I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Copperchain_Forest

AITAH for not selling my festival ticket although my friends already had?

Originally posted to r/AITAH

Editors Note: changed initials to names for easier reading.

Original Post  Dec 28, 2023

This will be a long one so I apologise in advance🫣

First off - it’s exactly as the title says. Every year, me and my friends (I’ll call them Anne, Beth & Clara to avoid confusion) take turns choosing a concert or festival to attend. We always take each other’s preferences into account and we’re lucky that we all like the same kind of music. This started a few months ago when we all received a fair bit of money for our birthdays and we decided it was time for another festival. (We’re May, June and July babies).

This year (2024) it’s my choice and I chose the ‘Nu-Metal Sick New World’ festival in Las Vegas. There isn’t one band on there that we don’t love, we’re especially fans of Slipknot, Rammstein, Rob Zombie and Ice Nine Kills. I know it could be taken that maybe they couldn’t afford it - but we all work very high up in PR and Travel Insurance, and have been on quite pricey holidays and festivals before.

We all bought our tickets and booked our flights and accommodations - all of that was done - we did it early as the event is in April. We decided the money we got for Xmas we’d use as extra spending money. Until a couple of days ago everything was fine and we’ve been talking about the event. Suddenly, there was a message on the group chat from Anne and Beth saying they’d changed their minds about the event and now want us to go to a Taylor Swift concert - I think it’s the Eras Tour that’s coming to the UK I’m not sure.  

Me and Clara aren’t fans of Taylor Swift at all - that’s no hate to anybody who’s a hardcore Swiftie, but me and Clara are die hard metal fans and it’s not our thing. We mentioned this on the group chat and immediately Anne and Beth called us both selfish for not taking their preferences into account - bearing in mind we all like the same metal bands. I politely said that it was my year to choose and I had chosen that because all of our favourite bands would be there.

Both Anne and Beth said that they’d already sold their tickets, cancelled their flights AND sent a message to the AIRBNB we booked that we would no longer be attending. Now it’s their money and they can do whatever they want with it, but I was quite angry that they’d cancelled out accommodation before this message even hit the group chat. I voiced this concern in the group chat and reinforced that it was my turn to choose.

The Taylor swift Tour is in June - they’ve already attended three of her events for the tour this year (one of which me and Clara went along to )- am I wrong for maybe assuming they’d be able to go along with my decision for this years concert? Anyway, I was quite upset over the accommodation thing which I feel is understandable. I hate to be that person who’s like ‘no it’s me who’s making the decision’ but I can’t help but feel that way.

Me and Clara spoke outside the group chat, and it’s quite good timing because my family are going to the US for Easter. We have family in Texas so they will be there and they’ll travel over to Las Vegas to stay in the AIRBNB they’d already booked. It’s not that far from our original location, and they will also be attending the Sick New World festival with us as my dad is also a huge fan. We spoke with my family and we decided to chip into the cost of their AIRBNB and keep our tickets.

Anne and Beth were very mad over that decision and said that we were selfish and trying to break up the group. We’ve all been friends since we were in school and met when we were around 4. I’m sure in time they’ll come to be okay with our decision but are we the a**holes for refusing to cancel our tickets?

Update  June 21, 2024

Hi all - I’m back with an update!! This one might be even longer than the original post so I apologise.

Me and Clara went to the festival and it was absolutely incredible! I don’t want to say once in a lifetime opportunity because of course we’re going again! But it was a really incredible time. It was really lovely to spend time with Clara and my family too. I’m telling you I couldn’t speak for a while afterwards with the amount of shouting I did🤭

Me and Clara also attended Ice Nine Kills’ Meat and Greet tour which was an amazing opportunity. Black Veil Brides performed at Sick New World which I’ll be honest I nearly lost my freakin mind🤭we also had tickets to their Bleeders tour and attended that at the start of June when we traveled back to Houston with my family🥰

This leads me into the proper update about Anne and Beth. They attended the Eras Tour in June, the seventh was when it came to Edinburgh and is in the UK until august 20th. They also have tickets for next month too. I feel guilty for being slightly disappointed that they picked my birthday - June 7th - to attend. Now I don’t know if I have the right to be upset as that was the date of the first show. I wouldn’t have minded…if they hadn’t told me they were attending on the 8th and 9th. I know some people will say ‘maybe they got the dates mixed up’ but no - they bought their tickets well in advance and knew it would be my birthday.

It was my 21st birthday, and we’d made plans even EARLIER than booking festival tickets. I’d planned a party (nothing huge because I’d spent a lot on tickets) and paid for the entertainment and catering myself. So everything was on track for the goth party of the century and lo and behold - a message in the group chat the literal day before! I’m gonna do a sort of reconstruction of the conversation just so you can see how this panned out.

Beth) ‘Hey, so about your birthday party…me and Anne can’t come’

Me) ‘wait what do you mean you can’t come?’

Anne) ‘the seventh is the first show in Edinburgh and we got tickets, so we’re going to the concert that day.’

Clara) ‘The seventh?? You said the 8th - 9th. She planned her party around you guys for that exact reason.’

Me) ‘literally, I wanted the party on Saturday so I could have my birthday for my family but both of you said the dates were after my birthday. If those aren’t the dates why did you tell me something else????’

Anne) ‘Because if we told you that’s when the concert was you’d act like you are now - jealous and overreacting’

Clara) ‘Jealous??💀She isn’t jealous, she’s frustrated because two of her best friends not only cancelled everything for a festival she’d planned, but they’ve lied to her face this entire time!!’

Anne) ‘Oh my fkin GOD are you still going on about that festival?! You still went didn’t you? It’s really not a big deal. You’re seriously overreacting - and how have we lied??’

You get the gist. This is just a brief of what I remember because I haven’t even been on the group chat since. They also went on to try and argue their points, saying that we now how obsessed with Taylor they are - and as I said in my first post, no hate to Swifties but me and Clara are metal through and through, it’s not our thing. I tried my best to be accommodating, and all I got in return was plans made without me and lied to my face. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, often Anne and Beth would pair off together and do their own thing, But we all attended the same college and did the same courses and like I said we all work together in the same company, so we’ve got even closer and we thought we’d outgrown all of this.

I moved my party back to the original day, which was the Saturday, and spent the seventh with my partner and family. The party was wonderful - it was a fancy dress which sounds really tacky but I love Tim Burton and horror movies and so do my friends, so everyone dressed up was amazing. I love Halloween so having a party like that at this time was everything.

Now for the Eras Tour…I actually feel bad for Anne and Beth coz they were scammed. If you’ve not been able to get hold of concert tickets, you know that some people sell theirs. The online tickets are harder to scam people with, but these ones were posted - as in paper tickets. I think they paid at least £3000 for their tickets. And they received them in the post. They already booked their train tickets and accommodation well in advance. But when they arrived to the concert, they were told that their tickets were fake. (I know a few people are going to find this hard to believe, but seriously, I could not make this up if I tried). Apparently, apparently there was a big thing involving security and everything. They tried to contact the person they got the tickets from, but of course they couldn’t find that person anymore.

I feel bad because they really wanted to go and they spent a lot of money. We didn’t find out about this until they got home and we all went back to work this week. I said that I was sorry that it didn’t work out, but since then they’ve been quite cold to me and Clara. Which quite frankly I don’t understand because I have more reason to be cold than them but anyway. I think maybe it’s more out of embarrassment. We haven’t really spoken much since, because I do still feel very hurt by how it all panned out. I don’t really want to be friends with people that could do that so easily and then lie to my face, sorry it is looking likely that we are going to sort of take a break from the friendship if that makes sense. We’re not completely our separate ways, but I think we just need time away from each other🤷🏽‍♂️

Thank you for listening to me rave about my problems - and I’m sorry that it’s very long or it’s not the update you wanted, but it’s just how things worked out 🫶🏻

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Lopsided_Put4682

So their reasoning was "I bet if we tell OP that we're choosing to go to a festival over their birthday then they'll be offended. I know, I bet they'll be totally fine with it if we pretend we'll go and only reveal the truth at the last moment after they've planned everything 🤡"

I wonder if they were cold to you because they thought you were being sarcastic when you told them about how sorry you were. Which I would understand, because I'd be using this story to teach people the meaning of schadenfreude, you're a much more forgiving person than I am.

OOP

That’s literally how it feels🤣but I was genuinely sorry and made sure to have that come across in what I said to them. I am quite a sarcastic person, so maybe they did think I was being sarcastic, but I did try to be as genuine as I could🤷🏽‍♂️

~

1920MCMLibrarian

Going from planning to see slipknot and rob zombie to Taylor swift is hilariously horrible. I know this is an upsetting situation because they’ve all changed everything behind your back, honestly, eff them. Go see the concert you want to go to. Taylor swift is boring anyway. Especially since you’ve already seen her multiple times! NTA

OOP

Literally!! No disrespect to Swifties, but…Rob Zombie?? Slipknot?? Ice Nine Kills?? Black Veil Brides?? Like I know I’m gonna go to the festival again but it’s an incredible festival and I loved every minute of it🥹🥹

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