Wednesday night, a speaker came to the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and delivered what was an enthralling, interesting and appropriately comedic speech I will likely not forget.
For those of you who don’t know or who are possibly just extremely good at avoiding the 200,000 bulletins around campus that screamed for attention worse than your old high school friend who used to tell you all about his made-up recording contract and girlfriend from Cali, Neil deGrasse Tyson is indeed the person to whom I am referring.
This event, put on by the wonderful (or at least now I consider them so because they brought Tyson to UF) Accent Speaker’s Bureau, was something I thoroughly enjoyed, and I am quite positive every other individual there did as well. From asteroids to laxatives, it seems Tyson said all that ever needed to be said in a single talk.
The talk was very important to me, but that’s not what I want to highlight. I want to highlight an incredible indecency that stood out even among the great beauty of that night.
I understand there are plenty of students who don’t give one piss about this man or what he had to say, but the amount of students who waited in line to get two tickets just to turn them around and try to scalp them is beyond belief.
You people were scalping free tickets, and most of you were asking $100 — for free tickets!
Whether it’s been said to you or not, I hope you realize that if you tried to scalp free tickets, then you are quite possibly one of the most repulsive and just incredibly aggravating individuals alive. Not to mention your desired profit was actually infinite, which is just ludicrous (even burglars have to put in a little bit of effort to make their money).
These tickets sold out in about 30 minutes. Poof, and they were gone. Some people wanted to blame Accent for booking the Phillips Center or how they let people get two tickets. But let’s understand here, people: Accent is not the one at fault.
The problem here is the abundance of sad students whose integrity is literally worth about $100.
Accent, by the way, did a stand-up job of getting word out about the show, which included creating an event on Facebook (because it’s not official until it’s Facebook-official, amirite).
Can you guess what the Internet decided was the most logical use for that page after the tickets were handed out? “What is scalping, Alex?” is the only acceptable answer.
I guess I’d also technically have to accept, “What are a--holes being a--holes?”
What I find most interesting are the people who picked up tickets and then three hours later posted saying, “Ugh, it turns out I can’t go to the show anymore, so if you want to buy my tickets, message me.”
Is that so? You were certain you could attend a show the very next night until three hours after you got your free tickets? I’m not sure who’s worse though, these people or just the blunt, “Two tickets $100 each. Who wants them?”
Luckily I had a ticket and didn’t want Lt. Cool Guy’s ticket. Although I was kind of curious as to where he got his tight, Greek-letter adorned tank top because I would have traded him my ticket for one of those for sure.
I could go on and on about how ridiculous the whole situation was, but the saddest thing about it was it did not surprise me. Not even a little.
Man’s indecency to man struck once again. To badly paraphrase Tyson (and I apologize in advance, Neil, if this gets you a bad rap), “Just be a decent human being, you jacka--, and live life to the fullest.”
Dallin Kelson is an English senior at UF. His column runs on Mondays.
