2024 LC Thread

My daughter the teacher can confirm this. At least in many schools beyond elementary, if there are phones in the classroom, kids are using them.

Iā€™m not assuming I know better which is why Iā€™ve asked for an explanation.

I think it is very plausible a company the makes the bags have come up with a bad idea that they have sold to comics who desperately need a solution. They feel better even though it does little or nothing to solve their problem.

Another data point. Iā€™m going to a show at the exact same venue tonight to see two of the most famous drag comedians alive right now. This system wonā€™t be used. We asked.

Do they have a Netflix special coming up?

When we were kids, the schools had phones and you could contact kids and vice versa through the office. It worked fine.

4 Likes

Not sure.

I agree it makes marginal more sense if there is a special being recorded as this could incentivize people who otherwise wouldnā€™t record to try doing so.

I agree with this. Having said that, if someone is shooting up the school, then that is not gonna work.

1 Like

When we were kids our parents didnā€™t have to worry that the people in the front office with the phone would be sheltering in place under their desks.

my pony was sheltering in place

1 Like

Old cellphones could easily be repurposed for emergency use only.

I get why they are protective. Their act is their currency. They tour it and then potentially end up releasing a special finally burning that content forever.

If it gets leaked online before that process is finished it can cost them a lot of time and money.

Musicians often play their hits. They are just replaying stuff you have likely already heard. Comedians, many of them at least, are trying to present a fresh hour to their audience. They tour on it for a year or more than release it as a special. They are protective over people hearing it besides in FHAs context they release it. When most comedians release a special that content is dead forever, they never tour it again.

Cellphones are as powerful as guns. The pen to the sword.

1 Like

I think the protecting material issue is real. Also, Iā€™ve read some interviews with the founder as well as some artists that have used them at their shows where they talked about how they feel like the audience is better/more engaged without cellphones. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to control themselves and generally stay off their phones (or, put another way, every performance would be so compelling that weā€™d never think to look at our phones), but so many people are addicted to their phones that maybe the extra will power is necessary.

And as far as the piracy thing, thereā€™s obviously ways to circumvent the pouches if someone really wants to, but I bet most of the people recording shows arenā€™t recording for some intentional/commercial reason. Theyā€™re just regular folks who are used to documenting everything for the gram (or the tok) and arenā€™t really thinking about whether the comedian wants their A/B testing of new jokes to be potentially seen by millions of people.

Iā€™m not sure that those are good enough reasons to annoy your fans/customers, but I can at least see why some artists and venues are trying it out.

Oh, and the company was founded in 2014 and itā€™s still around, so I guess they have some happy customers (or it at least has a decent sales pitch to school boards).

5 Likes

yep, last 2 summers

JimHammer did and you dismissed it

They know they canā€™t stop people determined to record but most people arenā€™t rolling around with a backup phone to get around the pouches so they can at least stop people who would just randomly decide to record.

This seems a bit different than what theyā€™re doing at the performances:

Sounds like pouch locking is on the honor system. Young Melk would just fake tap in every morning. But I assume it must be helping at least a little.

Maybe. Iā€™ve only encountered them a few times, so I donā€™t recall how easy it would be to fake tap if someone was watching when the kids come in. Again, Iā€™m sure there are ways around it if someone tries (and creative kids are almost always better at circumventing rules than adults are at enforcing them), but I imagine the schools are just happy if most kids follow the rules and it cuts down on the amount of texting/social media use in the classroom. And it gives the school more justification to punish kids that violate the no cellphone policy b/c the kid canā€™tclaim to know cellphone use wasnā€™t allowed if theyā€™ve had to stand in line to lock up their phone every day.

This isnā€™t true. Iā€™m a big fan but Eddie Izzard has used the same material over and over again at least as filler for the last 20 years

Sounds like itā€™s working. I like Sarah Silverman enough Iā€™ll watch some clips if thereā€™s some reasonable quality audio+video on YouTube, probably even an hour long professionally recorded and edited special whenever it pops up on the Netflix home screen. I am never searching torrents for an audio only bootleg. So at least in my case their policy is effective, and I suspect Iā€™m a fairly typical consumer of Sarah Silverman content.

If I was going to watch a live performance Iā€™d also appreciate not having the distraction of 100 phone screens held in the air in the rows ahead of me. So mark that down as another win. The process for locking the phones sounds like a pain in the ass, sure. But do you have any ideas for a better method to accomplish these goals? Iā€™m doubtful that simply telling everyone ā€œno phones, pleaseā€ will work. Iā€™ve seen that attempted at weddings and there are always a few assholes who insist on getting their own potato quality photos.

1 Like

First, they put the cell phones in pouches, and I said nothingā€¦

4 Likes

I was pretty careful to not say all comedians. Some comedians tour on the same material for decades. But many of the big touring comedians do try to protect their content for the special life cycle. I know other exceptions as well. Jay Leno has used the same act forever. Bobby Lee has never had a special until this year and has done a lot of the same material. But for those acts who have been in the forefront of using these bags, most of them do want to protect their content.

1 Like