Single Serving Pod People (at free concerts)

I really dislike being part of an audience. I hate how it paints me with a brush of association, how it drags me out of the event and into the a mode of vitriolic observation. Now I find myself wishing I hadn't taken an interest. Now I have all these other strangers that I will probably never feel compelled to know, and certainly I feel more compelled to not know them.

I don't belong in your audience. I probably don't want to be in whatever other categories your audience might also happen to overlap. I definitely don't like the social expectation that I am supposed to take interest in whatever commonality we might have. Now I am stuck in whatever demographic goulash your event happened to draw today. Now I am no longer a member of a thing I chose, and it's very unsettling.

I don't want to miss your thing, but more than that I don't want to subject myself to making it to your thing; because there are OTHER PEOPLE THERE. Can't you just send me a recording so I can participate on my terms?

What sort of person derives pleasure over and above this feeling of not- belonging? Why do I find that archetype of person so challenging? I imagine the awkwardness of being unable to excuse myself politely and the feeling of being trapped by socializing with them and having to pretend to be interested.

I think I can just stay home for the highlight reel next time. This experiment is not giving me the results I sought. Instead I feel the stress of being in a room full of people that any moment will shriek and point their fingers at me, the last non-pod-person among them.

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