#I blame Ticketmaster and hshq entirely

[phaoi]

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[track-five]

Thoughts on the tour cancellation? I’m so torn because as an American fan, I know I don’t have the right to speak for Asian Louies and it’s okay for them to be angry and upset. They’ve been waiting 8 years and once again they get the short end of the stick. At the same time I don’t think it’s Louis’ fault at all. He was so excited to tour Asia. I think his team has handled this in the worst way possible (what’s new🙄) but I don’t think he deserves to be slammed like he has been. Asian fans didn’t deserve to hear it from live nation or Twitter update accounts. His team 1000% should have and still should put out a statement. There’s no way they didn’t know a couple days in advance. I do find it incredibly strange that the only news we’ve heard from Louis or his team is a measly paragraph tweet apologizing. The difference from him breaking his arm and posting x rays and a notes app apology because he had to cancel a few signings and one show, to canceling an entire leg of tour and only writing a couple sentences is super weird and leads me to believe he can’t say anything else. The whole situation is messed up and I hope he’s okay.

oh boy ok i haven’t been tracking this closely today, so if anything new happened that i missed i could be completely off here…

i really feel for all of the fans in asia because they get the short end of the stick too often :( this is giving “harry cancelling his chicago show day-of via ticketmaster” and i’m really not sure what to think. shit happens sometimes, and we have to accept the disappointment knowing the decision is probably what was best for the person we care about. i believe harry didn’t owe us any explanation even though we wanted one, but hshq absolutely did owe us an announcement (and honestly an apology…both of which we didn’t get, but LA did!). i feel the same about louis.

we are never owed a look into harry or louis’ personal lives, but louis is so adamant that there’s a symbiotic relationship between himself and the fans…so the way this is being handled is very odd and makes me think something very personal is going on. i don’t blame louis for the response, but i’m inclined to blame his team.

as we’ve seen time and time again louis is in charge of a lot, but he has people working for him behind the scenes. he’s not the kind of guy to get every tweet pre-approved by a pr team, but i have a feeling he’s not in charge of the response here. even if he is, lthq still should have been the ones to announce it.

performing is his passion, but it’s also his job. regardless of how fun his shows are and how close we feel to him there, it’s essentially a transactional experience. his team knows this. it’s disappointing if your friend backs out of a coffee date with no explanation, but there are no stakes. if an artist backs out of shows, there was time and money invested on many fronts. when his team spends so much time pushing genuineness and transparency on us through aotv, it’s strange that all we have is a remix of every other apology tweet over the years. they absolutely dropped the ball on this one, and i feel so bad for him for the backlash he’s getting.

we are never owed an explanation, but we are owed the courtesy of hearing it directly from the artist (aka their team). that’s the bare minimum in my opinion. my guess is there’s something going on with louis. if there’s something serious he’s dealing with, the burden of making this difficult announcement (and blame for its inadequacy) should absolutely not fall on him, but on lthq and lthq only. there’s obviously a lot of nuance to decisions like this, so it’s hard to assign blame when we truly have no idea. i hope he’s alright, and my heart goes out to the fans whose shows were cancelled.

[eeveedel]

omg that post u made abt harry (gaslight, gatekeep, girl boss) it was so funny i dont think i hv laughed so hard before, the accuracy u utter genuis

but on another note, what do u think of everything happening there? bc its honestly so confusing? ik a lot of ppl want someone to blame, im lucky i dont hv a stake in it (as in i didnt buy a ticket or anything) but it feel weird to just put the blame solely on harry? or maybe its not? im not sure how it works i suppose im lucky to just be chilling and not worried a couple of my mates are rrly annoyed at this point tho and i even know someone who spent some $300 dollars so its sensitive

I think it's a complicated issue, and I don't think there's one person to blame. I think in general this is a hard situation because of course, no one knows what's going to happen in the near future and we haven't know anything for a year and half. There's no way to make people 100% happy; people will get mad if the tour is outright cancelled, people will get mad if it's pushed back. I think what so many people are upset about is the pure lack of communication and the sense that no one involved (meaning both Harry and his team) seem to care about the fans. Pushing back the tour a few months is laughable and potentially dangerous with current COVID regulations, and even with that change, the fans had to get emails from ticketmaster before we heard anything directly from Harry's team, while in the past usually Harry or HSHQ are the first to annouce tour news

It's a sensitive topic for so many people because Harry's tickets are expensive, and many people bought multiple shows, or don't live in a big city and have to factor in flights (which can be hard to cancel and move around) or gas money, lodging, food if they're staying for more than a day, parking, taking time off work or school if it's a weekday show...most fans don't have the luxury of driving or walking downtown to a major tour venue, buying an overpriced drink, having a fun show for a couple hours and then going home. For a lot of fans, it's a more complicated and expensive experience, and despite the wealthy fans that like to flex their multiple shows (who tend to be the loudest voices in this fandom), most of Harry's fans are normal people who are in school or work regular jobs; a few hundred dollars, is a lot of money for something that's not a necessity.

I know Harry isn't totally responsible for this -- some of it is the venues, some is trying to coordinate schedules of his opening acts, a lot of it is his management -- but I think people put blame on Harry for a few reasons. He's the face of it all; it's his tour and his album and he's the reason we all bought tickets in the first place. Fans are out a lot of money for the sole reason they wanted to see Harry in concert. Also, he's the one we're attached to and have a parasocial relationship with. A lot of us view Harry as a protective and safe figure, so when things happen in relation to him that hurt us, it feels personal and hurts a lot more. And finally, the way Harry has acted in the last few months but really in the last year has turned a lot of people off. Harry is a grown man with a lot of fucking money and is allowed to do whatever he wants, but going on an extended vacation in Italy for almost a month while fans are begging to know if they should sell their tour tickets...the optics of it not great, and paired with the personal relationship I mentioned earlier, it can especially hurt

So yeah, this entire situation is crappy, and that's my two cents as to why so many people are super upset right now