A disgusting overseas concert trend just landed on the floor of a Dunedin moshpit.
Warning: This story references a poo allegedly as big as a shoe.
It started with a faint bad smell. It ended, according to reports, with shit smeared up legs, screaming fans fleeing the venue, a celebrated metal act pausing their show and vomit in hair, on clothes and all over the floor.
It was murder on the dancefloor, or, at least, a massive poo in the moshpit, one so big one punter told the Otago Daily Times they “thought it was some guy’s shoe”.
On Saturday night, the concert trend no one ever wanted to arrive landed on the floor of a Dunedin moshpit. Celebrated metal act Devilskin were playing the second show of a nationwide tour at Union Hall when, according to this shockingly vivid Otago Daily Times story, someone shook out “a log” from their pants.
The crowd went wild, and not in a good way. “It’s on people’s feet. People are wearing skirts and shit is up their legs and stuff, and then one girl went bleh — just vomited on the shit — and then everyone else starts vomiting,” an unnamed concert-goer tells the ODT.
A Stuff report describes Devilskin singer Jennie Skulander stopping the show and asking if everyone was OK. The answer was no. When a fan in the moshpit mimed someone going to the toilet, Stuff reports Skulander saying: “Poo? Ew!”
Unwanted overseas concert trends – things like selfie sticks, fruit suits and bubble machines – usually take months or years to arrive in Aotearoa. This one, best summarised as aggressive pissing and shitting, has taken just a few weeks.
It started on June 28 at a Noah Kahan show in Philadelphia when someone “straight up shat themselves” and “waffle-stomped” their turds on the ground. On social media, Kahan reminded fans on X that “if you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao”.
Sounds like a one-off. It should have been. Since then, it’s just kept happening. Olivia Rodrigo admitted the smell from fans’ diapers was wafting up from her own shows. “…People wear diapers so that they can be front row of the show, and that’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled,” she told Kiss Breakfast. “They sit there all day… it’s a real thing.”
Next up was a Baltimore show by crooner Morgan Wallen, where a dispute between fans ended with one peeing all over the other – and his family, including, allegedly, an eight-year-old.
“I literally feel something on my leg. My wife feels something on her leg… And my wife says, ‘Whatever that gentleman is doing, it’s all over my leg,’” concert-goer Troy Grevelding told Fox 45. “So, I turned to look. He has his genitalia hanging completely out and he’s urinating all over the back of my seat, my wife’s leg, my leg, my niece.”
Three incidents is a trend and that means increased media coverage. If anything, that coverage has spurred others to join the action. Last week came another incident at another Noah Kahan show. A fan who’d spent big bucks on tickets alleged someone turned her seated section into a “biohazard”. “Spending $1,000 on tickets wasn’t supposed to end with replacing my belongings due to a feral creature turning a section into her personal toilet,” she wrote on Threads.
“The tix are so expensive nobody wants to miss it,” suggests someone about the reason why one might do this. Are concert tickets so pricey we’re soiling ourselves now?
How Saturday night’s incident happened is in dispute. One concert-goer told Stuff they were certain this was a deliberate act designed to “ruin this gig”. But, in a statement, Otago University Students’ Association president Daniel Leamy calls it an unfortunate medical incident” that “was in no way a deliberate ‘code brown’ situation”.
Could taking a dump in the middle of a moshpit ever be considered a medical incident? That, unfortunately, is a question we may never get an answer to. (Understandably, Devilskin didn’t want to comment for this story.)
Either way, this gross trend is here and it is happening. If you’re heading to a concert in the foreseeable future, you may want to pack a few extra things along with your ticket and your car keys. Like Wet Wipes, nose plugs, air freshener and, quite possibly, a pair of gumboots.
