Nobody Warned Olivia Rodrigo That Being Famous Would Smell Like This

Olivia Rodrigo did not grow up dreaming of this. She dreamed of stages and screaming crowds and the kind of transcendent connection between artist and audience that makes live music one of the last sacred experiences in modern life. What she got, in addition to all of that, was “people [who] wear diapers so that they can be front row. That’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled.”

Noah Kahan, Vermont’s most beloved export, a man who writes tender songs about home and longing and the complexity of the human heart, now writes desperate pleas on X about number two. “You guys gotta understand there’s a venue worker out there with a thousand-yard stare after dealing with that.” He has since incorporated a crowd pledge into his live show, in which audiences solemnly swear not to defecate in the pit. He had a fake Congress legislate diapers. Noah Kahan is doing congressional diaper content now. This is where we are.

Meanwhile, at a Devilskin show in New Zealand, a concertgoer in the mosh pit reportedly “shook a log down his leg” and then attempted to kick it away, which triggered a chain reaction of chundering across the pit. One witness described a woman emerging from the chaos with vomit in her hair, excrement on her legs, and tears streaming down her face.

Morgan Wallen fans have been urinated on. Sabrina Carpenter’s pit spawned an actual commercial product called the “pit diaper,” whose existence represents a genuine failure of civilisation. Five Seconds of Summer. Taylor Swift. It keeps happening. The concerts keep happening and so does the other thing.