Fuck Buttons ended their scheduled gig prematurely last night when the band discovered after three songs in that the reason the despondent crowd were not cheering or moving was that the inanimate gathering of supposedly attending ticket payers had been replaced by 2000 cardboard cut out versions of themselves.
Venue manager Arson Burns spoke about the incident admitting it was a rapidly re-occurring problem. “The hipsters seem to have found a loophole for being spotted at gigs they really had no interest in attending,” he explained. “They turn up, leave the card-board cut out of themselves then go and do what ever it was they actually wanted to do, maybe enjoy a gluten free croissant at a poetry reading or go drink gin from a jar at their friends vegan BBQ.”
“It started off with just one or two cut-outs being found at the end of gigs but the trend seems to have escalated quickly,” he continued. “They paid for the ticket so they are well within their rights to come and fuck off, I don’t think their absence makes much of a difference to the atmosphere in my opinion.”
Andrew Hung of the band was the first to become suspicious when the crowd did not cheer them as they walked on stage. Speaking after the gig he said, “We walked on to complete silence which isn’t unusual as minimalist reaction is common amongst contemporary gig goers,” he offered, “but after playing Surf Solar our third song in the set I became suspicious and asked for the lights to be turned on.”
“It was then I noticed that not only were their bodies not moving but their expressions had not moved in a while, which still wasn’t unusual amongst the stoic modern audiences.”
It was not until roadie Jodie Parent further investigated by entering the card-board crowd. Jodie said “At first I thought the crowd were just shy or were perhaps catatonically stunned by the excellent set, but as I began to move and feel around that we realised the crowd were in fact artificial.”
“With the absence of people live tweeting or videoing the gig we really should have known,” Jodie added.
One attendee Gilbert Strawberry of Leicester,has since uploaded a video of his card-board self at the gig to YouTube. “I don’t see the problem. I paid to be seen at the gig, I told everyone on Facebook I was going, but I had other things I would have preferred doing.”
Sites such as Ticketmaster and Letmein have yet to address the problem and music fans are likening it to the filming of gigs on mobile phones as a killer of atmosphere at music events.
