Earlier in November, Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival ended deaths of 10 individuals and injuries onto to hundreds of others. Over the course of the initial discourse, thousands of horrific videos surfaced about the deplorable condition that many of the attendees endured. Although attention has died down from the issue, the most memorable factor of the tragedy that people talk about is Travis Scott’s initial apology video.
Putting aside the fact that this situation is very morbid to joke about, people have had a laugh at the sleepy and uninterested video Travis Scott mistook for an actual apology. However, although there has been much attention and tom foolery made from the video, the apology from Kylie’s team, Drake’s team and the other organizers were insensitive.
Meaningless apologies are not tolerated by the public. Families lost their children and loved ones. It’s time to dissect the lack of humanity and empathy coming from these groups of powerful people and analyze ways we can change how these professionals handle our lives.
To start off, the biggest problem within the apologies that came out of these teams is not one made the statement “I/We are sorry”. Many of the people involved in the tragedy said “we offer our condolences,” “our hearts go out to…,” “we are committed to…,” and “we had no idea.”
The idea is to paint a picture of sincerity while avoiding any actual accountability. If they were to offer genuine phrases of apology and concern, a costly liability would be put on them.
Notes app apologies pull in a very important factor of creating content online: navigating parasocial relationships. Since social media has made it easier than ever to get in contact with anyone, influential figures need to be able to maintain a friendly yet distant relationship with their audience; consumers can get a slice of the figure and get closer to them by interacting with their content and buying their merchandise. It makes it so that their audiences are always trying to achieve closeness even using monetary gain, while keeping most of themselves private.
This makes it so that the empathy involved in creating a real apology is lost. When we are dealing with a loss of lives, simple apologies are not even close to enough. Notes app apologies are not personal so using them when someone loses their family, something so traumatic and personal, is ignorant.
Notes app apologies are not equipped to deal with real human emotions.
Now, many people (Travis Fans) have discussed how him and his team have put money into therapy sessions and funeral processions for all of the people who died at the concert. Could this be the earnest apology that compensates for the simply written one? Well, not exactly, seeing as how the youngest victim’s family, Ezra Blount, refused to take the money. That is understandable because this tragedy was preventable.
Travis has a track record of inciting his fans to do reckless and dangerous stuff at his concerts. His apology meant nothing because this behavior was allowed to happen before. Only now was there a weak attempt at making reparations. For all those who say a 9-year-old shouldn’t be at a Travis Scott concert if he doesn’t want to die, please feel free to use his offer of free therapy sessions for a month. One month of therapy is so ridiculous, it takes some people years to get over traumatic incidents and it takes nothing to put your name on a brand.
Honestly, all of this spawns from putting people in positions of power that they do not deserve. Travis is obviously violent and has no problem inciting that. However, when you have a platform of people that goes down all the way to the age of nine, should a person who promotes violent acts and acts of recklessness really have access to all this fame, power and money?
I know many will make the argument of free speech; he is free to do what he likes so listen to something else. But when people make arguments like that, people who really should not have platforms have more influence over a range of people, specifically children, who will emulate and pay to do those things.
This is the information age. Anyone anywhere can become famous on a dime. That is dangerous. There should be checks and balances because unrestricted power and money can cause the loss of life like this. It starts with where we spend our money, but also how we highlight and dissect incidents like this. I do not want a tragedy like this to fall under the radar and for Travis to make a recovery from this. I and many others want him to know that if you use your platform irresponsibly and harmfully, there will be consequences.
To all those that died in the festival: Ezra Blount, John Hilgert, Brianna Rodriguez, Jacob Jurinek, Franco Patino, Axel Acosta Avilia, Bharti Shahani, Rudy Peña, Madison Dubiski, and Danish Baig, I am so sorry. I am so sorry that an event that was supposed to be fun and safe did not provide you with the security you needed. I am sorry for your families who loved you dearly. I hope that something in this world changes so no one else will have to suffer the way you did.
Sources:
https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/travis-scott-astroworld-festival-victims/285-befdff4a-f566-43ae-b738-aa398be7b270#:~:text=Bharti%20Shahani%2C%2022%2C%20died%20from%20injuries%20sustained%20at,being%20critically%20injured%20during%20crowd%20surge%2C%20family%20confirms
https://www.vulture.com/2021/11/astroworld-festival-tragedy-travis-scott-explainer.html
https://news.yahoo.com/astroworld-nine-old-victim-ezra-052736641.html