The best reactions to Ticketmaster's meltdown during the tumultuous Taylor Swift pre-sale
Beth Garrabrant
- Ticketmaster crashed during the pre-sale for Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour."
- Online, Swifties commiserated — likening the experience to an all-out "war."
- The tour is set to be Swift's first in five years, and kicks off in 2023.
As Swifties hovered over their keyboards, waiting to buy tickets for Taylor Swift's first tour in five, long years, they were greeted with an unwelcome error signal: Ticketmaster's site had crashed.
The "Eras Tour" presale began at 10 am EST on Tuesday, and as Insider's Travis Clark previously reported, reports of outages on Downdetector.com began before the presale and continued well after, peaking at almost 4,000 tickets ahead of the presale.
In the meltdown and ensuing melee, fans took to TikTok and Twitter to air their grievances, likening the situation to an all-out "war" against the fandom.
Swift's "Midnights" album made her the first music artist in history to snag all 10 of the top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. After her previous Lover Fest tour was canceled in response to the pandemic, fans were especially eager to snag tickets this time around. Earlier today, TicketMaster tweeted a statement saying the company had experienced "historically unprecedented demand" for tickets. If the user who tweeted about being behind 2,000+ people was really only behind a few thousand people in line, she might have been in a better position than many others; In its statement, TicketMaster said that "millions" showed up to buy pre-sale tickets.
Some who had been given the green light for pre-sale reported being unable to access the "waiting room," and when the Ticketmaster Fan Support Twitter tweeted a message to instruct those approved for pre-sale to use a texted link rather than the homepage, many said that, too, didn't work.
Swifties joked about a future in which Taylor Swift walked out on stage to an empty stadium "because the TicketMaster queue never did move" and the year 2043, when the "first-manned mission is en route to Mars. TicketMaster's virtual queue for Taylor Swift's 'Eras Tour' remains paused."
Below, you'll find a few of the best reactions from Swifties during TicketMaster's inopportune pre-sale meltdown.
—sarah ???? (@thisismenotryin) November 15, 2022
—marg’s midnights (@BetttysCardigan) November 14, 2022
—Alex Goldschmidt (parody) (@alexandergold) November 15, 2022
—ˏˋ zane ˎˊ˗ (@zaneugh) November 11, 2022
—???? (@jenigmama) November 15, 2022
—Vulture (@vulture) November 15, 2022
—John Michael (@JohnMAbbott) November 15, 2022
—shana (@archielizabeths) November 15, 2022
Swift's tour is scheduled to kick off in 2023, and includes 52 dates across 20 cities. General admission tickets start at $49 and VIP tickets start at $199, though tickets are already selling for hundreds and even thousands more on ticket resell sites.
Representatives for TicketMaster did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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