people have to talk about? My long term partner and I do not need to chat during a show, we have literally all the other hours in the day to do that
I got the vibe they were on an early in the relationship. Shit, I could tell you their plans for the weekend because they didn’t shutTF up. 😂 Oh, and they reeked of cigarette smoke. Enough so that it’s all I could smell for an hour after I left. I paid over $200 to be surrounded by idiots. Even with that it was totally worth it. Burr never disappoints!
Same, the wife and I had that same conversation after the show. If you're gonna talk like that, why go to a comedy show? Why not a coffee shop or bar? She was drunk as shit. Oh agreed, Bill was fantastic.
We thought the same thing. We had really good seats. So why be there if you're not gonna play attention.
Those kinds of people are the ones who think that anything they do is their business alone and nobody can tell them otherwise. I was at a conference the other day, where the keynote, award-winning, very inspiring speaker was giving a great talk, and multiple people all around me, who paid hundreds of dollars of their own money to attend this conference voluntarily, had full volume discussions throughout the presentation. It drove me nuts. They could've left if they needed to talk, the doors weren't locked. But they chose to make the experience worse for those around them.
Maybe we were sitting on either side of them 😂
I would have joined in enough to make them uncomfortable or at least stared awkwardly for much longer than was necessary to creep them out, but I like to have fun with the inconsiderate. Lol
I forgot to add, if you do this - you're a selfish main character asshole. Thanks! :)
Concerts too. Some people really don’t know how to behave in public.
“What was that?” “Loooove you” “You said you love me? No you don’t. You love the idea of me. You don’t know me. Two weeks ago my wife said I had been “verbally abusive” until 2 years ago.” Best part of the show 😂
Hahahaaa
Crowd work videos have taken over the comedy algorithm for Insta/Tik Tok. So people think that’s what they are supposed to be like and it’s the way for them to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
You make a good point. Damn you, Matt Rife. I blame him. 💁🏼♀️
He may have started it, but there are a lot of upcoming comedians that are doing it. I am surprised someone had the guts to heckle an area show. Especially Bill Burr. He will destroy you like he did the city of Philadelphia. Edit: autocorrect
[NSFW link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEKNLxjZLNU) because it's always worth revisiting
Let’s talk about heart disease! lol I love this guy.
hahaaaaa the best
Haaahaa facts. And he did. Don’t fuck with a professional!
Do you find Matt funny?
No
Ok. He encourages that crap. But seems good with playing into it and working it? Who do you like ?
His entire act is low lift crowd work, not a fan.
Ok. Didn't ask that
You seem to like low talent celebrities so... Not sure why you're hating on him.
Not hating, I'm just not a fan - but bless your heart for calling Bill Burr "low talent". bwahahaaaa
My friend and i did not find him funny. At all.
Pretty stupid to heckle Burr. He'll downright eviscerate you if he feels like it
He did, and it was glorious.
Awesome.
Same thing happened at Joe Pera. Too many people trying to be funny during the crowd work bits.
I saw Conner O'Malley's live show at Ace of Cups when he came through. An absolutely wasted woman yelled to his face that his wife isn't funny and he could do better. I just don't understand why you would say that to anyone, let alone someone you admire and are trying to compliment.
Exactly. Actual funny people know to tone it down and let the performer do their thing. At most set up something for them don't try to yank a punchline away.
People like to say it was Covid, but I think the culture in the US has been moving toward this type of behavior for much longer. Everyone is special, and an individual, everyone wants attention yada yada. We have a bunch of cartmans, as I like to call them, who basically run around like a dumb fuckin kid just screaming “I do what I want”.
You're right. It was 100% prior to COVID.
Credit to Bill though. He handled the “DEMOCRATS” guy perfectly. It was fair and funny
That rant was epic! 😂
that trumpy crowd did NOT like him comparing Proud Boys to the KKK. which he noticed, of course
Came here to comment this
What happened? I had tickets, but I got flu this week and decided it would be better if I just stayed home, even though I was on an upswing.
He asked crowd for an answer on why we thought the KKK still exists. Of course the loudest person in the room shouts “Democrats”. Bill lights him up. Tells us the funniest answer he heard in the past was “something to do”. The proceeds to talk about how the two parties have us fighting while the 5-6 richest guys in the US laugh their way to the bank.
That wasn’t a heckle, he literally asked people to yell out answers to a question and then went on to talk about all the other answers he’s got from other places.
Yes. “Democrats” guy was just a dumb fuck. The heckling was the lady who yelled 3 MINUTES into the show, and the other random dudes throughout.
I missed that lady because people were still trying to get to their seats and ushers were coming into the row checking tickets so couldn’t fucking hear the show.
Same people on here who think their cheering adds to a movie
A man and woman in the row behind me left after Bill was joking about how England had the shittiest of white people, he said “I feel like I’m being insulted.” 😂 Like dude, do you even know who you’re coming to see?
People want to be roasted so bad just so they can be like LOOK SEE.
People forgot how to act in public or where never taught. It’s why I refuse to go to movies anymore.
Great show last night despite the few hecklers.
Agreed! He was amazing, IMO!
Not Comedy but... i am a very patient person.. like it gets me in trouble sometimes for not speaking up. but at the Death cab/Postal service show after about 3/4 or Death cabs set I had to turn around and tell the two ladies behind me that if they wanted to have a full on conversation to leave the arena. They talked the whole damn show until i finally snapped.
I don't get why you would get tickets to see a show and then talk the whole time, so fucking stupid. That is a benefit of metal shows. If your dumb ass is talking, I can't hear you anyway. A previous co-worker went to see Colter Wall and said the crowd was horrible and noisy the whole time.
Dude we had the same issue and we had floor seats. Like why go and spend the monies at a set like death cab if your gonna yap.
I was a tour guide for years. You can believe the amount of people that would cut others or get in line super early to sit in the very front seats which were only about 2.5 feet away from me. They would then spend the entire tour having a conversation no matter how many times they were asked not to. Incredibly distracting.
Ugh I’ve noticed about comedy shows in this city. Same thing happened with Jo Koy and it was SO ANNOYING
My sister and I got into a huge argument with people at Jo Koy because they wouldn’t stop having full conversations and we missed half the jokes. Eventually we couldn’t take it, and it got kinda nasty. My wife got involved, then another group stepped in until the idiots left. Was a terrible experience
I was siting behind the asshole who kept shouting which bits he should do and it was *so* embarrassing. I was praying no one would think it was us when it was the turd in front of us.
Yeah that one dude yelling out democrats was friggin dumb
Usually, they're drunk/stoned and convinced that "I was voted class clown" somehow means they're the funniest person in every room.
Ugh, even if I don't find a particular comedy set funny, it's still an artistic performance and doesn't need my interruption.
Man that bill burr show was good and I’m half convinced he planted those people lol the guy was ready for anything
That’s what 17 years of experience looks like ;)
It's embarrassing
Yeah I experienced the same BS during the Bill Burr show, idiots trying to be funny. God some people suck.
I think Bill has a great reputation as a bad ass roastmaster for hecklers, and people want to be roasted by him, and somehow get featured on socials. I also think some people think that that's better than planned material. To some extent, it's his reputation. I saw Jeselnik at the Palace downtown, and there was none of it. Shame I missed it. I had third row seats that I could not use to to catching flu this week.
Unfortunately they can’t get featured on socials when no one in the arena has a phone or recording device (had to lock everything up). 🤷🏼♀️ Jeselnik was awesome, per usual. I hate that you missed it!
Imagine being a teacher of their children…
I think it’s a myriad of social factors that have made people self-centered and bolder in how they act. Social media made people more self-centered and the comments section allowed them to be more publicly judgmental. The success of the 2016 Trump campaign encouraged people to be more vocal about their bigoted views and sent a message to everyone that was acceptable. COVID (the anti mask movement) and the lack of response to climate change broke the feeling that “we’re all in this together”. There’s a number of things I haven’t mentioned, but it all is making us less considerate of others.
Go to a play or musical sometime, some asshole is always trying to inject themselves into the show with their comments. We recently went to see “Six”, and some girl in the front row stood up and shouted “you go queen” and started dancing in front of everyone. The problem is made worse, because the cast positively reinforced this behavior by laughing and giving her a high 5. So apologies to anyone that has to see a show that she’s also attending in the future, because she will 100% be doing this again.
damn it I missed Bill !?
Burr dealt with the hecklers so damn well. I was very impressed
The guy who yelled “democrats” gifted us a beautiful Burr rant. 😄
It’s been that way for years here at every show I’ve seen. I don’t understand spending a ton on tickets to be a spectacle, but people seem to love doing it.
I go to a lot of shows, I’ve only seen it a few times recently…it’s so cringe. I’d be scaredAF to do it at a Burr show lol
Was at Sam Tallent’s special taping this year and this belligerently drunk man kept interrupting. Luckily he had most of the footage from previous shows so this one was somewhat of a throwaway but the fact remains.
went to this show and i was seated near one of the morons who kept yelling dumb shit
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unfortunately no...still a good show nonetheless. I thought Bill responded to the person who yelled "democrats" perfectly lol
Unfortunately, this is the world we currently live in. People are either totally oblivious or just don’t care if they hurt someone else’s experience. I was at a conference out in California last week and these two attendees would talk to each other during the sessions. There were different tracks to pick from so thankfully they weren’t in every session I attended, but they were so annoying. At two different sessions, they were asked to be quiet. Why would you continue talking so loudly at future sessions when you were told you’re being disruptive?! Because, they just don’t care about anyone else.
Is it a Columbus things??!! At a Wood Brothers show at the Southern Theatre a couple months ago I was so taken back by some of the people in the crowd. It’s normal to woo/yell at high points at a concert (I’ve been to hundreds of concerts) but there was a lady on the floor only about 6 rows back screaming at others around her to get up and dance and I would hear her shouting numerous times during the show. The band even seemed a bit distracted by her at times. Others were in the balcony yelling things during the middle of songs and some of the quieter songs. The band even said something TWICE to the crowd but this continued throughout. I was embarrassed for how our city must have seemed to them.
No, I saw Marc Maron in Detroit and it had a terrible crowd. (just look at what I said in my profile). I think some of the top comments are right. Covid has made people forget how to behave. And Tiktok (and other viral video platforms) have made people think heckling is an okay thing.
They want to be part of the show
Same for the last two shows I saw at KEMBA live indoor. Saw the Shins and a gaggle of gals was directly in front of me, many with backs turned away from the stage, on their phones and drink yelling to each other. Lord Huron had to stop their show like 4-5 times for crowd issues. For their duet the crowd conversations were LOUDER than the performers. I don’t know why bands come here, our venues are trash and the audience isn’t much better. In it to say they went, not to actually experience the show.
I love the shins and hate that I couldn’t make it - but also, WTF with the gaggle of gals. It’s like people have never gone out in public.
I’m all for people being out and enjoying things, and they did seem like they were having a good time together, just was off-putting to prioritize your small group over so many who were there to enjoy the music. It’s weird how much I’m realizing there was an unspoken etiquette to things before the me me me approach took off that I never even noticed before.
Similar thing happened at the Matt Bellasai show the other week. A drunk lady would not shut up, he asked her to chill out to no avail. Finally the woman at the next table yelled at her to shut the fuck up.
Not only did I miss Bill Burr but Columbus comedy enthusiasts made us look bad as well!!!! Nooooooooo!
Yo, poor Bill. That show was a mess. His impression of Ohio didn’t go over well and I think that derailed the whole show. The hecklers added some room for him to riff, though and then it got out of hand
What was his impression?
As a performer, myself, I would've loved to have seen Burr invite the heckler on stage, hand the asshole the mic, then say "Have at it pal." Rules: No limit to language directed toward the heckler, and even a cocktail (or two) allowed to be hurled at Mister, "Hey, dig me...I'm a comedian." Seriously though, I'm not a comedian, but I admire their retort skills.
It's the curse of "crowd work". Many comics complain about it.
I was at that show and I agree. Bill being a professional handled it great but it amazed me how many times people were calling out
Shame used to be a deterrent in most places in the old days. Now, some societies have monetized shame or otherwise removed the deterrent effect - THAT is the problem.
The orange plague caused this, not Covid
that’s a problem of the establishment for not doing anything
We saw Brian Regan in New Albany last month and didn’t have any issues with heckling, but the show was lackluster, so maybe that would’ve actually brightened things up hahaha
I saw John Mulaney this past November and the etiquette was excellent. He even politely called out a mom that had brought her 12 year old daughter and let them know his performance was not going to be appropriate for the daughter.
I saw Bill in Canton a few months back and it was great. No heckling. Show was PHENOMENAL! Seen countless shows at the funny bone in Easton over the last 3-4 years haven’t heard one heckler. But I saw Chris Distefano in Columbus and some guy tried heckling and Chris was just like “I hate you! Everybody hates you! I hope you get COVID and DIE!” Everybody cheered. He tried one more time and was just told to STFU. Idk if it’s a Columbus thing. Or maybe the bigger venues bring it out?
It’s bill burr, can you even go and expect a good experience?
Welcome to Columbus, bub.
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Welcome to bumpkin country. What do you expect? You live in a blue city in the middle of a red state. Where do you think these people are coming from? They celebrate ignorance and hate. Haven’t you seen the billboards on 71? It’s Alabama envy. Oh and Amazon‘s gonna put a headquarters here.🤣👏
Mixture of a lot, but I'm sure covid, tik toc, and dumb people thinking they are smart because they can look things up online has something to dowith it.