Jeff Ihaza
Contact Jeff Ihaza by Email View all posts by Jeff Ihaza October 6, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
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Timothy Norris/Getty Images/Coachella Over the weekend, DeuxMoi, the notorious Instagram gossip account known for its celebrity sightings and blind items, shared an Instagram Story post featuring a screenshot of a message from a reader who reported seeing comedian Martin Herlihy getting a drink alone at Phoebe Bridgers’ concert at Barclays Center. Bridgers’ tour restricts phones, so the reader’s account had to stand in for the clandestine photo that might otherwise have accompanied the sighting.
“Phoebe’s great, but going to a phoebe show solo seems a little sad,” the reader wrote. Another attendee had asked Herlihy for a hug, which he gave, but the reader dismissed the encounter as “a moot point since no photos!”
The internet has summarily ridiculed the (thankfully) anonymous user, who, in psychoanalyzing the decision to attend a concert alone, both confirmed the reason for no phone policies at shows and illustrated how ingrained the surveillance-driven ethos of these invasive little devices in our pockets has become.
“Cannot imagine anything more lame than opening the Instagram app and messaging Deuxmoi,” one X user posted.
The reader also makes an unforced judgment error. Going to concerts alone is decidedly not sad. Beyond the fact that Phoebe Bridgers is probably the ideal concert to attend by oneself, going out to see a show alone is one of life’s great pleasures.
Of course, it’s a grand experience to meet up with a bunch of friends at the show, or dance in the embrace of a significant other, but being at a show alone offers a more personal kind of intimacy that, increasingly, is hard to find.
For one, at least in an ideal world, you’re able to blend into the mass of the crowd, whose attention — again, in an ideal world — is laser focused on the stage, a shared object of adoration that finds you in communion with complete strangers, enraptured in something near-religious and sometimes even explicitly so, the human spirit dialed to a frequency that alone or in a group you get to tap into for a brief moment, experiencing the oneness of all things — unless you’re staring at your phone or looking around for celebrities to call out.
