Which people tend to go to concerts?

Here’s something too damn oddly specific that I’ve noticed.

So I’m not too fond of going to concerts myself, although once in a while they can be a fun excursion. I just like doing things, and when I say doing, I really mean doing: I would rather write the script than enjoy the script. Might I say, I feel more comfortable doing standup than standing in a sweltering 26th row of yet another Live Nation venue. But that’s not my focus today.

I want to talk about a bemusing pattern that I totally didn’t need to notice nor think about, but this blog is called Overanalyzed, so that’s exactly what I do best. I’ve noticed that the people who do tend to go to a lot of concerts, especially big ones, have one thing in common: they all center their life around finding an “other half”.

And well, you might ask, isn’t that just called love? I’ve seen plenty of relationships, heck stable ones at that, where love relations could be compared to litigation, and where both people explore separate Ikea showrooms whenever they’re looking to upgrade their bedrooms (with an ‘s’). No, what I’m talking about is people who literally don’t see themselves as whole until they have the other half, who are eager to put their partners in their Instagram profile pictures, who post tons of stories where the him, her, them, or whatever is front and center. Whenever I see that, I can be 103% sure (totally legit statistics!) that they are really into concerts as well.

So why is that? Let’s overanalyze it.

Life: a game of signs

One thing which separates humans from other animals is our use of abstract signs to convey information to others.

Consider that a huge part of any interaction, even with those we know well, is letting others know who we are, including our more stable traits (identity, personality) and less stable states (feelings, thoughts). Now, the issue is that our own words can only do so much. Much of our words are already taken up conveying our states, leaving little space for our traits. And as for the reason why we don’t use our words to convey our traits more, well, just think of how awkward those first-day icebreakers are. “Hello, my name is Anthony, I hate celery…” Fuck, just get me out of here!

Instead, traits are things we tend to convey through signs. We perform our signs to people to make them believe that we have a specific trait they might want to see. And if that seems like a cynical way to see signs, well am I not a cynical bastard! In moderation.

I think we do live in a world where actions matter more than words, but not in an idealized way, because those actions are usually just performing the right sign, such as speaking a certain way, wearing certain clothing, or even putting the right pin on your chest. I know this quite well because, even though I’m gay and it’s a really gay thing to do, I know I get a different type of attention when I wear a crop top in public and suddenly I’m responsible for saving the 46,XY karyotype.

To take this even more cynically, I think that the signs don’t matter as much as the value they provide to the person performing the sign. From performing the sign, they get (what I like to call) sign equity. One fun example is how in the UK, from the moment you utter a word and it slips out, your regional accent often dictates how you are treated. The sign equity is different between the nice refined accents on the BBC (Received Pronunciation) and the rougher (but realer) accents of some chap from Manchester. The former might get you more sign equity in a BBC job interview, while the latter might get you more sign equity with your disgruntled mates at the pub.

Anyhow, my point is: life is a game of signs, but don’t think about the signs themselves. Think of the practical benefits, the sign equity, that motivate people to perform those signs.

I have a hysterical personality so I’m quite performative myself, but I take pleasure in the fact that all it takes is a melodic voice, a well-timed smirk, or a decent joke for people to, at least in the moment, imagine their entire future revolving around me. Ha! (Now, please don’t buy into my bullshit, I beg you!)

It starts early

Despite being known for other infamous things like the Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud had the brilliant insight that our upbringing changes our relationship to signs. Since then, psychoanalysts have disavowed some of his more batshit crazy ideas, while still making useful distinctions between different personality types and their perception of signs.

When I say that I have a “hysterical” personality, I am not referring to today’s caricature of hysterical personalities: that of a purely attention-seeking histrionic personality. Instead, I see myself as someone who may struggle to use their words a lot, but who has the sign game nailed down pat, which is closer to what Freud meant when he was talking about “hysteria” (see here for a useful overview). To me, signs are powerful tools for which I feel bad for using so readily! When it comes to interpreting other people’s signs, I’m a skeptic, full stop. I know you like that matcha latte not for the taste, but for the photons that bounce off the matcha latte into the eyes of the other gender. I want to know who you are behind the performance.

How might I have developed such a personality, such a worldview? Of course, part of it comes before my first memory. But the other part is, I think, ironically from my penchant for stepping back and overanalyzing things.

I was always a bit of a misfit but, no don’t pity me, I liked it that way! When I was a kid, I saw the rise and fall of plenty of trends, but it was always hard for me to fall into them, because I preferred the bemusement of seeing people redefine their whole identity around the latest hot thing. Can’t see the stage if I’m on the stage. And I’m going to say this: performativity doesn’t stop. Never does. Even grown adults still become gym bros, or theater kids, or Mr. Matcha Labubu Clairo, and they’re blissfully unaware of it. Now, I was only a bit of a misfit: I still got along with most people! It’s just that I didn’t want to sincerely play their game as well.

But I haven’t met many other fellow hysterics. There’s another particular type that I’ve met a lot of though.

Everything for the other half

The most common personality structure is not a hysterical personality, but a depressive personality. Now, don’t confuse ‘depressive’ with ‘depression’, although a depressive personality is vulnerable to depression.

But the core belief of the depressive personality is, to put it frankly, depressing. Depressives believe that they are bad (ouch!), and that their badness is what drives others away from them. As a result, they believe that if they show that they aren’t bad, then the other person will not leave them. That is a very sign-shaped problem. If they just perform the right signs to the other person – the other half – then they will forever be the other half, and everything will be sunshine and rainbows and the leprechaun will not run away with the gold. Those signs may include affirmations, kisses, gifts, matching profile pictures (my biased take: that’s sweet but very bemusing to me), or philosophizing over love languages. That’s not to betray the sincerity of the depressive, who might genuinely be invested in signaling to their other halves that they’re not ‘bad’, ‘like the other [insert gender here]’, or whatever.

Just like hysterics like myself, depressives play the sign game well (better than I do! I can’t say most things with a straight face), but unlike hysterics, they are actually sincere about it. Unfortunately, depressives are prone to dating partners with paranoid personalities, the number one cause of relationship drama on this green Earth.

Paranoids are the beloved enemy of the depressive. Paranoids are chronically suspicious, thinking that a lunch at Denny’s with a coworker within your sexual orientation is worth a nationwide manhunt. And depressives love them! Because depressives, more than any other personality, long to prove that they aren’t bad people.

Let’s take a step back though and see this as a sign game. Paranoia is fundamentally a demand for signs: “prove you still love me”, “prove you aren’t cheating”, ugh I can’t come up with any other examples because this demand is so cringe. Depressive personality is fundamentally about furnishing those signs, even at great cost to the self, in the quest of redeeming themselves. So it is no wonder why depressives find their partners, usually one with paranoid traits, to be their “other half”. They are part of their quest to be a good person again. And if (and I hate to say it, but in many cases, when) they lose their partners, it hurts hard, for it hits the original wound: the original wound of ‘feeling like a bad person’ and ‘driving others away from them’, even when they are just taking in someone else’s projection.

Footnote: Despite my flowery wording here, that’s not to say that depressives are doomed forever to paranoid partners who will scrutinize every breath they take! Especially as many depressives start to realize that their harsh appraisals of themselves are ultimately defense mechanisms: against rage, and against grief over dashed attempts to repair past relationships. However, going for paranoid partners and compulsively seeking reassurance does definitely perpetuate the depressive organization.

And this is not to blame the paranoid partner either. I’ve seen many depressives, too, use dehumanizing words to describe their former partners, almost as if they did no wrong and their partner was the Joker, instead of recognizing that both sides are people with their own flaws and virtues. No surprise that part of having compassion for others is having compassion for the self! The depressive-paranoid pairing acts as a system that was once an adaptive dynamic (usually with an early attachment figure), but has now outpaced its adaptiveness. That being said. Back to my usual cattiness!

Back to the concerts

So where do the depressives’ love for concerts come from? (Huzzah! Now we have a name for the type I’m caricaturing in this post. And depressives, I’m sorry D:)

Not to be all mock motivational, but music has always been more than the sound waves hitting our ears. Music is a culture in its own right. We don’t just listen to music. We talk about music, we worship and project onto musicians, and we judge others based on their relationship to music. And might I add, nowhere is the world of signs more apparent than at your local Hot Topic, where you can marvel at the periodic table of band T-shirts. We can’t understand music without realizing that people treat music, musicians, bands, and heck, even genres, as loaded signs. A musician may not just be someone who plonks on a keyboard, but also someone who, bemusingly, bears geopolitical meaning.

And it isn’t always the musicians who give these signs their sign equity, their value in showing to others that you are (or aren’t) some sort of person. Often, it is the people who rally around these signs. Sometimes, the associations are obvious: if your favorite genre is contemporary Christian music, well you’re going to have to convince me that “you just like how it sounds” if that’s the case. But other times, the associations come from the beliefs of the listeners. You can barely have ‘alternative music’ without an association to causes of the more liberal kind. Wearing a punk band T-shirt or crop top grants you some sign equity with those who are more willing to bestow rewards on those, well, on the more liberal side. No, I’m not the one making the rules!

Whereas the Brits who long to be a BBC news anchor might have to spend many shillings on accent training, liking a certain musician or band is not a costly signal at all. You can lie about it if you want! You can go to Hot Topic and ask the green-haired septum-pierced employee what bands are cool nowadays and get yourself some plumage to show off to your desired subculture.

Such a sign economy is a dream for the depressive, especially as music has always been linked to moral causes, making it easy to signal that they aren’t the ‘bad’ people they believe themselves to be. (Consider that the Beatles, a British band, easily became a sign of protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile the Beach Boys just produced tacky surf music and, what, sounds of pets?) They’re more than willing to identify with a musician or band who is considered ‘good’ in the eyes of those whom they perceive to be judging them, even when in reality they’re simply judging themselves. It’s the same propensity to produce the signs that others want which draws them to paranoids and musicians alike.

And if producing signs were to be a religion, then it is the concert that would be the most sacred of grounds. Concerts are not only signs, but they are costly signs, and quite literally so. Damn, for the price of a concert of some mid-level artist, I could cook up multiple nice surf-and-turfs at home! I guess we just have different values. Anyways. If a Hot Topic T-shirt was plumage, then going to a concert and being a superfan is the most absolutely stunning, gosh-darn beautiful, jaw (and sometimes pant) dropping feather one will ever see. A Sistine Chapel you can wear. But just going to a concert proves that you can afford it. Proves that you love the musician or band and all the ‘good’ it bestows on your reputation. Proves that you aren’t cheating on them and liking the ‘bad’ instead.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to just enjoy the music or the crowd, and I myself like the concert experience once in a while. Nor is it a bad thing that music can have connotations beyond the music. Some noble causes can be organized in part by the world of music. If anything, I find it a joy to realize that our culture is not just defined by those at the top, whether by fame or by dollars, but by us. But it does explain why depressives love concerts… and their paranoids too. Sorry!