For Just ₹ 50, You Too Can Attend a Concert You Never Went To!

Imagine lying in bed on a Friday night, doom scrolling through Instagram as your feed erupts with videos from the hottest music festival the city has ever seen. You weren't there because tickets probably sold out, you didn't feel like going, or maybe your wallet said no. A creeping dread settles in—FOMO.

But here's the surprising twist: someone just slides into your DM offering you a "solution". For mere 50 rupees, they will deliver you a crisp, front-row video of all of the festival's headlining acts. Perfect for your Instagram stories. "No one will even know you didn't go," they assure. And, preposterously enough, you take it seriously.

Welcome to the strange, slightly dystopian world of digital clout capitalism, where even not going to an event can now be bought, packaged, and sold for the right price.

I was very intrigued, not because I wanted to purchase one but because I couldn't help but wonder who was behind this. Was this an amateur hustler taking advantage of people's insecurities or if FOMO had somehow grown into a real business model? So, I made contact with the page admin and asked for a conversation under the promise of anonymity. What I learned was nothing short of mind-bending.

The admin is part of a strange new ecosystem. He doesn't attend these concerts but researches attendees, buys or acquires their videos, and resells them to people chasing clout. "It's crazy," he said to me.

"I don't need to go to these concerts. I just follow the people who do. They're already there filming for the likes, so I buy those videos from them. Later, I sell them to people who missed out or didn't want to spend the crazy ticket prices. The response has been tremendous."

When I asked why he believed that people are purchasing, he responded with two answers:

"Tickets these days are insane. Most middle-class people can’t afford to drop thousands just to see an artist. But even those who go are often there for the flex, not the vibe." So for others, buying a ₹50 video achieves the same result without all the hassle."

For ₹50, you buy relevance. Social media has shifted the focus more toward how one experiences something or an event or experience, compared to what I feel in this moment. It's really fantastic, isn't it? Where we will go just to not receive silent judgement for not being part of the crowd.

Doesn't this make you wonder what we're doing to ourselves? Are we trading authenticity for aesthetics? Memories for metrics? The irony of course is the same platforms designed to connect us are feeding the disconnect. If you did not attend but posted that you did, does it even matter? If you attended but didn't post, did it ever happen?

The real cost of FOMO isn't ₹50 or even ₹5000—it's the loss of authenticity. Shared experiences have become transactions with validation as the currency and being 'cool' a full-time job. So do we just laugh it off and go along, speak out, or ask ourselves why we have such a need to belong so desperately?

Maybe life’s too short to fake the vibe. Missing out might just be okay, because no one’s keeping score—except the algorithm. And do you really want to live for that?