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Picture being gifted with a open night. You are refreshed, eager for new things, and wanting to change your regular habits of relaxing at home. Life itself is your oyster! Would you choose a) going to a gig or b) engaging in intimacy? The outcome, as is often seen with these sorts of hypotheticals, is obviously: “It varies.” Reasonable people could understandably inquire: what kind of the concert? Who is the other person? Could it be expected to be enjoyable?

Few would pick a heavy metal lineup if the other option was one enchanted evening with a beloved celebrity. Yet change any part of the equation, and it grows less clearcut. Regarding the thousands surveyed asked this question from a gig organization, no such context was offered – and the answer emerged decisively and overwhelmingly preferring gigs.

Survey Results Indicate Unexpected Trends

A worldwide report, polling thousands of participants ranging from 18 and 54 in different nations, revealed that gigs currently stand as the most popular leisure activity, ranking above games, cinema and – indeed – intimacy. When limited to one type of enjoyment forever, 39% of respondents selected concerts, against watching movies (17%) and athletic competitions (14%). Participants were over two times as prone to select watching their top musician in concert (70%) instead of sex (30%).

You appear expecting to be pleasantly surprised – and quite often you might find with another person's locks in your mouth

Perspectives and Analysis

Naturally it makes sense that a promotional study commissioned by a concert promoter should come out so heavily supporting gigs – and, in the freewheeling spirit of a would-you-rather, if your preferred musician is, say an iconic star, it's understandable why seeing him may be chosen over a common or garden situation. Yet this binary choice between gigs or intimacy, clearly absurd as it is, is fascinating to consider considering the strange juncture we’re at with both.

The Change of Concert Culture

Lately, live music participation has grown beyond a communal experience but a competitive sport. Major promoters appropriately highlight that arena crowds has “tripled year-over-year”, and festivals sell out quicker than before. Just obtaining tickets now demands detailed strategy, rapid-fire response times and bottomless pockets (or a high spending capacity). Although you manage, it isn't sufficient to just show up and enjoy the show. Nowadays exists an expectation, at least among concertgoers, that you can boost your return on investment by seeing several shows (including overseas trips), swotting up on the performance lineup in advance and memorizing the cues to hit and audience interactions established by previous crowds.

Several fans describe being affected by their participation at large concerts: appearing as a choreographed performance of huge audiences, in which particular fans arrived unaware of the steps. Those lengthy tour, producing huge revenue, showed of the extents that fans will travel to experience a significant event and experience their top musician play, even if the real performance seems increasingly secondary to the show.

The Situation of Modern Intimacy

Sex, conversely – an accessible and available enjoyment – is in dire straits. According to recent surveys, approximately 25% of people had sex in an average week, while about three in ten were sexually inactive. In a different nation, recent data revealed that a significant portion of people admitted to avoiding sex a single time in the previous year, increasing from lower numbers in the past. In both territories, the trend has been linked to decreased encounters in youth demographics. Compare this with the market booming for major events and the intense rivalry for admissions. Certainly it’s not as simple as a straightforward choice between one or the other – “do you prefer attend a huge concert multiple times, or stay celibate?” – but it's possibly an signal of which is perceived as the more dependable enjoyment.

Interesting Comparisons

Sex and live music are closer aligned than people often believe. They both embody the activation of a bond, a actual experience of impressions or possibility that may have developed only in your head. You come with some idea of what might happen, but hopeful of being happily shocked – and how it ends up good or bad rests largely on whether your energy and anticipations match theirs. Regularly you could wind up with a stranger's hair in your mouth, and later be waiting around for a smoke and personal space on your own. Likewise with either, drugs and alcohol can potentially heighten or reduce the event (but definitely make the worst experiences easier to weather).

Finding the Balance

The magic to both gigs and sex depends on locating that hard-to-find balance between familiarity and novelty, consistency and change, challenge and comfort. Of course it happens only rarely – but it's the remembrance of when they did, the understanding that it can happen, that motivates us to attempt once more: to {