Of all the inexplicable things music fans do, the least explicable and most annoying is the weird lack of impulse control that leads some folks to throw things at performers onstage during concerts. Just recently, someone chucked a lemon of all things at Ariana Grande during her weekend two Coachella performance, while stories of fans tossing water bottles and the like pop up way more often than they should. It looks like even underground favorites like Earl Sweatshirt can’t even avoid this plague, but in Earl’s case, he was more than capable of handling the problem, stopping the show to address the offending party.
“You’re on some real smug white man sh*t right now,” he told the perpetrator. “Why you throw a fully loaded Budweiser?” The declaration was met with a chorus of “boos” from the rest of the audience as Earl taunted the beer thrower from the stage. “I bet you feeling hella weird right now,” he said. “You wasn’t expecting no public humiliation… You outta here! Get him out!” The crowd both cheered and jeered as the rowdy fan was ejected from the venue, looking pretty mortified for all his prior boldness.
But seriously, people. Can we knock off this cornball behavior, please? One, it’s pointless. What possible reason could you have for throwing things onstage other than drawing attention to yourself? You’re not that interesting, nobody paid to see you. Two, it’s dangerous. What happens when you actually hit the performer and seriously injure them? What if they step on the object you threw and fall? Is that really what you want to see and be responsible for? Because you can also be responsible for some medical bills and you can bet they’re going to the top shelf specialists and likely still pressing charges. It’d be pretty dumb for you to pay to go see a show and end up locked up because you thought you were funny. Just stop.
