Australia’s most hated: Mums who failed to secure Swift tix

A collective insanity has taken hold and the search for the golden ticket – aka Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tix – has turned normally reasonable parents into wild-eyed lunatics.

Australia’s most hated right now? Mums who failed to secure Swift tix for their daughters after today’s surprise new release.

A collective insanity has taken hold and the search for the golden ticket has turned normally reasonable parents into wild-eyed lunatics. Isn’t it the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Well, then. Welcome to Australia, currently the globe’s most agitated asylum.

No one was talking about changes to the NSW curriculum at the “meet the teacher” session at my son’s school tonight. There were huddles of hollow-eyed mums and even a couple of dads whose slumped posture reeked of failure.

Once home, my FB feed told the same sad story: right now the mums of teens who missed out on yet another round, having wasted hours and untold energy in an increasingly desperate and hostile effort, are in a world of pain.

It is horrible to watch and I am thanking my lucky stars that I have two sons. My friend Emma Lovell has two kids, Aimee, 13, and keen singer Harry, 10, who also wanted to go. Her post was simple:

“Ah Taytay – I could have done without that again today … and another round of tears from my disappointed teenager!”

Followed by a string of sad and tearful emojis that captured the mood in households around Australia on Tuesday night.

Mum Emma Lovell, with daughter Aimee and son Harry, 10, a keen singer himself who also wanted to go to the Taylor Swift concert. Picture: Supplied

“We were disappointed when the first ticket release took place,” Emma told me. “Then they somehow found extra tickets to sell with restricted view. More disappointment. When the announcement went out that there were yet more, I thought it was some kind of joke or scam.

“But no, it was time to watch another afternoon of my life drain away, staring at multiple screens hoping that I didn’t have to see my kids’ eyes well-up for a third time.

“I know it’s a first world problem but it’s been very unusual in the way these releases have happened. Don’t even start me with the amount of people I know who have had money disappear through scams, after being so desperate to surprise their kids with a golden ticket.”

Emma was offered two tickets yesterday through a corporate link but they were $2000 apiece. Another friend of hers got booted at the payment stage after being so close to four tickets she could probably smell the teen spirit.

But it was Emma’s NZ-based friend Lexi who really got my attention with a picture that looked more like the control room at NASA. Her family, including two daughters Ophelia, 11, and Sylvie, 13, plus husband Nick, was really all in, because had they succeeded, they would also have had to fork out for return airfares to and from Australia.

Is this what the control room at NASA looks like? All signs point to Yes. Picture: Supplied

“My husband was at work … manning all of the devices,” Lexi said. “He took it very seriously and actually got put through … but then there were no tickets left.

“Stub Hub has loads of tickets but I reckon they are all scams, because the only two ways you’re meant to be able to buy them are via Ticketek and Marketplace.

“We would also be throwing away return tickets from NZ to Australia.”

Danielle Chapman, 15, who was timed out while she and her mum Anglea tussled over whether she could attend unaccompanied, said she was “quite disappointed.”

“I tried an hour and a half today and I got in once,” she said. “And tried for two hours on the presale. I missed the first general admission because I was on a road trip and I was pretty upset about that.”

Look what you made us do, Tay Tay. Picture: Christopher Jue/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Mums, dads and kids, I salute your efforts, I really do, but this absolute bedlam and an epidemic of adolescent tears is taking some of the fun out of it, surely? Perhaps in fact that’s what all this bald need is really all about: everyone just needs to have a little more fun.

As someone who despises all queues, I honestly can’t think of a single thing I would be prepared to queue for as long as these families have queued for Tay Tay. Oh, wait. Except for the chance to vote against the madhouse’s real pin up boy, Donald Trump. I’d queue for days to do that, I’d even sleep on the street like back in the old days when you actually went to a Ticketek outlet – these kids today! They don’t know how good they’ve got it!

So I find the fervour Taylor’s tour provokes a little unsettling (there’s no love lost between Taylor and the Don, but it turns out they do have this grip on people in common).

And yet there’s something undeniable in the commitment. Something like the unrequited love Taylor has turned into billions through her music.

As Danielle said before hanging up, as easily bolstered as a windsock on Parramatta Rd as a westerly blows through, “Now I’m just trying to convince my mum to go to one of the stadium pop ups.”

Originally published as Australia’s most hated: Mums who failed to secure Swift tix