Global Citizen Festival Fail

Global Citizen Festival Fail

Janine Jones, Copy Editor

Picture this:

Scrolling through Facebook on a summer afternoon and seeing something about being able to see some of your favorite artists like Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and Demi Lovato for free. Obviously interested, you click on this ad and it brings you to a site for THE Global Citizen Festival, you know the one, you heard BEYONCE came out last year and performed or came out and blessed the poor souls with her smile and left or something amazing like that. Out of the sheer possibility of seeing Rihanna perform, you decide to sign up, how hard can it be, right?

WRONG.

How the free ticket process works is you do a series of tasks like posting tweets, signing petitions, and posting on Instagram to show your solidarity, and with each task you complete there’s a set number of points you get added to your total. In order to enter in the ticket drawing, which was usually three to six thousand tickets every two or three weeks, your total had to match (or exceed) the magic number, which was 28.

I usually like doing things like signing petitions and retweeting things to get awareness out there, but some of these things were a bit out there. This year’s theme was about getting girls of the world education, which I’m all for. I think every person in the world deserves a fair chance at education, so they reeled me in like a little sea bass with that theme.

At first, things started off pretty fair- post a few tweet templates, sign a few petitions, and send an email to local lawmakers. Okay, done and seemingly painless. Then they wanted you to make calls to international politicians, like the prime minister of Italy, for example. A little uncomfortable, but Rihanna is possibly at the end of this journey, so I did it. I even enlisted my best friend to do it with me and double our chances of winning tickets to this concert.

We got to the magic number, entered the drawing, and waited for our emails congratulating us on our win and thanking us for our good deeds… but they never came. So we decided, for Rihanna, we’d go for round two. The tasks were different this go round- more calls than petitions, more personalization than template, and GOD FORBID you did use the template, you lost points. I’m not ashamed, I used the templates, and sent those premade emails like a boss (Sorry, to all those politicians for the spam, I just wanted tickets.)

We were at 26 points and one task left, but this task is where we drew the metaphorical line – even for our beloved Rihanna. These people wanted me to take a picture of myself cleaning a toilet, for some reason that I forget because I block out all traumatizing events of my life, and post said picture on Twitter. I’m sorry Global Citizen, but I refuse to stoop down to such a level for free tickets. Shoutout to all the people who got on their knees and picked up that toilet brush all in the name of Rihanna, but I enjoyed the concert just as much from my computer in the comfort of my dorm room.