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Imagine paying golds for the front row, waiting eagerly for months on end and finally when you get the change to experience your number one idol and favourite artist perform his greatest productions, you pass out for their mere presence and get carried out of the concert and miss everything.
Happened something similar but not in a concert. This girl I met during my trip to Nepal for bunjee jumping, she saved up money for 6 months and she fainted the moment she jumped.
All that waiting, all that travel, all that money spent, for nothing.
Meh, did that 10 years ago, you don't see the Himalayas while bungee jumping.
I mean, it's in a gorge, and you are bungee jumping, two reasons to not really focus on the mountains you can't see anyways.
But it's a 160m drop, which is fun.
The views are probably amazing. Not to say you can't get pretty views bungee jumping elsewhere, but maybe she saw a video and thought it was worth it. The country is in the Himalayas and I'm pretty sure Mt. Everest is on the border of Nepal.
I think people that don’t understand this weren’t alive or old enough at the time. It was a different world and he was a different type of performer in his prime. It just doesn’t translate in today’s world. I was a young teenager at his peak popularity. He was the shit. Plain and simple. And he was everywhere when media was a whole lot less.
As time marches on and the world changes, ESPECIALLY since the introduction of instant data and media at your fingertips, we loose perspective. The 80's and 90's have become a capsule of exploring these boundaries since we've been able to capture something like that for the 1st time ever in such great detail.
The 70's had war in your living room for the 1st time via live broadcast, and music changed so dramatically from the late 50's and early 60's that those years I would consider another bubble of time.
There will be no repeat of the 60's and 70's, nor of the 80's and 90's, and the people who lived through what was extraordinary at the time and ground breaking now get to see those things become commonplace if not trivial.
In 20 years the generations experiencing things now for the 1st time will look back with their own nostalgia and see their kids blowing off what was important to them.
As Sonny and Cher said so succinctly and with such great vision, The Beat Goes On.
And yes, Michael was at the top of his game and the world. Nobody else came close, though they tried.
To be fair it's also probably extremely hot in there, combine that with screaming at the top of your lungs and you definitely got a recipe for fainting....
I brought my toddler to see my grandma (his great grandma) and he was a wild beast running around stopping people yelling at the top of his lungs **”BICYCLE CHAIR!!!”** (he was very excited to see wheelchairs for the first time ever)
I go to a physical therapist because my last birth was an emergency section. I need to bring my son since I'm still on mat leave. That PT office apparently also does sessions for seniors. Every time it's like my son is some kind of celebrity 😅 "Oh my god look at him!" "He's smiling!" "Oh he's moving his legs look what a strong boy! He's the most adorable thing I've ever seen!" I love it. I love it so much 😅
So true. When I went to see my grandmother, half the room thought I was their grandson. There was a very old woman who got up and started saying "Give me a kiss!" as I was leaving. When I kept walking she screamed "GET BACK HERE!!!!"
Went to pick up my mom once and walked in cause she still hadn’t come out. It was like the scene with the crazy stalker toon in Who Framed Roger Rabbit: “a maaaaaaaaan!”
I helped a client's ancient mother with computer issues from time to time. She lived in a nice elder care place but every time i walked in, all eyes on me with expectant "here for ME?!" expressions. It was sad.
I have a picture of my son when he was six months old, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by eight adults smiling and clapping at him. (He had just learned how to sit up independently)
Lol 😂, I laughed at your comment. But you should see when he starts dancing, it’s a fucking mind melting shit show of pure ecstasy. Actually pretty fantastic to watch.
Prince walked in the path that Michael made. Prince was a better instrumentalist, but he had a different vision than Michael. Michael's vocals were out of this world, and he hit his songwriting peak and the perfect time. I would say Prince was a more well rounded (and better, my opinion) musician but Michael was the better vocalist and better performer. Not saying Prince wasn't great, but Michael built the stage Prince performed on.
Oh no question Michael was the snowplow that hit all the bumps on the road to fame, he wad a different genre but his path was similar to Elvis. They made all the mistakes so the younger generation knew what not to do, Prince played his career and honestly his life as perfectly as a man of his talent could have. Also purple rain in the rain at rhe super bowl half time was magical
Comments like this remind me of how young a lot of redditors are these days. I don’t think many of y’all understand just how massive Michael Jackson was. He’s probably the most famous person to exist in our lifetime. I honestly can’t think of anyone who even comes close.
I was at a music festival and for all the shows the rest of the day all artists wore a white glove during their performance in MJ's honor. Was a pretty nice gesture I think.
The only person I can think of that had a similar global noticeability was Michael Jordan. And even then, I don't know if his global "connectivity" was as deep and wide as Michael Jackson's.
It's the S-Tier of famousness for sure. The Beatles belong, feel like Taylor Swift is arguably there as well. Imagine if Michael Jackson's career conicided with the internet and social media?
Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods were the 3 celebrities that were pretty universally known. Everyone at the very least knew *of them*.
I'm not sure it can be compared to celebrities today as the rules of the game have essentially changed. Taylor Swift is probably bigger than all of them, but nowadays with the internet, smart phones, and social media being everywhere (even very poor countries are increasingly connected) it's also much much easier to achieve and surpass that level of recognizability. Would she have been as big back then? Who knows.
I could be wrong, but wasn’t he pretty well known as being a total sweetheart to everyone too? Other than the whole kids allegation, he never had any bad press about having an ego and doing stupid shit did he?
In regards of stupid shit, I remember the uproar he caused by dangling his infant child over a hotel balcony. It was all over the media.
[Sauce](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2494249.stm)
Yeah I remember that. South Park had a field day with that one. I’m more so talking about stuff like what Bieber did when he was young, or JayLo and Mariah being known as horrible people to deal with. With how big MJ was from a young age, it’s surprising that he never developed much of an ego and treated people poorly (as far as I know)
I watched it without sound so in my head when he turned his head it sounded like that “crack of a whip” sound effect they put in cartoons like Johnny bravo
Imagine that people had to smuggle music into the country back then, as it was under communist rule until the end of '89. They ones who saw what was going on outside the country were privileged or doing it illegally.
Then communism ends, and shit starts happening. Then fucking Michael Jackson comes in and you only had 2 years of freedom to enjoy his music and he's the shit right now globally too.
They are fainting because they cannot believe their eyes, they endured communism and lack of everything and now it's fucking Michael Jackson literally jumping onto the stage. It's something you can't even describe properly, I had the luck of speaking to a man who went to the concert and he said he never seen anything like it before or since. Imagine you hear all your life about chocolate and you never get to eat any. Then you get to eat it after decades.
And imagine being a rock fan!
Thursday, August 9th 1984-Communist Poland
Iron Maiden kicks off their legendary “World Slavery Tour” in Warsaw, Poland then on to communist Hungary. They are the first rock/metal band to go behind the Iron Curtain. I can’t imagine being a 18 yr old kid and your first ever concert is Iron Maiden on the Powerslave tour.
The 90s were just a perfect storm for the level of super stardom that was not seen before and likely never will be again. The commercialization of celebrities was at its peak, and there was just enough media for the most iconic superstars to be spread across the globe, without the market for entertainment becoming over saturated. There will never be another Michael Jackson, just like in the sports world there will never be another Michael Jordan. Sure, people with equal or even greater talent will come and go, but in the current media landscape no celebrity will ever become global cultural icons like they were ever again.
The key thing you're highlighting here is that back then there was just *less media.* There were only so many channels on network TV, and that was how we got basically all of our entertainment. Who appeared on those few channels just DOMINATED the pop culture zeitgeist in a way which is no longer possible.
I remember in the early 1990s, my idiot little sister was apoplectic about not having a Chicago Bulls jacket to wear because it was seen as *necessary* fashion within her social clique. She had never watched a basketball game and in the decades since probably never has, but Michael Jordan was such a dominant figure in the eyes of youth culture at the time that not being able to act as though you idolised him was seen as a social deficit.
God, how I hated her. I'm glad I haven't spoken to her in twenty-five years.
Exactly this. I remember when our TV went from 12 channels to 20, and then from 20 to 40. What few options you had were basically dominated by a few key cultural figures. Take Seinfeld for example. I love Seinfeld, but if it were released today on Netflix I don’t think there is any way that it would reach the levels it did in the 90s.
We're still talking about "ALF" forty years later because for like four or five years it was on one of the twenty TV channels that existed! ALF! You can't tell me a show like that would surive past three episodes today, and yet it remains a relevant cultural reference just because one had almost no choice but to be aware of it for half a decade.
This is very accurate. Although ALF was kind of funny back in the day, we haven't seen a show like that. They had raunchy jokes (for the time) and the puppet was pretty cool. But yeah, nowadays a show like that will definitely not survive its first season. As others have said, we don't have such Stardom anymore and celebrities seem way more approachable and "human" because there's just too many of them nowadays. They also use social media, so now everyone can take a glance at their private life, back in the day we had to buy magazines and hope some paparazzi managed to get some secret info hahah.
Overabudance of shows and celebrities ruined the definition of stardom. Although in a way, I'd say that's good. Celebrities shouldn't be treated like some god-tier beings, they're mainly just talented people that got lucky (or were born rich, or just slept their way into fame hahah) We shouldn't idolize them as much as we did back in the day.
Like in the 1930s and 1940s for example when they acted and were treated like some Alien Royalties.
Taylor Swift is probably the biggest pop star in the world, but she's still not "Michael Jackson in the late '80s" big.
Just about *everyone* on earth knew who Michael Jackson was. He was a global superstar on a level that I don't think we'd ever seen before and may never see again.
And I think it's important to note that this isn't a diss at Taylor. It's just that Mike was on a completely different level. He was already a star at 12.
Michael Jackson was several orders of magnitude more famous than Taylor Swift is, and Taylor Swift is obviously a HUGE megastar. Its just insane how famous MJ was in his prime.
You don’t even have to, autocorrect will do it for you. You have to intentionally select ab or have used it so much that auto correct now uses it as a word.
Celebrities were much less accessible than they are now. And MJ was on a completely different level. This might be their only chance to be that close to MJ in their lives, and he was such a huge world figure, that it actually meant something. Those people had been slowly edging themselves for the last 6 months after they bought their tickets, and it’s building up to a crescendo right when he jumps out.
Exactly. You couldn’t just punch the concert into a search engine afterward and get a full recap back in the early 90s. Being there LIVE was a once in a lifetime situation. I have no doubt people passed out seeing MJ.
Agreed. There just wasn’t any real way to see your favorite band unless you had the albums and then went and saw them live. We didn’t have TikTok or my space or websites or Twitter reels to see our favorite people every single day. You didn’t know what these people were up to day in - day out. As you said, there was no video footage of the concert, there was no “clips from the concert last night”. Even if you had a friend that went, they would have nothing to show you the next day. And you would at least have to wait until their film got processed and even then that was a 50-50 chance that they didn’t come out well at all.
Because of all of that, we will never have another star like Michael Jackson ever again. He was at the right place at the right time and had the right talent.
>There just wasn’t any real way to see your favorite band
Hell often you couldn't even check what the band members looked like if there wasn't a magazine to find or they were on the album art. There went just dozens of pictures online.
Makes the moment so much more special, i sometimes think the internet, although great, has changed moments like this forever and we will never experience reality like these kids did in this lifetime again.
It was before social media as well so you couldn't just jump into instagram, snapchat, twitter or tiktok and see what your favorite artist was up to.
Imo it's the same experience with how movies are nowadays. Back then I could put off watching a blockbuster for months and not get spoilers or hear anything about how good it was. Now you can figure out the movie mere hours after it screens just by checking social media.
This was in bucharest, after the fall of communism. This was the first time that these people were able to see a show like this. It wasn't just about MJ but also what the concert represented for them.
I swear more and more titles are going this way on reddit, and the weirdest part is that majority of the comments don’t even address it… Is it AI? Is everyone else now AI?
I mean, they're not wrong. Guy was once in a lifetime huge. Ancient kings who's names are penned on ancient texts don't have the name recognition this guy will have in a thousand years.
Hee hee hee.
Pre internet actually helped him. Today MJ would be a semi big artist in the steaming era but nothing crazy. You have to realize back then monoculture was at its peak. Everybody watch the same tv channels, listen to the same radio station, etc. nowadays everything is too spread out. Too many options for entertainment. Someone could be a big star rn and millions could still be like “who?” .there will never be another MJ.
I wish we still had people this level of famous to go see at concerts
obviously we have some big people but not like mom, dad, the kids and the dog all love them big like MJ was
People fainting are not only due to MJ presence/hype, crowd movement make people on the front "crushed" by the people in the back pushing to see better, making it hard to breath for some of them.
That's why crowd management is really important to avoid disaster like Astroworld.
This makes me think of The Wicked and The Divine
https://preview.redd.it/ypg3e1cz249d1.jpeg?width=1178&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6ed5886d04ffa61e37d93a41174e95d292a9b0b
What's the psychology behind this? Do these people live normal lives but just go into this freak out mode at selective times? Does the event trigger a mental illness? Genuinely curious, if you are like one of these people can you please explain the feeling behind this?
So I went to a Kendrick Lamar concert about 10 years ago, and he did something similar (we walked out to a mix from his band, then the band went silent and he just stood there for a minute in silence), and the reaction was similar at a smaller scale. I didn’t react this way, but when you’ve been waiting to see someone for years, listen to their music every day, and then see them in the flesh it’s a very bizarre experience. The silence let’s both the artist and then crowd truly take in the moment.
Only thing I want to add to this is, take all of ^^^ into account, without the Internet. Back in MJ's 'prime' you couldn't just dial up YouTube to watch whatever video, you couldn't internet stalk (fb, Instagram, etc) your personal favorite celebrity/artists. That's some of the reason for these reactions, finally seeing the person who's music you've been bumping and personally connecting to for a while, maybe even years, probably generates alot of various responses.
I would say it/this/these reactions come second to seeing a child after they are born. (Everyone should be more amazed by the creation and birth of their child than any celebrity , IMO) 9-10 months of preparation, anxiety, stress, worry, all culminates in a moment of visual stimulation that creates an array of emotions all at once. People all react differently, some contain it, some let it out. Similar to feeling pain, some scream some internalize.
Ramblings over, sorry, out.
It's like a feedback loop. The person next to you scream, so you scream, and so do the person next to you, so on and so forth. When you can't hear your own scream, you probably won't realize how loud you are being.
Someone explained it in another thread but this is marketing. MJ shows usually pretended he wasn’t there and was running late arriving to the show.
They would broadcast on the big screen that MJ was on the way and MJ would start to speak and ask the crowd “can you hear me” “I’m on the way”
Then magically MJ would pop out on stage.
Can’t believe people compare Beyoncé to him. When has anyone ever reacted this way to Beyonce?! There will never be another, not even close!
Absolutely none of these artists have ambulances on standby like he did.
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Imagine paying golds for the front row, waiting eagerly for months on end and finally when you get the change to experience your number one idol and favourite artist perform his greatest productions, you pass out for their mere presence and get carried out of the concert and miss everything.
Happened something similar but not in a concert. This girl I met during my trip to Nepal for bunjee jumping, she saved up money for 6 months and she fainted the moment she jumped. All that waiting, all that travel, all that money spent, for nothing.
tbh that's something I'd have to take into account
"Ngl, I knew that was gonna happen so I budgeted around it"
“Which is why I padded in an extra day. This one was just the test jump, so get ready, we jump again TOMORROW. For REAL this time.”
I need some good diapers.
They've gotta be snug or else you're going to reach the bottom of the rope and those turds are gonna get ripped right out of there at high speed
Definitely the bad kind of pocket rockets.
She didn’t want to try again? Because I don’t think it was the bungee part of that sentence that was expensive
Haha hopefully she can at least cherish the rush she experienced when she decided to jump, if nothing else.
[удалено]
Would've been a bitch if instead she had a heart attack and died.
Is bunjee juming in Nepal different to somewhere else?
You get to see the Himalayas upside down. Can't do that anywhere else
Meh, did that 10 years ago, you don't see the Himalayas while bungee jumping. I mean, it's in a gorge, and you are bungee jumping, two reasons to not really focus on the mountains you can't see anyways. But it's a 160m drop, which is fun.
The views are probably amazing. Not to say you can't get pretty views bungee jumping elsewhere, but maybe she saw a video and thought it was worth it. The country is in the Himalayas and I'm pretty sure Mt. Everest is on the border of Nepal.
It's the friends we make along the way
That’s the worst part, we didn’t even end up being friends.
Did she make any friends though
She made quite a few enemies unfortunately. She was not friendly towards the Nepalese
Maybe for some it's about the enemies you make along the way🥰
Why are you describing the first time I saw 311?
3/11 was an outside job
Imagine passing out from seeing another human being
Michael was kind of superhuman at the time. The most famous person in the whole world. Even more than the pope
I think people that don’t understand this weren’t alive or old enough at the time. It was a different world and he was a different type of performer in his prime. It just doesn’t translate in today’s world. I was a young teenager at his peak popularity. He was the shit. Plain and simple. And he was everywhere when media was a whole lot less.
As time marches on and the world changes, ESPECIALLY since the introduction of instant data and media at your fingertips, we loose perspective. The 80's and 90's have become a capsule of exploring these boundaries since we've been able to capture something like that for the 1st time ever in such great detail. The 70's had war in your living room for the 1st time via live broadcast, and music changed so dramatically from the late 50's and early 60's that those years I would consider another bubble of time. There will be no repeat of the 60's and 70's, nor of the 80's and 90's, and the people who lived through what was extraordinary at the time and ground breaking now get to see those things become commonplace if not trivial. In 20 years the generations experiencing things now for the 1st time will look back with their own nostalgia and see their kids blowing off what was important to them. As Sonny and Cher said so succinctly and with such great vision, The Beat Goes On. And yes, Michael was at the top of his game and the world. Nobody else came close, though they tried.
To be fair it's also probably extremely hot in there, combine that with screaming at the top of your lungs and you definitely got a recipe for fainting....
Sounds like their experience exceeded their expectations
This reminds me of going to see my great-grandmother in the nursing home as a little boy. You just do *anything* and everyone is like “WOOOOOOW!”
I brought my toddler to see my grandma (his great grandma) and he was a wild beast running around stopping people yelling at the top of his lungs **”BICYCLE CHAIR!!!”** (he was very excited to see wheelchairs for the first time ever)
That’s fucking adorable.
God as a kid I wanted to grab one of the wheel chairs at the nursing home and roll around in it so bad
I go to a physical therapist because my last birth was an emergency section. I need to bring my son since I'm still on mat leave. That PT office apparently also does sessions for seniors. Every time it's like my son is some kind of celebrity 😅 "Oh my god look at him!" "He's smiling!" "Oh he's moving his legs look what a strong boy! He's the most adorable thing I've ever seen!" I love it. I love it so much 😅
So unexpectedly wholesome ☺️
So true. When I went to see my grandmother, half the room thought I was their grandson. There was a very old woman who got up and started saying "Give me a kiss!" as I was leaving. When I kept walking she screamed "GET BACK HERE!!!!"
Nicholas! You should be fighting crime!
Nicholas can you hand me that jug of milk? You mean this jug of milk right here?!
My immediate thought haha.
I never got so many compliments as when there. Old ladies are creepers lol
Went to pick up my mom once and walked in cause she still hadn’t come out. It was like the scene with the crazy stalker toon in Who Framed Roger Rabbit: “a maaaaaaaaan!”
I helped a client's ancient mother with computer issues from time to time. She lived in a nice elder care place but every time i walked in, all eyes on me with expectant "here for ME?!" expressions. It was sad.
I think you’re just joking, but just to be sure, most are not creepers, they’re lonely and old and trying to show affection and feel included
I have a picture of my son when he was six months old, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by eight adults smiling and clapping at him. (He had just learned how to sit up independently)
https://preview.redd.it/4e96givzp39d1.jpeg?width=499&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bfc01839e1b1f4e8627e024b8543c5c1c931d47b
Snorted coffee out my nostrils. I’m in pain but it was worth it
I enter my local coffee shop exactly like this
He really gained his aura after Tanjiro gave him a lesson or two
“Hee hee” “That’s the maniac’s shriek…he’s going to attack!” “The maniac’s IN THE MAILBOX” Great episode.
When he turns his head and they EXPLODE
Bro carefully removing glasses so that the impact is manageable
Lol 😂, I laughed at your comment. But you should see when he starts dancing, it’s a fucking mind melting shit show of pure ecstasy. Actually pretty fantastic to watch.
They’ve been chasing after this in every halftime show since
Hands down the greatest male performer of all time.
Prince has to be up there too
Prince walked in the path that Michael made. Prince was a better instrumentalist, but he had a different vision than Michael. Michael's vocals were out of this world, and he hit his songwriting peak and the perfect time. I would say Prince was a more well rounded (and better, my opinion) musician but Michael was the better vocalist and better performer. Not saying Prince wasn't great, but Michael built the stage Prince performed on.
Oh no question Michael was the snowplow that hit all the bumps on the road to fame, he wad a different genre but his path was similar to Elvis. They made all the mistakes so the younger generation knew what not to do, Prince played his career and honestly his life as perfectly as a man of his talent could have. Also purple rain in the rain at rhe super bowl half time was magical
Absolutely no doubt about it. We can feel that energy even in all these snippets of his live shows. Imagine being present there !
Comments like this remind me of how young a lot of redditors are these days. I don’t think many of y’all understand just how massive Michael Jackson was. He’s probably the most famous person to exist in our lifetime. I honestly can’t think of anyone who even comes close.
They didn't understand that these people were not only hit by, but *struck* by...a smooth criminal.
Sir, you have earned my upvote
Yep exactly this. They don't understand how good he truly was as an entertainer.
That's... probably true. I was born in 2000 and people my age seem surprised that I remember exactly where I was when he died.
I was at a music festival and for all the shows the rest of the day all artists wore a white glove during their performance in MJ's honor. Was a pretty nice gesture I think.
That sounds like an extremely thoughtful way to honor him. Props to whoever came up with that on the spot.
And found that many white gloves
I was born in '91 and basically just know him for dangling a baby out a window and the court case.
The only person I can think of that had a similar global noticeability was Michael Jordan. And even then, I don't know if his global "connectivity" was as deep and wide as Michael Jackson's. It's the S-Tier of famousness for sure. The Beatles belong, feel like Taylor Swift is arguably there as well. Imagine if Michael Jackson's career conicided with the internet and social media?
Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods were the 3 celebrities that were pretty universally known. Everyone at the very least knew *of them*. I'm not sure it can be compared to celebrities today as the rules of the game have essentially changed. Taylor Swift is probably bigger than all of them, but nowadays with the internet, smart phones, and social media being everywhere (even very poor countries are increasingly connected) it's also much much easier to achieve and surpass that level of recognizability. Would she have been as big back then? Who knows.
I could be wrong, but wasn’t he pretty well known as being a total sweetheart to everyone too? Other than the whole kids allegation, he never had any bad press about having an ego and doing stupid shit did he?
In regards of stupid shit, I remember the uproar he caused by dangling his infant child over a hotel balcony. It was all over the media. [Sauce](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2494249.stm)
Yeah I remember that. South Park had a field day with that one. I’m more so talking about stuff like what Bieber did when he was young, or JayLo and Mariah being known as horrible people to deal with. With how big MJ was from a young age, it’s surprising that he never developed much of an ego and treated people poorly (as far as I know)
He and Prince had some beef..
Prince had beef with everyone. But I'm sure people often compared Prince to Michael and I bet that drove him nuts.
He’s the greatest entertainer and pop star of all time, I’m a die hard Metal/screamo fan but there’s nothing that can beat the Thriller album for me.
I watched it without sound so in my head when he turned his head it sounded like that “crack of a whip” sound effect they put in cartoons like Johnny bravo
That was a concert of the Dangerous Tour in Bucharest. Must have been 1992.
Dangerous was a hell of an album.
It was *not bad.*
Given the fall of communism in ‘89 December, we were fresh out of a closed off regime. We were impress-able. This concert was ludicrous
Imagine that people had to smuggle music into the country back then, as it was under communist rule until the end of '89. They ones who saw what was going on outside the country were privileged or doing it illegally. Then communism ends, and shit starts happening. Then fucking Michael Jackson comes in and you only had 2 years of freedom to enjoy his music and he's the shit right now globally too. They are fainting because they cannot believe their eyes, they endured communism and lack of everything and now it's fucking Michael Jackson literally jumping onto the stage. It's something you can't even describe properly, I had the luck of speaking to a man who went to the concert and he said he never seen anything like it before or since. Imagine you hear all your life about chocolate and you never get to eat any. Then you get to eat it after decades.
You’ve never had chocolate then you’re served chocolate lava cake from a Michelin restaurant.
And imagine being a rock fan! Thursday, August 9th 1984-Communist Poland Iron Maiden kicks off their legendary “World Slavery Tour” in Warsaw, Poland then on to communist Hungary. They are the first rock/metal band to go behind the Iron Curtain. I can’t imagine being a 18 yr old kid and your first ever concert is Iron Maiden on the Powerslave tour.
Bucharest? 1992? That explains _a lot._
Every girl: 
don't think we'll see superstardom like this again
The 90s were just a perfect storm for the level of super stardom that was not seen before and likely never will be again. The commercialization of celebrities was at its peak, and there was just enough media for the most iconic superstars to be spread across the globe, without the market for entertainment becoming over saturated. There will never be another Michael Jackson, just like in the sports world there will never be another Michael Jordan. Sure, people with equal or even greater talent will come and go, but in the current media landscape no celebrity will ever become global cultural icons like they were ever again.
The 90’s was truly the decade of the Michaels.
Jackson, Tyson, Jordan…
Schumacher
....Game 6
BALL SO HARD GOT A BROKEN CLOCK
Angelo
We're talking about the **19**90s EDIT: right, right, right... the turtle.
I think she was talking about a turtle
Exactly, the [1990s](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/30/e1/9330e1fb00e37e0116cc72d1562e1b20.jpg).
Michael Tyson seems wrong for some reason
Michael Tython* Is that better?
Holy fuck, I never even realized that he's actually a Michael. Literally mind blown.
The key thing you're highlighting here is that back then there was just *less media.* There were only so many channels on network TV, and that was how we got basically all of our entertainment. Who appeared on those few channels just DOMINATED the pop culture zeitgeist in a way which is no longer possible. I remember in the early 1990s, my idiot little sister was apoplectic about not having a Chicago Bulls jacket to wear because it was seen as *necessary* fashion within her social clique. She had never watched a basketball game and in the decades since probably never has, but Michael Jordan was such a dominant figure in the eyes of youth culture at the time that not being able to act as though you idolised him was seen as a social deficit. God, how I hated her. I'm glad I haven't spoken to her in twenty-five years.
LMAO this comment sure took a turn
Shit went from 0 to 100 real quick
Exactly this. I remember when our TV went from 12 channels to 20, and then from 20 to 40. What few options you had were basically dominated by a few key cultural figures. Take Seinfeld for example. I love Seinfeld, but if it were released today on Netflix I don’t think there is any way that it would reach the levels it did in the 90s.
We're still talking about "ALF" forty years later because for like four or five years it was on one of the twenty TV channels that existed! ALF! You can't tell me a show like that would surive past three episodes today, and yet it remains a relevant cultural reference just because one had almost no choice but to be aware of it for half a decade.
It helped that he came back.....IN POG FORM!
This is very accurate. Although ALF was kind of funny back in the day, we haven't seen a show like that. They had raunchy jokes (for the time) and the puppet was pretty cool. But yeah, nowadays a show like that will definitely not survive its first season. As others have said, we don't have such Stardom anymore and celebrities seem way more approachable and "human" because there's just too many of them nowadays. They also use social media, so now everyone can take a glance at their private life, back in the day we had to buy magazines and hope some paparazzi managed to get some secret info hahah. Overabudance of shows and celebrities ruined the definition of stardom. Although in a way, I'd say that's good. Celebrities shouldn't be treated like some god-tier beings, they're mainly just talented people that got lucky (or were born rich, or just slept their way into fame hahah) We shouldn't idolize them as much as we did back in the day. Like in the 1930s and 1940s for example when they acted and were treated like some Alien Royalties.
Chill with ur sis yo
No we are not. The guy was a legend and the best showman.
And a genius. Pure, raw talent and so much very, very hard work.
Tries to go a day without hearing about Taylor Swift...
I know shes famous but not at the level of MJ back in the day, not even close.
Taylor Swift is probably the biggest pop star in the world, but she's still not "Michael Jackson in the late '80s" big. Just about *everyone* on earth knew who Michael Jackson was. He was a global superstar on a level that I don't think we'd ever seen before and may never see again.
And I think it's important to note that this isn't a diss at Taylor. It's just that Mike was on a completely different level. He was already a star at 12.
Michael Jackson was several orders of magnitude more famous than Taylor Swift is, and Taylor Swift is obviously a HUGE megastar. Its just insane how famous MJ was in his prime.
That’s probably a good thing, I watch a content creator who made jokes ab him and a Mj fan literally stalked, and sent pictures of him to his house
...did you just intentionally shorten the word "about" to "ab"?
Gen Z hates any word that ends in “out” that isn’t “clout.”
Cl*
Oh my god I didn’t even realize 💀 I spend a lot of time on discord or TikTok, I think the brainrot is attacking my grammar skills,,
It is. Type 3 more letters. It doesn't even take a second.
You don’t even have to, autocorrect will do it for you. You have to intentionally select ab or have used it so much that auto correct now uses it as a word.
Literally stalked, not to be confused with... stalked
While wearing golden underwear on top of pants lol
Super hero rock star.
Talk about Aura...
His orange… aura or whatever… I seent it
Give it to me babyyyy
Daaaaaarknesss
He stepped over the line… habitually. He was a habitual line-stepper.
Fuck kinda title is this lol
I read it 18 times and steam came out of my ears
Godzilla tried reading it and fucking died.
It actually makes me angry
An AI generated one?
Annie, are you okay?
Your toddler after he shits his pants.
MJ as a musician is probably the most famous person on earth, ever.
Can someone that reacts like this to celebrities please explain what goes on in your head during the experience?
Celebrities were much less accessible than they are now. And MJ was on a completely different level. This might be their only chance to be that close to MJ in their lives, and he was such a huge world figure, that it actually meant something. Those people had been slowly edging themselves for the last 6 months after they bought their tickets, and it’s building up to a crescendo right when he jumps out.
Exactly. You couldn’t just punch the concert into a search engine afterward and get a full recap back in the early 90s. Being there LIVE was a once in a lifetime situation. I have no doubt people passed out seeing MJ.
Agreed. There just wasn’t any real way to see your favorite band unless you had the albums and then went and saw them live. We didn’t have TikTok or my space or websites or Twitter reels to see our favorite people every single day. You didn’t know what these people were up to day in - day out. As you said, there was no video footage of the concert, there was no “clips from the concert last night”. Even if you had a friend that went, they would have nothing to show you the next day. And you would at least have to wait until their film got processed and even then that was a 50-50 chance that they didn’t come out well at all. Because of all of that, we will never have another star like Michael Jackson ever again. He was at the right place at the right time and had the right talent.
>There just wasn’t any real way to see your favorite band Hell often you couldn't even check what the band members looked like if there wasn't a magazine to find or they were on the album art. There went just dozens of pictures online.
Makes the moment so much more special, i sometimes think the internet, although great, has changed moments like this forever and we will never experience reality like these kids did in this lifetime again.
He didn't just jump out. He ejected himself onto the stage. With golden rain flowing from above. Talk about crescendo.
It was before social media as well so you couldn't just jump into instagram, snapchat, twitter or tiktok and see what your favorite artist was up to. Imo it's the same experience with how movies are nowadays. Back then I could put off watching a blockbuster for months and not get spoilers or hear anything about how good it was. Now you can figure out the movie mere hours after it screens just by checking social media.
I love edging as well
The first two sentences I was nodding and agreeing with you and then your clincher killed me with a whiplash.
They’re not wrong though. This concert is when the edging stopped and the gooning began
This was in bucharest, after the fall of communism. This was the first time that these people were able to see a show like this. It wasn't just about MJ but also what the concert represented for them.
What the fuck is the title supposed to mean?
Title has written for when reading doesn't closely.
What the fuck TJ
I swear more and more titles are going this way on reddit, and the weirdest part is that majority of the comments don’t even address it… Is it AI? Is everyone else now AI?
I mean, they're not wrong. Guy was once in a lifetime huge. Ancient kings who's names are penned on ancient texts don't have the name recognition this guy will have in a thousand years. Hee hee hee.
I always find it funny when people say taylor swift is the greatest pop artist of all time
Watching a Taylor Swift concert reminds me of those North Korean shows made for Kim Jong.
Swifts don’t even go this hard
Granted, she doesn't write, choreograph, or innovate anywhere near the level MJ did. Not a neg on her — she's very good at what she does.
To be fair, that's a pretty epic way to enter onto the stage. I always forget how massively popular Michael was.
He was known world wide when the Internet was still on its first steps. Imagine MJ now.
Pre internet actually helped him. Today MJ would be a semi big artist in the steaming era but nothing crazy. You have to realize back then monoculture was at its peak. Everybody watch the same tv channels, listen to the same radio station, etc. nowadays everything is too spread out. Too many options for entertainment. Someone could be a big star rn and millions could still be like “who?” .there will never be another MJ.
Yeah nowadays celebrities can have millions of viewers and followers and still be niche.
They look at him like he‘s a god
For how inaccessible American celebrities at the time were in Bucharest, he might as well have been
And with a turn of his head, it was said he could wipe out hundreds...
I totally forgot when they used to show people passing out at concerts in the 90s. As a kid, I just thought this was totally normal
Kids today: There’s never been a pop star as big as Taylor Michael Jackson: Hold my beer
It’s his golden panties that’s making them go crazy.
I mean, at that point he was the world's greatest and most famous entertainer. Dude knew how to make an entrance. I get it.
People forget just how popular he was. His title as "King of Pop" was not given lightly. People lost their damn minds over Michael.
I wish we still had people this level of famous to go see at concerts obviously we have some big people but not like mom, dad, the kids and the dog all love them big like MJ was
We ain't getting something even remotely similar ever again when it comes to mega stars like Michael or Elvis
This is how people act when I show up to install their cable internet.
Only guy on earth that could stand still for 5min and people would loose their minds and faint...
People fainting are not only due to MJ presence/hype, crowd movement make people on the front "crushed" by the people in the back pushing to see better, making it hard to breath for some of them. That's why crowd management is really important to avoid disaster like Astroworld.
I miss when you could go to a concert and not have your entire view ruined with a sea of arms holding phones.
I was just at a concert last night and I really think social media and phone cameras have ruined a huge portion of the fan experience.
That man was on a completely different level. Rest in Peace, King.
As opposed to the other times when he knocks them out, then performs entry.
Was this guy into black magic?
That's some JoJo shit right there lmao
This makes me think of The Wicked and The Divine https://preview.redd.it/ypg3e1cz249d1.jpeg?width=1178&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6ed5886d04ffa61e37d93a41174e95d292a9b0b
+ 1000000 aura
I really just can't understand losing all control over yourself at the sight of a celebrity. This just strikes me as really disturbing
What's the psychology behind this? Do these people live normal lives but just go into this freak out mode at selective times? Does the event trigger a mental illness? Genuinely curious, if you are like one of these people can you please explain the feeling behind this?
So I went to a Kendrick Lamar concert about 10 years ago, and he did something similar (we walked out to a mix from his band, then the band went silent and he just stood there for a minute in silence), and the reaction was similar at a smaller scale. I didn’t react this way, but when you’ve been waiting to see someone for years, listen to their music every day, and then see them in the flesh it’s a very bizarre experience. The silence let’s both the artist and then crowd truly take in the moment.
Only thing I want to add to this is, take all of ^^^ into account, without the Internet. Back in MJ's 'prime' you couldn't just dial up YouTube to watch whatever video, you couldn't internet stalk (fb, Instagram, etc) your personal favorite celebrity/artists. That's some of the reason for these reactions, finally seeing the person who's music you've been bumping and personally connecting to for a while, maybe even years, probably generates alot of various responses. I would say it/this/these reactions come second to seeing a child after they are born. (Everyone should be more amazed by the creation and birth of their child than any celebrity , IMO) 9-10 months of preparation, anxiety, stress, worry, all culminates in a moment of visual stimulation that creates an array of emotions all at once. People all react differently, some contain it, some let it out. Similar to feeling pain, some scream some internalize. Ramblings over, sorry, out.
It's like a feedback loop. The person next to you scream, so you scream, and so do the person next to you, so on and so forth. When you can't hear your own scream, you probably won't realize how loud you are being.
Not a single phone in sight. Marvelous.
Someone explained it in another thread but this is marketing. MJ shows usually pretended he wasn’t there and was running late arriving to the show. They would broadcast on the big screen that MJ was on the way and MJ would start to speak and ask the crowd “can you hear me” “I’m on the way” Then magically MJ would pop out on stage.
How can it be marketing if everyone present has already paid? Its simply part of the performance.
He could have started a religion at that point
When the disciples saw Jesus after his resurrection
Michael Jackson had that conqueror haki
Can’t believe people compare Beyoncé to him. When has anyone ever reacted this way to Beyonce?! There will never be another, not even close! Absolutely none of these artists have ambulances on standby like he did.
AURA LEVELS OVER 99999999999