7 ms·

Tickets Are for Remembering

44 points by Thevet 2y ago

contravariant 2y ago
Not to be confused with the more familiar type of tickets. Those tickets are for forgetting.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
The lack of even an OPTION to get a proper, physical ticket makes TicketMaster's obscene rip-off even more outrageous.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  Can you elaborate? I don't see how physical tickets factor into this. I mean, it seems like it's the same outrageousness either way to me.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    If nothing else a physical ticket is a bearer instrument. You can sell it to someone else without having to give StubHub or another third party a cut of the deal.
  - DidYaWipe 2y ago
    Don't know if you read the article, but the point is that you used to get something collectible. I've saved every one of my concert ticket stubs since 1983. Now, for your $50 per ticket in junk fees, you don't even get a tiny piece of card stock. In fact, you've been charged a "convenience fee" for using YOUR OWN PRINTER. That is disgraceful. And now I don't think you can even use a physical printout anymore. And that's not even getting into the resale/transfer-rights aspect.
alsetmusic 2y ago
I have a small tin box that something or other came in as a gift. It stored concert tickets and other small memorabilia (like the movie ticket from a great first date) for every event I'd gone to for well over a decade. Gradually, as physical tickets got phased out, I had fewer and fewer items of memorabilia to add. At this point, I have no physical record of shows we see. I feel like something has been lost. But I suspect far fewer people kept these tickets for nostalgia than threw them away, so I guess I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed.
- dlojudice 2y ago
  I've been doing this for over 20 years, but I confess that I've never gone back to look at the tickets. Maybe one day, out of nostalgia, I'll look at the dusty box full of old tickets and have good memories of shows, movies, good and bad. For now, what matters is the feeling that part of my life's memory is being preserved for something that I don't even know what exactly it is...
  - eastbound 2y ago
    Some tickets were awesome. I’m in France and I still remember getting JJ Goldman (an artist)’s physical red star ticket for his communist tour, or the photo negative film physical artifact, he always made sure the physical artifacts were never a simple printed piece of paper.
- CosmicShadow 2y ago
  I definitely think it's a minority, but even so it's a very large group of people that liked to save tickets. It's why I made Stubforge, so I could keep adding tickets to my own collection. I've got a lot of repeat customers who have been able to keep their collections growing as well. Even if you don't look at them, it's a way to remember what you've been to in a consistent fashion.
lmm 2y ago
No, for those of us who care about the actual play rather than the hip ephemera, tickets are for getting in.
- jMyles 2y ago
  I've been working on a system for my own bluegrass shows of free-to-enter, pay-for-a-ticket-if-you-want-to. Not sure how it will go, but an interesting experiment I think.
  - dfxm12 2y ago
    Why not offer posters at the merch booth (or something more ticket-sized, I guess)? I always look forward to show posters. It helps foster a sense of community too, when you work with printers and a cadre of artists.
  - niccl 2y ago
    I think Derek Sivers [0] had something to say about this. He used to run CD-Baby, and IIRC was also a musician with some well known bands from back in the day. I've found his stuff about different ways of approaching live music very thoughtful 0: https://sive.rs https://sive.rs
- mym1990 2y ago
  There can be overlap in both though?
dfxm12 2y ago
They tell us what it was like to be there. Personal memories can be made in innumerable ways. The absence of tickets doesn't mean memories, or physical representations of memories, are going away. As for academic interest, I have to imagine there's a digital repository of playbills or the information therein somewhere that's easily searchable. After all, these types of resources exist for other performances like pro wrestling and mixed martial arts in the form of cagematch & sherdog. I may not have my ticket stub from my first match, but I can still look it up by venue, year and the matches I remember. I can find contemporary news reports and reviews. This can be supplemented with web forum discussions and other social media, blogs, etc. people crave this type of discussion, documentation and artifacts that prove their fandom. I don't think they care about the medium.
- chrisbrandow 2y ago
  When my grandmother died, she had a little box of programs, a couple letters, and a few little clippings of newspaper items. It was such a special thing to discover. I can’t rule out that digitizing everything makes such moments impossible, particularly with photo albums, but there is memory contained in physical objects that is not the same as just taking some time to remember.
  - dfxm12 2y ago
    Yes, when I wrote "personal memories can be made in innumerable ways" & "I don't think they care about the medium", this is what I meant. Tickets, specifically, aren't unique in this regard, and the absence of tickets doesn't imply the absence of physical objects to contain memories.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Something I've noticed is I just don't produce or collect "I was here" type memorabillia, compared to people from older generations like my parents. Photos and videos? Nope, I don't even have a camera aside from the one in my phone, and the stuff in there are so forgettable I don't even know what's in there. Postcards, hats, shirts, and other "I was here." tourists' goods? Nope. I stopped buying them when I noticed they all just end up stuffed under nine layers of my closet's hell never to see daylight again. Waste of my money. Tickets and other "I paid money to be here." artifacts? Thrown out in the trash asap. See above; waste of space. In stark contrast, I do buy and collect things that enrich my present day. Books pertaining to my interests to line my shelves, hardware and software to satisfy my computing itch, and so on. Whoever has the unfortunate privilege of cleaning up my affairs (I have no children nor a spouse and don't plan on it) will unfortunately have no idea where the fuck I've been, but honestly I don't think I could care. I just don't see value in memorializing my past. I don't know if that's good or sad, but I certainly couldn't care less.
klodolph 2y ago
I collected tickets without giving it much thought when I was in high school and college. Every few years, when cleaning, I’d come across them again. I realized that they belong in the garbage. “They tell us what it was like to be there.” I could just as easily write a few lines down in my journal, and the journal would at least record my thoughts. The ticket does nothing.
wodenokoto 2y ago
I haven’t been to a broadway show in decades, but I have been to a few Westend and broadway on tour in the past 2-3 years and they’ve all featured those checkered backdrops with the shows name on that you can line up to take your picture in front of and they all have cardboard cut outs that you can stand next to for a “look where I’ve been” selfie.
CosmicShadow 2y ago
As someone who has been saving my ticket stubs for 20+ years I was very frustrated by the disappearance of physical tickets. I paid the extra fee to have them mailed to me, but eventually that went away. Printed emails are not the same. I eventually figured out how to make the most realistic replica ticket stubs possible to add to my ticket stub album. I spent several thousands dollars on professional printers and real stock as well as months building my own software to customize and print tickets, all to scratch my own itch. Now my collection continues to grow with the 20 or so shows I go to every year and I've helped over 16,000+ people do the same with my website https://stubforge.com https://stubforge.com, which I'm now lucky enough to run full time. A lot of people don't get it, and that's ok, but for those that do, they really get it. People buy our tickets to give as gifts (because it's not easy to do anymore in a non-awkward or non-art project fashion), to add to their collections, to frame with posters, to use as surprise proposals, to invite people to their weddings, to announce their pregnancies and more things I never would have imagined when I started. There are people that do miss ephemera. Even if you don't look at it that often, it's something precious to you. It doesn't matter if your kids will get it or just chuck it, it's there for you to enjoy and remember in the fashion that you want to.
- sho_hn 2y ago
  I definitely do get it, as someone with a (loose and not organized) physical ticket collection. That said, I think it's partly the authentic object I'm attached to. While I'm absolutely amazed at the length you went to create facsimiles, I'm not sure a recreation does it for me. That said, I think it's a nifty gift idea to create e.g. fake tickets to your birthday party or something.
  - CosmicShadow 2y ago
    I've got a stub binder that started having print outs of tickets in it or post-it notes. When I would go back to see what I've been to and get a burst of nostalgia, I'd just get mad at the lack of ticket instead of the good memory. Having one that looks and feels like the real thing let me move on from that. There are a lot of folks who feel like the object obtains some "magical aura" by physically being at a concert with you, and that's ok, but for me, it's just a way to remember the show and keep track of everything I've been to. I go to enough shows that a single ticket isn't like a massive special memento, which may be the case for the person who goes to like one show a year. Gifting is huge for us as well as parties, retirements, anniversaries, you name it!
akeyva 2y ago
Event tickets should be NFTs. They can retain the quality of bearer instruments and remain a keepsake after the event. It would also unlock new ways to connect with audiences. For example, if your wallet holds 3 or more NFTs from this venue/director/band, you get early access to purchase tickets for future events.
- lmm 2y ago
  Back home the local football club would sometimes give priority to e.g. people who could show at least 2 ticket stubs. Of course they could do that because they were the sole issuer of their tickets, it would be much harder for an entity that sells tickets through multiple channels.
- smolder 2y ago
  NFTs: for imposing scarcity on things that have no reason to be scarce. It always struck me as backwards.
joshka 2y ago
One of my biggest regrets in life was throwing away in a house move my tickets / flyers / poster collection from many years of gigs I attended. Probably a banker's box full of random things. I wish I hadn't done that. And then they stopped making them the same way.

44 points by Thevet 2y ago

contravariant 2y ago

Not to be confused with the more familiar type of tickets. Those tickets are for forgetting.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

The lack of even an OPTION to get a proper, physical ticket makes TicketMaster's obscene rip-off even more outrageous.

dfxm12 2y ago
Can you elaborate? I don't see how physical tickets factor into this. I mean, it seems like it's the same outrageousness either way to me.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  If nothing else a physical ticket is a bearer instrument. You can sell it to someone else without having to give StubHub or another third party a cut of the deal.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Don't know if you read the article, but the point is that you used to get something collectible. I've saved every one of my concert ticket stubs since 1983. Now, for your $50 per ticket in junk fees, you don't even get a tiny piece of card stock. In fact, you've been charged a "convenience fee" for using YOUR OWN PRINTER. That is disgraceful. And now I don't think you can even use a physical printout anymore. And that's not even getting into the resale/transfer-rights aspect.

alsetmusic 2y ago

I have a small tin box that something or other came in as a gift. It stored concert tickets and other small memorabilia (like the movie ticket from a great first date) for every event I'd gone to for well over a decade. Gradually, as physical tickets got phased out, I had fewer and fewer items of memorabilia to add. At this point, I have no physical record of shows we see. I feel like something has been lost. But I suspect far fewer people kept these tickets for nostalgia than threw them away, so I guess I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed.

dlojudice 2y ago
I've been doing this for over 20 years, but I confess that I've never gone back to look at the tickets. Maybe one day, out of nostalgia, I'll look at the dusty box full of old tickets and have good memories of shows, movies, good and bad. For now, what matters is the feeling that part of my life's memory is being preserved for something that I don't even know what exactly it is...
- eastbound 2y ago
  Some tickets were awesome. I’m in France and I still remember getting JJ Goldman (an artist)’s physical red star ticket for his communist tour, or the photo negative film physical artifact, he always made sure the physical artifacts were never a simple printed piece of paper.
CosmicShadow 2y ago
I definitely think it's a minority, but even so it's a very large group of people that liked to save tickets. It's why I made Stubforge, so I could keep adding tickets to my own collection. I've got a lot of repeat customers who have been able to keep their collections growing as well. Even if you don't look at them, it's a way to remember what you've been to in a consistent fashion.

lmm 2y ago

No, for those of us who care about the actual play rather than the hip ephemera, tickets are for getting in.

jMyles 2y ago
I've been working on a system for my own bluegrass shows of free-to-enter, pay-for-a-ticket-if-you-want-to. Not sure how it will go, but an interesting experiment I think.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  Why not offer posters at the merch booth (or something more ticket-sized, I guess)? I always look forward to show posters. It helps foster a sense of community too, when you work with printers and a cadre of artists.
- niccl 2y ago
  I think Derek Sivers [0] had something to say about this. He used to run CD-Baby, and IIRC was also a musician with some well known bands from back in the day. I've found his stuff about different ways of approaching live music very thoughtful 0: https://sive.rs https://sive.rs
mym1990 2y ago
There can be overlap in both though?

dfxm12 2y ago

They tell us what it was like to be there. Personal memories can be made in innumerable ways. The absence of tickets doesn't mean memories, or physical representations of memories, are going away. As for academic interest, I have to imagine there's a digital repository of playbills or the information therein somewhere that's easily searchable. After all, these types of resources exist for other performances like pro wrestling and mixed martial arts in the form of cagematch & sherdog. I may not have my ticket stub from my first match, but I can still look it up by venue, year and the matches I remember. I can find contemporary news reports and reviews. This can be supplemented with web forum discussions and other social media, blogs, etc. people crave this type of discussion, documentation and artifacts that prove their fandom. I don't think they care about the medium.

chrisbrandow 2y ago
When my grandmother died, she had a little box of programs, a couple letters, and a few little clippings of newspaper items. It was such a special thing to discover. I can’t rule out that digitizing everything makes such moments impossible, particularly with photo albums, but there is memory contained in physical objects that is not the same as just taking some time to remember.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  Yes, when I wrote "personal memories can be made in innumerable ways" & "I don't think they care about the medium", this is what I meant. Tickets, specifically, aren't unique in this regard, and the absence of tickets doesn't imply the absence of physical objects to contain memories.
Dalewyn 2y ago
Something I've noticed is I just don't produce or collect "I was here" type memorabillia, compared to people from older generations like my parents. Photos and videos? Nope, I don't even have a camera aside from the one in my phone, and the stuff in there are so forgettable I don't even know what's in there. Postcards, hats, shirts, and other "I was here." tourists' goods? Nope. I stopped buying them when I noticed they all just end up stuffed under nine layers of my closet's hell never to see daylight again. Waste of my money. Tickets and other "I paid money to be here." artifacts? Thrown out in the trash asap. See above; waste of space. In stark contrast, I do buy and collect things that enrich my present day. Books pertaining to my interests to line my shelves, hardware and software to satisfy my computing itch, and so on. Whoever has the unfortunate privilege of cleaning up my affairs (I have no children nor a spouse and don't plan on it) will unfortunately have no idea where the fuck I've been, but honestly I don't think I could care. I just don't see value in memorializing my past. I don't know if that's good or sad, but I certainly couldn't care less.

klodolph 2y ago

I collected tickets without giving it much thought when I was in high school and college. Every few years, when cleaning, I’d come across them again. I realized that they belong in the garbage. “They tell us what it was like to be there.” I could just as easily write a few lines down in my journal, and the journal would at least record my thoughts. The ticket does nothing.

wodenokoto 2y ago

I haven’t been to a broadway show in decades, but I have been to a few Westend and broadway on tour in the past 2-3 years and they’ve all featured those checkered backdrops with the shows name on that you can line up to take your picture in front of and they all have cardboard cut outs that you can stand next to for a “look where I’ve been” selfie.

CosmicShadow 2y ago

As someone who has been saving my ticket stubs for 20+ years I was very frustrated by the disappearance of physical tickets. I paid the extra fee to have them mailed to me, but eventually that went away. Printed emails are not the same. I eventually figured out how to make the most realistic replica ticket stubs possible to add to my ticket stub album. I spent several thousands dollars on professional printers and real stock as well as months building my own software to customize and print tickets, all to scratch my own itch. Now my collection continues to grow with the 20 or so shows I go to every year and I've helped over 16,000+ people do the same with my website https://stubforge.com https://stubforge.com, which I'm now lucky enough to run full time. A lot of people don't get it, and that's ok, but for those that do, they really get it. People buy our tickets to give as gifts (because it's not easy to do anymore in a non-awkward or non-art project fashion), to add to their collections, to frame with posters, to use as surprise proposals, to invite people to their weddings, to announce their pregnancies and more things I never would have imagined when I started. There are people that do miss ephemera. Even if you don't look at it that often, it's something precious to you. It doesn't matter if your kids will get it or just chuck it, it's there for you to enjoy and remember in the fashion that you want to.

sho_hn 2y ago
I definitely do get it, as someone with a (loose and not organized) physical ticket collection. That said, I think it's partly the authentic object I'm attached to. While I'm absolutely amazed at the length you went to create facsimiles, I'm not sure a recreation does it for me. That said, I think it's a nifty gift idea to create e.g. fake tickets to your birthday party or something.
- CosmicShadow 2y ago
  I've got a stub binder that started having print outs of tickets in it or post-it notes. When I would go back to see what I've been to and get a burst of nostalgia, I'd just get mad at the lack of ticket instead of the good memory. Having one that looks and feels like the real thing let me move on from that. There are a lot of folks who feel like the object obtains some "magical aura" by physically being at a concert with you, and that's ok, but for me, it's just a way to remember the show and keep track of everything I've been to. I go to enough shows that a single ticket isn't like a massive special memento, which may be the case for the person who goes to like one show a year. Gifting is huge for us as well as parties, retirements, anniversaries, you name it!

akeyva 2y ago

Event tickets should be NFTs. They can retain the quality of bearer instruments and remain a keepsake after the event. It would also unlock new ways to connect with audiences. For example, if your wallet holds 3 or more NFTs from this venue/director/band, you get early access to purchase tickets for future events.

lmm 2y ago
Back home the local football club would sometimes give priority to e.g. people who could show at least 2 ticket stubs. Of course they could do that because they were the sole issuer of their tickets, it would be much harder for an entity that sells tickets through multiple channels.
smolder 2y ago
NFTs: for imposing scarcity on things that have no reason to be scarce. It always struck me as backwards.

joshka 2y ago

One of my biggest regrets in life was throwing away in a house move my tickets / flyers / poster collection from many years of gigs I attended. Probably a banker's box full of random things. I wish I hadn't done that. And then they stopped making them the same way.