It’s practically impossible these days to attend a concert without a flood of bright smartphone screens obscuring your view.
In a desperate bid to shore up street cred with their followers on social media, audience members simply cannot help themselves from documenting every little thing, going as far as to record videos of entire songs — a practice that comes directly at the cost of their fellow concertgoers’ sanity.
This screen-filled nightmare has now caught the attention of Grammy-winning singer songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. For her latest tour, she implemented a strict phone ban — including smartwatches and Meta’s “pervert glasses” — to put the music front and center. The result, so far, has been a far more memorable couple of hours that are inspiring a smartphone-obsessed generation to get creative in ways that have already been unexpectedly beautiful.
Some fan have pulled out pencils and pens to physically sketch Bridgers’ stage and lighting, a wholesome example of what we stand to gain by setting aside our ever-present depression rectangles.

