I've been going to shows for fifteen years and live show etiquette has genuinely gotten worse in one specific way: the phones.

Not the photos at the start of a set — that's always been there. Not the occasional video clip for a memory. I'm talking about people who have their phone up recording full songs, multiple times per set, creating a second screen in front of them that's partly blocking their physical view and partly disconnecting them from the room.

I've thought about why this bothers me and I think it's about attention economics. The person recording isn't just recording for themselves — they're performing witnessing for a future audience, which changes their relationship to the present experience. They're not fully in the room because they're already thinking about the content.

I don't have a solution and I'm not interested in arguing about phone bans. I'm interested in what the behavior says about how we experience live music now.