"Ya know" the 537th time: on the problem of excessive influencer power and responsibility for fans' lives
Kanye West asked Billy Eilish to apologize for dissing Travis Scott at the concert: “COME ON BILLIE WE LOVE YOU PLEASE APOLOGIZE TO TRAV AND TO THE FAMILIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES NO ONE INTENDED THIS TO HAPPEN TRAV DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING WHEN HE WAS ON STAGE AND WAS VERY HURT BY WHAT HAPPENED AND YES TRAV WILL BE WITH ME AT COACHELLA BUT NOW I NEED BILLIE TO APOLOGIZE BEFORE I PERFORM”
I love the circular bail of the elite, where one can defend another of his own rank simply on the basis of their similarity and warm friendship. Kanye has been giving off one delightful prick after another lately. What scares me the most are the commenters who text: “Billie, say sorry to Ye. Ye, accept Billie’s apology”.
Every politician in the world wants to build up a nuclear electorate that is extremely loyal to him in any situation. Hip-hop artists are very good at it, because people love to absolutize their idols, assigning each one a rank: this is a legend, this is a GOAT, this is mid, and this is no-name. There's no secret — just the ability to make mass culture obey.
You know (damn it Travis, this is contagious), maybe Billie really should apologize: for speaking facts; for refusing to play by the fanbase’s rules and pretending nothing exists; for calling things by their names — a speech about the artist making sure fans feel okay at the concert. Billie, you're wrong — the artist has the right to provoke the crowd into crazy behavior and not be responsible for the consequences. They obeyed-they knew where they were going. And the artist has the right to say, "What's the problem with me? I've got paws!"
But actually this whole situation was a good excuse to remind and talk again about what happened at the Travis Scott concert. He has always loved performances imbued with a demonic atmosphere, "rage" as the Americans call it. Many people can be named as the culprits: people who did not monitor the condition of their dance floor neighbors; staff who trivially failed to cope with such a big threat.
The most important culprit is Travis himself: there are a lot of saved videos where he sees and hears the fans' pleas to stop the show, but he smiles demonically in their faces, thus showing that he is satisfied with the slam. When an ambulance is seen, he simply asks: "What the hell is that?" All of this can't help but suggest that he saw people pass out in front of him, but he resolutely did nothing about it. After the tragedy, he records the now-meme regret, and later comes in for an interview with Charlamagne tha God.
It is simply impossible to watch this interview, because for 51 minutes he goes around the same idea: that he is very sorry, that he is looking for the families of the victims, that it is important for him to stay in touch with his fans. I felt that listening to something that makes me sick, mixed with "you know" — a phrase he said 537 times (!) — was just disrespectful to my time, which I didn't have much of. It feels like the interview may have been commissioned to whitewash Travis Scott's reputation, because the whole time they are discussing the same topic. You can't fool the audience: there are hundreds of comments from people who passed out at the festival or whose friends were hurt or killed at his show. People are great at sensing falsity and ostentation, so many commented that the radio host was communicating with a bread stick.
AstroWorld Festival crowd crush is not the first, but just another accident in a string of many that occur at his shows. In 2017, he incited his fan to jump from the second floor of the auditorium, telling him he would get caught. No one caught the guy, and he was left wheelchair-bound. In response, Travis... simply gave the fan his ring.
As for the crush, it's very convenient to blame the fans themselves for their injuries. They're all adults, they knew where they were going. It's time to realize that Influencers like Travis have a huge impact on a large crowd, especially in a moment of "rage." Any phrase they throw around about the energy of the performance immediately becomes the perfect behavior model for those in attendance. When rappers start to feel their personal responsibility to influence the fans' minds, their behavior will become more meaningful, and with their words they can still reduce the number of accidents at their concerts.
Travis cherishes his image as a psychedelic rapper. Rage at his shows is actually his brand, a patented phenomenon. He probably wouldn't even want to share his "property" with Playboi Carti, whose concerts are also often crowded and people almost die. Couple that with your words, Travis: give up the wild energy at your concerts. It may be to the detriment of your image, but it's to the benefit of your fans.
He has had a bad reputation in the industry since his rise. His manager, who Travis abandoned due to epileptic seizures, told a well-known story in 2012. They became friends in 2011 and Shane Morris [note — manager's name] introduced Travis to a lot of big names in the industry at the time. When Shane had an epileptic seizure, Jacques [note — artist's real name] preferred leaving him in a dark alley, later arguing that he couldn't be sure of a manager who was having seizures. The mention of this foul side of the personality is logically linked to a new discussion walking around a small part of the rap community on the Internet: the engineer spoke about his experience working with Webster, pointing out the latter's rudeness while working at the studio.
Once again I am convinced that personality plays the greatest role in the image of the performer. Society insists on separating the artist from his work. This is possible: but now when you listen to his tracks in your headphones, don't forget that the voice of an instigator who thinks he can be responsible for nothing is pouring into your ears. As many commentators have pointed out, dating one of the Kardashians is top class, to which he has his own demands. He has built himself a base of such devoted fans who will side with him anyway, and their numbers are so large that they act on the mechanism of Asch conformity experiments. This is nothing but misinformation, aimed at distorting the perception of reality.