You’re standing in a crowded, dark room, bodies brushing together, anxiously awaiting the sound check to finish before your favorite band takes the stage. Your stomach flips when the lights go down and the filler music between sets cuts out. The room is dark, aside from a few fans with their cell phones engaged to take pictures of the performance that’s to come. You squeeze the hand of your best friend, in disbelief you’re seeing one of your all-time favorite bands. Maybe you even make a connection with the stranger standing in front of you; sharing excitement before the music starts. Your heart beams and you feel the excitement in the air once that first strum of the guitar is heard, or the first kick of the bass drum deafens you.

Many people my age know these feelings very well. One of the greatest parts of being alive in today’s world is the live entertainment, especially the post-hardcore/pop-punk concerts. There's an amazing community and family that's formed at these shows. Without respect as a foundation, there is no such uplifting community. And before you can reach the point of butterflies and excitement, sometimes you have to endure a few opening bands that maybe you aren’t so attuned to.

Allow me to take you with me as I travel back in time to the night of March 29th, 2016. We’re now at The Lost Horizon-a dark, dingy, homely concert venue full of excited fans and a cool, two-sided bar. We’ve found our way down the little step and into the ‘pit’ area, nearest the apron of the proscenium stage. We’re about one row away from being pressed against the guardrail and being face-to-face with security guards, who anxiously await the crowd-surfing to ensue. We jam out to three awesome opening bands, despite never hearing them before. The third band to play, Cold Rain, is from Japan and you’ve just had a blast getting to know their music and their edgy songs.

While you wait for the fourth band, one of which you’ve heard of and used to be quite fond of, you set your expectations way low. You know that they practically have all new members, and that they aren’t going to play any of the older songs you knew back in Middle School. But still, you’re open to their new music, especially after the very successful bands that preceded them.

Emarosa makes their way to the stage, and begins their set. You notice that no one is really picking up their feet, or catching onto the beat. Despite a fairly still and leery crowd, front-man Bradley Walden decides to jump into the audience, bringing his mic, it’s cord, and the stand along with him. Here he is, weaving through the people, practically begging for them to become engaged and make him feel good by jamming along or touching him.

No one seems interested.

He should have stopped there.

This is annoying, but you’ve experienced it before. Normally, it’s cool when band members get interactive like this. Spoiler alert for the near future: Joel Quartuccio of Being As An Ocean comes into the crowd several times, you get to be with him, singing into his mic through your happy tears in a little while. But this man is not Joel Quartuccio, and your instincts tell you that he’s not becoming one with his audience, he’s instead begging for their acceptance.

Although that’s pretty sad, and the tight-knit crowd is pretty accepting of Walden’s meandering and tangling of his mic cord, it’s simply not okay. He finds his way back to his place on stage and you feel a communal sigh of relief. But, you notice one thing: he’s left his mic stand in the crowd, and you watch as some adolescent dude awkwardly struggles while deciding what to do with it. The music is still blaring, you reach for the mic stand, wanting to angrily launch it back onto the stage, but you’re stopped. You realize it’s too soon to get kicked out anyways; you still haven’t seen the bands you came to see, even if it was your second time seeing them.

After another weak song that seems like a Walden-one-man-off-of-the-beat-Johnny-Craig-wanna-be hit wonder, Walden bewilders you again. “Play some of your older stuff!!!” Someone excitedly shouts between songs. We all cheer for that guy because we all want to hear Casablanca or Utah, But I’m Taller. Walden’s response: “That’ll never f-ckin’ happen”. Your jaw drops. Your blood is boiling. There are so many things wrong with this. Aside from the fact that you won’t hear any of the older tunes, you struggle to fathom how someone, a part of this fantastic family in the music scene of our generation, could have such blatant disrespect that he would reply to an audience member like that.

But it isn’t over yet.

You move on, remembering the disrespectful and inconsiderate slam that Walden just spewed. He’s not satisfied yet, though. It’s the second last song of the set, after Walden misses his solo notes, while dramatically kneeling on the ground with one finger against his ear, singing out of tune, he does one more insecure, disrespectful act. All of a sudden, you turn to your right to see this poor kid, parading this bulky, jean-jacket wearing jerk on his shoulders, unhappily around the crowd. As the audience member struggles to assist Walden back to the stage, to dump Walden off, you can’t help but to be affected by how upset that audience member seemed. His hat was falling off, he was struggling, and you knew he did not want to do this.

You think to yourself: “Just because this guy is ‘famous’ and we paid to see him, does not mean that it’s acceptable for him to pick on one of the largest audience members, and assume that he will be his chariot through the pit.

Don’t worry, the rest of the concert was superb. However, you weren’t able to let this set go. It’s now almost a week later, and I still can’t drop this topic from my brain and my heart. There’s a special aura about these shows and within this scene. I used to word ‘community’ to describe it, but it truly is a family. I’ve encountered rowdy audience members who trump over the unwritten guidelines of shows, but never have I seen disrespect come from the performer. Until March 29th, 2016.

I refuse to support any musician, performer, or human who thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable. It's not because I miss their older music. It's not because I'm a hater. It's because I treat you how you treat me.

Respect must exist and radiate from both the audience AND the performers to keep our family and community tight. I refuse to let this sort of volatile treatment of loyal, paying, eager young audience members go unnoticed.