Global Citizens Festival and PJ fans missing the point!

Hamson

Ok, I've been a fan of PJ for years and seen them a dozen times, always have a great time at the shows and stay in this club so I continue to attend shows and have fun. Last night at the GCF, I had VIP 2 tickets. And you know what? Last night was the first time I was embarrassed to be a part of Ten Club.

It's was a free ticketed event that we were able to buy tickets for and "skip the good deeds" so to speak, and while we were all waiting for a Pearl Jam's set, portions of the crowd started to boo World Leaders! It was so disrespectful. Who cares about Global Poverty when we only want to see a PJ set (which we will complain about later because we weren't drunk enough or further back than we are "used to" at a PJ show)? Yikes. Global Leaders were pledging to end global poverty as chants of "Eddie" and crowds of men pushed their way to the front. Wow.

To all the fans and 10 Club members who got the point of the event, I'm sure you enjoyed the show as much as I did.

To the rest of you, I hope karma affects your seating at PJ shows for the rest of your life. Welcome to Douchebagistan, population: YOU!

kosteva2

I was at show too. Agree that not ideal to boo world leaders/CEOs but going to defend the crowd response. I get that the whole point of the show was to create awareness for these issues and support that cause completely.
I think that the message by the end of the night was so beaten into everyone's heads that it was overkill and started to drag the message down. If you were at concert for whole time starting around 4 when Colbert/Jackman came on until RITFW closed, you probably heard these messages dozens of times and stood through about 2-2.5 hours of speeches mixed with about 4-4.5 hours of music (if your musical tastes match with usual Pearl Jam fan tastes, maybe about 2-2.5 hours of the music was of interest to you. After a while, repeating the messages over and over and over became counterproductive. There was about 30-40 minutes between Beyoncé and Pearl Jam sets. I think in sequence they had Michele Obama introduce Bono who introduced Malala (Nobel Prize winner). I think if they just kept it at that after about 20 minutes, everyone would've been happy. Instead they added a bunch of speeches from other hosts, collection of CEOs, and other international dignitaries that dragged on and on. I understand it's an honor to have these people there, but could you really distinguish/recall a difference between Bill Gates' speech from Mark Zuckerburg, from PM of Norway, from PM of Sweden, from UN Secretary General, from CEO of Gucci, from Salma Hayak, from Joe Biden by the end of the night? They introduced a collection of CEOs (including Richard Branson) who all surrounded some red button that they would push to pledge their support. If they would've done it all collectively at once, I think it would have been fine. Instead they introduced each one individually and let them each talk for a few minutes (again same message that we all heard dozens of times, could've copied anyone else's speech and wouldn't know the difference). When the parade of CEOs was nonstop that's when the boos and crowd frustration came out. At one point a host made a comment about the crowd reaction/frustration saying something along the lines of "these guys (CEOs) are so valuable that their time up here is worth thousands of dollars a minute" (my paraphrasing, but something like that) that only fueled the fire. It was like "OK, we get the point, let's just hear some music now."

SPEEDY MCCREADY

Pearl Jam Fans
40 years old

$250 for a poster
$50 for a hat
$10 for a sticker
Wait in merchandise line for 5 hours

Booing our world leaders and guest speakers? PRICELESS!

xavier mcdaniel

listening outside the venue for free while pearl jam fans who pay tons of disposable income to stand on a field where I play softball.. Priceless... (for me at least)

TalonTedd

Douchebagistan....lol

javis el errante

Hamson said:

Ok, I've been a fan of PJ for years and seen them a dozen times, always have a great time at the shows and stay in this club so I continue to attend shows and have fun. Last night at the GCF, I had VIP 2 tickets. And you know what? Last night was the first time I was embarrassed to be a part of Ten Club.

It's was a free ticketed event that we were able to buy tickets for and "skip the good deeds" so to speak, and while we were all waiting for a Pearl Jam's set, portions of the crowd started to boo World Leaders! It was so disrespectful. Who cares about Global Poverty when we only want to see a PJ set (which we will complain about later because we weren't drunk enough or further back than we are "used to" at a PJ show)? Yikes. Global Leaders were pledging to end global poverty as chants of "Eddie" and crowds of men pushed their way to the front. Wow.

To all the fans and 10 Club members who got the point of the event, I'm sure you enjoyed the show as much as I did.

To the rest of you, I hope karma affects your seating at PJ shows for the rest of your life. Welcome to Douchebagistan, population: YOU!

I said the same thing on the relay thread when we were bitching about the broadcasting not happening

what dreams

Without the billionaire CEOs sponsoring the event, the free concert would not have happened at all for most of the people in the park. I'm my own cynic, but I also understand the realities of corporate sponsorship and that includes giving them an opportunity to promote themselves in exchange for the goods and services they had just provided us with.

I'm not privy to comment on the poor behavior in Douchebagistan because I was ALL the way back in Pen 5 with the people who couldn't afford to drop 200-1000 bucks for a ticket. I'm happy to report there was no booing from the plebiscite in the back (from what I could tell at my vantage point).

noaloha

I agree 100% some of the ten club members in vip 3 acted the same way. One girl next to me told the guy she was with, during Beyoncé's set that there were all blacks and fags there to see her. I couldn't believe what I heard. The complete opposite of what PJ stands for. Unreal.

tempo_n_groove

Thought the same thing OP.
We were there for a demonstration not a PJ concert. Though in VIP 3 it seemed like a PJ concert.
This event brought out a lot of star power. When the POTUS and the VPOTUS speak on behalf of something you know it's big!
I'll admit I did boo when Michele Obama was on screen. I thought she was there in person... Well then she DOES come out later. Shame on me...
I wasn't aware of the problems of girls and schooling across the globe. Now I know.
Thank you GCF.

sparky_fry

what dreams said:

Without the billionaire CEOs sponsoring the event, the free concert would not have happened at all for most of the people in the park. I'm my own cynic, but I also understand the realities of corporate sponsorship and that includes giving them an opportunity to promote themselves in exchange for the goods and services they had just provided us with.

Hearing all these billionaires/millionaires promote equality is a joke. The reason there is so much disparity in the world is because these guys. If governments are truly motivated to make a difference these people are going to be forced to pay their share.

what dreams

sparky_fry said:

what dreams said:

Without the billionaire CEOs sponsoring the event, the free concert would not have happened at all for most of the people in the park. I'm my own cynic, but I also understand the realities of corporate sponsorship and that includes giving them an opportunity to promote themselves in exchange for the goods and services they had just provided us with.

Hearing all these billionaires/millionaires promote equality is a joke. The reason there is so much disparity in the world is because these guys. If governments are truly motivated to make a difference these people are going to be forced to pay their share.

I do not disagree that there is irony in the situation. But I also know that all of us on this planet are complicit in the problem. For one, if you had checked the corporate sponsorship before the event to inform your decision about whether or not to go (like I did), you could have boycotted the festival on the grounds that it was a farce. I went anyway, after doing some stupid action journey that not only didn't get me a ticket (I had to post on here), nor did it do anything to change anybody's life.

I'm not even comfortable the term Global Citizen. All I could think all day is "What ever happened to the slogan 'act locally?'" I'm listening to speeches about sustainability and climate change, and there all on the ground are piles of trash being left by the people hash-tagging away about sustainability. Then Eddie started calling us all "activists" in his speeches that nobody booed, and I'm like, "Dude, do you see the trash out here?" . . . It's all a matter of perspective. If I expect billionaires to do something on a grander scale, I need to be a little more attentive to my own smaller behaviors as well -- and maybe that might just have meant refusing to support the event by attending if I felt so strongly about the hypocrisy. I didn't, and apparently you didn't either.

I am not defending the billionaires. I'm just saying they made it possible for us to have a show, and for that, people should have been gracious enough to restrain themselves.

Dirtie_Frank

Are you on the same person on Facebook with this same post?

Dirtie_Frank

Also this country thrives off of freedom of speech. Why can people not voice their displeasure with these so called leaders? To go off your point there are people in these areas that if they voice displeasure they are killed. So if you booed that is your right do not let someone who disagrees with you tell you different. I will also add that ten club sent this portion out: A limited amount of VIP tickets that will be sold exclusively to the Ten Club. so what makes you so sure that all the people that you are so displeased with were Ten Club Members?

odiedragon

Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences of your speech. It just means the government can't throw you in jail over what you say.

I can still call someone an asshole if they say something shitty.

Dirtie_Frank

You are right

whoanelly15

Hamson said:

Welcome to Douchebagistan, population: YOU!

That's hilarious! And you raise some good points about our fandom and how priorities can be so easily twisted. I hate to side-track this, and maybe this isn't the best place to bring this up, but whatever. I think it's an example that this can and does happen in more ways than one.

I was watching the broadcast at home. As a global citizen, both philosophically and "commercially" - for lack of a better term, I was disappointed in what I saw of the event itself. I admit - I only tuned in to catch PJ's set, but was an hour or two early and watched a lot of the speakers in between Beyonce and PJ. Some of them I found incredibly compelling and inspiring. Many others, not at all. I'm sure that being there was a wholly different vibe, but the broadcast especially sent some very mixed messages to me.

First, even though he'd probably be fun to have a beer with, this dude isn't a world leader in my book...

Neither is this guy, as handsome as he may be...

Nor is this guy.


Second, there was a gigantic T-Mobile banner covering the bottom panel of my screen for a lot of the time. And maybe it's my bias against the one percent, but it's hard for me to think that many of the CEO's and corporate partners who spoke, who repeatedly make the same pledges, hit the same talking points and push a pointless button, aren't there just for the face-saving and free advertising. This is part of a larger discussion that I'm going to hold off of for fear of launching into a total tirade, but I think you get the idea.

I haven't had cable for a very long time, so maybe I'm just not as de-sensitized to having all of this stuff thrown in my face as I used to be. But this is an important organization, and an important event, that I feel is being hijacked by the wrong people now because it has reached a certain level of acclaim. This doesn't detract from the message for me personally, because ending global poverty is too important. There's no way that I would have booed if I was there, but even watching the little bit that I did, I was sick of hearing the same old suits say the same old things. All I really wanted at that point was the music.

The music is no small thing at an event like that, by the way. I don't think that I need to convince anyone here about why music is important in causes like this and others. I first learned of the global citizens through a different artist and who knows, may not have gotten involved otherwise. I guess I feel like there is a time and a place. The time and place at GCF is right for passion, inspiration, celebration and other "ions", I'm sure. Music is all of the above. For me, that is not the time and place for commercialism. I am truly grateful that people who have real ability to do so are putting their money where their mouth is (like those above). I'd sure rather them support the cause then not at all. But again, the corporate spectacle that it became sends the wrong message.

whoanelly15

odiedragon said:

Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences of your speech. It just means the government can't throw you in jail over what you say.

For some reason, it's the people who don't understand this very simple point that are the first to try to throw the first amendment in your face.

bootlegger10

xavier mcdaniel said:

listening outside the venue for free while pearl jam fans who pay tons of disposable income to stand on a field where I play softball.. Priceless... (for me at least)

Part of the fun should have been seeing pearl jam where you normally play softball.