The link above will send you to an article written about the lead singer of Staind, Aaron Lewis, performing with his band at Rockfest, as well as a video of the events unfolding.
During the performance, an underage girl begins crowd surfing. Apparently Aaron is watching this and sees the young girl being groped by men in the crowd as they are pushing her along. He ends the song and makes it a point to let these people know how upset he is that they are “molesting” an underage girl. He threatens to point the offenders out to the crowd and urges others to beat them up if they do it again.
Some people are applauding him for standing up for this girl and letting others know that they shouldn’t be taking advantage of a female in that manner.
What do you think? A great human being for advocating fair treatment? Or wrong for using a profanity - laced rant and threats of bodily harm to get his point across? Should Aaron mind his own business? Or do more people need to stand up against what is wrong?
Are you effing serious? This is even a question? Someone is getting molested OF COURSE the right thing in to point it out and call out the bad behavior. We need more people to do this sort of thing.
If he’d taken it to the next level, and identified the “molesters” while encouraging the crowd to attack them, he’d possibly be charged with inciting a riot and/or other charges.
Yeah, Broomstick. I’m effing serious. Some people are saying he was wrong to go about it the way he did. I was curious what other people felt.
As a female that has attended many concerts, I’ve never crowd surfed because I knew I would be groped by people. At 15 years old, I knew that risk so I’m assuming this girl knew the risk also. In no way whatsoever am I condoning the act or blaming the girl, I’m only stating from my personal experience.
I’d have to know more about the situation before I could really comment, and it depends on the girl’s reaction.
If she was unhappy about the groping then, absolutely, let’s pull the plug and stop it, regardless of her age.
But you can’t go crowd-surfing without being “groped” to some extent. Even if you’re the most consciencious audience member ever, it’s a pretty safe bet your hands are going to wind up somewhere they shouldn’t as someone passes overhead. I would have to assume that the girl knew that, and if she wasn’t shouting “Stop! Let me go!” that she was OK with what was going on.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard that the singer does this outburst routinely at his concerts, which leads some people to think he does it for the attention and to make himself look like a hero.
I even learned a new term – “white knighting” – which means taking a grand, dramatic but disingenuous stand in defense of someone who doesn’t really need defending, while decrying something so offensive that no one is going to contest it.
So his critics say he often stops a concert to scream about an underage girl being molested, pointing to some girl who may or may not be underage but, this being a concert, is being touched in some way. He screams “fucking molesters!” and such, and the crowd is predictably supportive. Then he gets to continue as the fucking hero who was willing to *interrupt his fucking song *to call out the fucking child molesters.
I also think he’s treading on very dangerous ground when he screams for the crowd to beat the supposed molesters. In a hyped up crowd, it doesn’t take much to incite some really ugly violence. Somebody is going to follow his lead and attack someone, followed by more in the crowd piling on.
There’s the age thing … he may as well have banned crowd surfing for the under-age …
Its why lots of bands have the age restrictions even when there are drink restrictions(bar is separately controlled)
This is a really puzzling question, I must say. On the one hand, no one should be touched in a way they don’t approve of. On the other, crowd surfing is literally consenting to strangers putting their hands on whatever part of you lands near/on them. On a third hand, they’re only consenting to your support of their body weight, not a squeeze, but on the fourth hand, haven’t you just thrown your body at them without their consent?
I think crowd surfing is supposed to be a harmless, fun event with like-minded folks, not a near sexual assault. I’m glad he called the offenders out.
If the lead singer has indeed done this before, then good for him for calling out bad behavior. The need for education never stops and public censure is a powerful tool.
Okay, my opinion: It was wrong to grope an underage girl. It was also wrong to threaten a riot in a crowded venue.
This isn’t a situation of one thing being right and the other being wrong. They’re both wrong. It happens sometimes. It’s not black and white, nor black and gray. It’s black and black.
I seriously doubt anyone checked the girl’s ID when the singer was cursing at people from the stage. The linked article did not verify that she was under-age.
I never said “You have a license to grope people!” What I said was that crowd-surfing involves being touched in a non-sexual situation, people know this, and therefore we can assume consent.
If underage girls are unable to give consent to being touched even in non-sexual situation… well, I’m totally out of line, obviously. I’ve been hugging all the nieces and granddaughters all these years and I never even though to ask if that was OK. And pushing them on swings! I even changed a diaper once. Lock me up and throw away the keys, already.
I saw Pearl Jam on their most recent tour, and about halfway through the show something troubling apparently happened near the front of the house. Eddie Vedder stopped singing, said “Is something wrong?”, then held out his arm and said “Hold on, stop!” Immediately the band stopped playing and the lights came up. Vedder then said “What’s going on down here?” There was a pause, and then he said something like “This situation is about to be resolved. Everything is going to be fine.” There was another pause while he continued looking down from the stage, and then they started up the song again.
I’m not sure exactly what happened or even if the troublemaker(s) stopped on their own or if security had stepped in, but I was impressed that Vedder and the rest of the band responded so quickly and calmly.
I haven’t watched the videos of the incident this thread is about, but if Aaron Lewis saw someone who appeared to be in danger or distress then it was right for him to speak out but wrong to suggest that other members of the audience attack the offenders. If he was capable of pointing out the troublemakers then he could have pointed them out to security and had them removed from the show.