There’s been a bit of chatter online about the free opera concert at Fed Square tonight, and honestly, it’s given me a lot to think about. Someone posted about how packed it was, how magical the whole experience felt, and threw in a cheeky reference to Timothy Chalamet being wrong. For those not following the entertainment news cycle (I barely keep up myself), the actor recently made some comments about opera being too elitist or inaccessible – or something along those lines. The irony of his statement being contradicted by a packed Fed Square certainly wasn’t lost on the crowd.

Been following this whole Coldplay concert kiss cam drama that’s been doing the rounds online, and it’s got me thinking about something that goes way beyond celebrity gossip or infidelity scandals. The incident itself is almost beside the point - what really bothers me is this casual acceptance we seem to have developed around being filmed, broadcast, and potentially humiliated for the sake of “entertainment.”

The whole thing started when someone asked a pretty reasonable question about the legal implications of kiss cams and audience filming at concerts. They wondered about consent, about the fine print we never read, about whether we actually agree to having our most vulnerable moments broadcast to thousands of people. But instead of engaging with that important question, most of the discussion devolved into moral judgments about the people caught on camera.

The mercury’s climbing, and the beaches are packed. Nothing beats cooling off at Port Melbourne or Brighton Beach on a scorching summer day. Well, almost nothing - except for that one person who thinks everyone within a 50-meter radius wants to hear their specially curated summer playlist blasting from a speaker the size of a small suitcase.

This peculiar breed of beachgoer seems to be multiplying faster than bin chickens at Federation Square. They arrive armed with portable speakers that could probably be heard from space, apparently operating under the delusion that they’re the designated DJs for the entire beach.