Concerts: we know them, we love them, but I fear we have lost a crucial part of enjoying live music – no one dances anymore. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
There is nothing quite like a night of slightly epileptic lights and off-chorus harmonising to your favourite songs, but now Gen Z are refusing to dance, and the vibes are, frankly, off. <\/p>\n
I am Gen Z, and I\u2019m sick of watching my generation stand still and bop (often with a drink or phone in hand) and I vote we bring back the boogie.<\/p>\n
I mean, can you really call it night-life if there\u2019s no life to be seen?<\/p>\n
A close friend on mine attended French electronic duo Justice\u2019s concert last Wednesday night at Sydney\u2019s Qudos Bank Arena. <\/p>\n
Standing in a moshpit a few thousand large, he told me hardly anyone was getting down and dirty to the EDM\/rock bangers.<\/p>\n
The week before, another young Aussie, Paris, attended American pop superstar Doja Cat at Qudos (seems to be a theme here). <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you went to the Doja Cat concert in Sydney and you weren\u2019t dancing in the mosh,\u201d she said in a video uploaded to TikTok.<\/p>\n
\u201cF*** you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video\u2019s caption read: \u201cI\u2019m so sorry girl you should\u2019ve said no phones in Sydney cause (sic) when did everyone become a videographer?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy (are) yall (sic) standing there filming instead of dancing what\u2019s wrong with yall (sic).\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it, but we\u2019re all thinking it.<\/p>\n
Another TikTok video from earlier this year of Haitian-Canadian DJ\/rapper Kaytranada\u2019s afterparty in Melbourne showed a sea of limp hands waving around in an otherwise still crowd.<\/p>\n
American country singer Kelsea Ballerini\u2019s crowd were also incredibly underwhelming, with a video shared by a concertgoer showing rows of people \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 recording and watching the show through their phones. <\/p>\n
Although I\u2019ve bagged out Gen Z for this habit, a video recently emerged showing a diversely aged crowd at Oasis at Sydney\u2019s Accor Stadium in November doing the exact same thing.<\/p>\n
Even Liam Gallagher\u2019s gritty tone couldn\u2019t get Aussies up.<\/p>\n
The death of dancing has seemingly infected music festivals too, a video shared to TikTok revealed, with just one lone dancer among a mosh pit of thousands standing dead still at Spilt Milk in Ballarat on Saturday. <\/p>\n
I hate to fan the flames of the generational divide, but maybe Millenials really do have this one down pat.<\/p>\n
We, as the iGeneration, have officially swapped the shuffle for the screen.<\/p>\n
Emma Ruben, a fellow young person and Student Edge spokeswoman, agreed, adding in a sea of phones dancing can be daunting. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean look, I have to say, personally, I don\u2019t understand,\u201d she told news.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Gen Z and you\u2019re going to have to peel me off the dance floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said cringe culture, regardless of the generation, is always going to play a part.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go to a concert and everybody at in that mosh pit has got their phones out filming and they\u2019re not dancing, you\u2019re not really going to be that encouraged to dance, are you?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think generally speaking, most people don\u2019t want to be the outlier \u2013 they don\u2019t want to be that one person that\u2019s having a boogie when everyone else is not.\u201d<\/p>\n
With many major international acts often skipping Australia on tours due to distance, and following the live music hiatus the pandemic and it\u2019s aftermath brought, Ms Ruben believes many Gen Zers are often \u201cstarstruck\u201d when their favourite musicians finally arrive down under.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they do come, we\u2019re almost starstruck into not wanting to dance because we\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my gosh, like I just can\u2019t contain myself\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just have to look at this artist. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy colleague Steph, she\u2019s also Gen Z, was saying that when she went to see Doja Cat last weekend, she was just so in awe that she didn\u2019t even think about dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n
This often translates into the tendency to (excessively) film the show, Ms Ruben added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think another element to it as well is that we do just want to capture these moments on our phones \u2026 so we can keep them forever,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to sound so cringe \u2013 I think the boogie lives inside all of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a generation that loves to capture our moments, but that\u2019s a double-edged sword \u2013 at the same time, we\u2019re so busy capturing the moments that we\u2019re not living in them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Concerts: we know them, we love them, but I fear we have lost a crucial part of enjoying live music – no one dances anymore. There is nothing quite like a night of slightly epileptic lights and off-chorus harmonising to your favourite songs, but now Gen Z are refusing to dance, and the vibes are, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2192754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[423290,423309,21823,382836,423305,423308,423295,423292,423289,423300,132953,423291,423306,423301,423298,423303,423297,423296,423304,306233,309963,423293,22477,402585,423299,24845,423287,22782,386843,382828,423288,350988,423302,423294,348525,423307,22602,385756,423310],"class_list":["post-2192753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-american-country-singer","tag-andrew-potts","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-ballarat","tag-beach-ball","tag-boogie-lives","tag-caption-read","tag-cat-fan","tag-concert-behaviour","tag-country-singer","tag-cringe-culture","tag-dance-floor","tag-emma-ruben","tag-fan-mid-concert","tag-fellow-young-person","tag-generation-stand","tag-hands-waving","tag-hannah-wilcox","tag-kelsea-ballerini","tag-liam-gallagher","tag-limp-hands","tag-live-music","tag-live-music-events","tag-live-music-hiatus","tag-melbourne","tag-mosh-pit","tag-music-festivals","tag-new-south-wales","tag-oceania","tag-phones-dancing","tag-qudos-bank-arena","tag-recording-phone","tag-ruining-concerts","tag-shirley-manson","tag-steph","tag-sydney","tag-victoria","tag-young-concertgoers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/How-Gen-Z-has-brought-about-the-death-of-the.avif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2192753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2192755,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192753\/revisions\/2192755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2192753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2192753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2192753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}