In August 2024, Oasis, my favorite band dropped some unexpected news. They announced a reunion tour 15 years after they broke up in 2009.
If you haven't heard of Oasis, you may have heard their hits like Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova and Don't Look Back in Anger. It's chiefly founded by two brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, who have always had a strained relationship and have been quite vocal about them not getting along.
While they both have had some great solo albums since the Oasis days, like all fans I too have been looking forward to them burying the hatchet and coming back together. Rumors have floated for years, people interpreting their tweets and lyrics from their new songs to figure out what's going on between them.
But finally it happened.
The tickets went on sale on 31st August 2024 and like tens of millions of people I too lined up on Ticketmaster online queues to get my hands on them. But after 6 hours of waiting and the site becoming unresponsive a handful of times, I got to know that the tickets were all gone.
Saddened, I comforted myself with the possibility of the band getting back together for good and not just for the reunion tour. Maybe they would also release new songs? And even if they don't, I would certainly get to see phone recordings of the concerts on Youtube, right?
Scalpers were reselling tickets for thousands. I actually saw some for up to $8000 on Stubhub. But the band management was quick to declare that unauthorized resales would not be accepted for entry. Joining scalpers in the action were the scammers looking to sell you a QR code that probably linked to a grocery store or something on Google maps.
Of course as a top 0.05% Oasis listener on Spotify (a figure that doesn't take into account time spent listening to Oasis on Youtube), my Instagram feed has always been full of Oasis clips: Interviews, concerts, montages, edits and more.
And now these posts were full of comments by people saying that they managed to get tickets and how they had a dozen of their friends logging into Ticketmaster to help increase their odds.
Yay good for you Pete! /s
After a week of Oasis fans showing up every time I opened Instagram, I did the only thing I could to stop getting bummed out constantly: I deleted Instagram from my phone.
I had done this many times before. Sometimes after an embarrassing screen time report. Or after reading about studies on social media usage. Or the times I slumped into my chair watching reels until my back felt weird.
But nothing really made me stick to an Instagram-free life like not getting the tickets.
Without Instagram I suddenly felt that I could actually do things during the afternoons and evenings instead of watching reels on my feed or the ones my friends sent me.
I started going to the gym after half a decade, and really got into it. I began working on maintaining UniVoice, my popular voice chat plugin for Unity. I picked up and completed a short game project I had briefly worked on in 2021 and abandoned.
And some more constructive use of time that has made 2025 an amazing year.
Months later, I saw that resale tickets through official channels were available for the Australia dates.
I managed to get two of the handful decent seats remaining.
And while we really cut it close, my wife and I got the visa just in time to book a last minute flight to Sydney and watch Oasis live on 8th November with 80000 other people.
An amazing night and a dream come true to watch them live!