glenjamn3, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Popular artists such as Travis Scott embody the normalized and pedestaled egoism of our time, hidden behind the virtue for “individualism”.

It is a real-life depiction of a newfound type of egocentrism hidden in the cracks of American ideals: crowd congestion so severe that concert-goers are asphyxiated, and yet the man overwatching it all encourages the chaos. 

The death toll for the Astroworld festival of Nov 5. has risen to 10. 50 thousand were squished into a crowd to be trampled or suffocated, causing many injuries on top of the deaths. 

The incident adds on to the list of reasons why the term “individualism,” something many Americans claim to embody, is silently yet swiftly turning against this country. 

Instagram user @seannafaith was at the festival, and she looked back on the experience horrifically, recalling the feeling of the crowd being collectively ignored when they needed to be heard. “More people began to scream for help, some began to collapse. The music continued. Hundreds of people ripped their vocal cords apart screaming for help, but we were not heard,” she wrote in a post. 

The dangerous size of the crowd can be mostly blamed on Travis Scott’s attitude towards his fans, which has historically incited reckless and dangerous behavior. He tweeted encouraging fans to jump the barriers of the festival back in May when tickets had sold out. 

As Scott’s performance continued despite the mayhem, those who tried to inform authority of the violence and death were disregarded. In the same post, the user recalled being ignored by the cameraman, “[his] eyes glued to the stage,” as she screamed that people in the audience were dying. 

The chaos began well before Scott’s performance, partially because the security was not equipped to handle the situation. Numerous security guards quit before the show even began due to safety concerns and the security as a whole were reportedly hired over text without even having to show an ID.

The show was clearly going to result in chaos, and yet the authority behind it disregarded this fact; a viral Twitter video depicts Scott watching an unconscious person in the audience get carried away on a stretcher and making no effort to stop the concert. 

Fans of Scott defend him under his Twitter post by saying things like “it was the management of the crowd” and “he can’t see what happens off stage!” 

Scott’s egoism is seen in his desire to keep going – to fuel the fire at the price of his fans’ safety. But this brand of selfish apathy disguised as “individualism” is nothing new to Americans; it has been all around us and has always been normalized.

The twisted argument of “anti-maskers” and “anti-vaxxers” is another prime example. People become so entangled with their personal interests and values that when they are forced to consider the collective, they prioritize their own individualism.

Masking up and getting a vaccine for your community should be a no-brainer, yet there are entire movements protesting this basic decency. 

The same thing applies to Scott; he clearly valued the continuation of his concert more than other people’s wellbeing. 

Previous fans of Scott continue to criticize his actions. Senior and longtime fan of Scott, Mazen Alsheikha, commented on the event. “I think he cost a lot of people trauma due to his inability to recognize the safety of his fans even though he saw what was happening,” he stated.

So while it is good that society can criticize after moments like these, elite celebrities who are pedestaled never seem to notice the danger behind their actions, at least not in the moment.

While the ideal of individualism is often a good thing  –supposedly upholding innovation, freedom and power of the people– the extremification of its definition is creating a more sociopathic path for America, where it is the norm to fail to consider anyone other than oneself.