‘Have you ever bought tickets to an event and realised you’d completely misunderstood what it was? – 23 people who didn’t know what they were turning up to

We live in an age where we are incredibly busy and have rapidly dwindling attention spans, which means we’re constantly distracted about bound to make mistakes.

Over on the AskUK subreddit, user XStaticImmaculate has been ruminating on the recent debacle where parents were up in arms about the unsuitability of a KPop concert for their small children, and posed this question…

Have you ever bought tickets to something (a movie, a concert, an event etc) and realised you’d completely misunderstood what it was?

This post is inspired by the K-Pop tribute show that’s on tour at the moment. From what I’ve seen, it seems a lot of parents either believed it was a K-Pop Demon Hunters show and therefore for children, or didn’t realise K-Pop was a wider genre and not just a children’s movie and have expressed their frustrations online at some of the content on stage. It reminded me of a tweet that went viral years ago where a girl thought she’d bought tickets to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers but had instead bought tickets to a piping band called Red Hot Chilli Pipers.

So thought I’d ask here – ever completely misunderstood what something was about?

And it turned out that a lot of people had, with often quite hilarious results…

1.

‘They didn’t buy tickets, but my very religious and prudish grandparents thought Trainspotting was going to be like Last of the Summer Wine. They also thought the word ‘orgy’ just meant ‘party’.’
–blodblodblod

2.

‘Not me but there were definitely people in the audience of Book of Mormon who did not know what they were in for.’
–Calm-Bus7555

3.

‘Some acquaintances of my parents bought tickets to a ‘70s night thinking it would be lots of music from that era. it was actually an event for over 70s.’
–Fun_Anybody6745

4.

‘My single friend and I went along to a ‘Singles night’ in a bar once. We asked the bartender where the event was taking place and he looked at us all dressed up and said ‘Wait… You do know it’s a singles as in hit singles night, not singles as in dating…’

Mortified.’
–whatrachelsaid

5.

‘Back in 1995 (so pre-internet) I realised that child-me had mixed up Venice and Vienna when teenage-me got to the Austrian capital and couldn’t find the canals I’d dreamed of lazily sailing through in a gondola.’
–PoeticLE

6.

‘Bought two tickets to see Def Leppard, it was an event where they talked about a book they had released, it was funny to slowly watch at least half the room leave during the talk.’
–itsnickypvs350

7.

‘I used to go to visit friends in Hull in the early 00’s and we used to go to a nightclub called Spiders. I wasn’t there when the below happened but I can see why it made the national news:

A group of deaf people turned up to see QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE because their new album is called Songs For The Deaf, according to Britain’s Metal Hammer magazine.

The 37-strong party of hearing impaired folks turned up to see the QUEENS at the Spiders club in Hull. The group baffled the bouncers with their use of sign language and threatened to call trading standards when they were refused entry to the “Songs For The Deaf Night”.

A spokesperson for the club said: “They were angry and said they had phoned us to check we were holding a ‘Songs For The Deaf Night’. They didn’t see the funny side at all and left straight away.”‘
–Workingclass_owl

8.

‘I brought tickets for a theatre show in the local town, I was surprised at the price of the tickets being more than reasonable. I skipped over the part where it was a live screen link to the actual London show.’
–Historical_Cobbler

9.

‘My friends and I bought tickets for a pianist performance, just to find out it was just his music performed by a random (and not great) player. The poster had the name of the original pianist in huge letters but the real performer’s name was very small indeed.’
–T0raT0raT0ra

10.

‘I remember my dad telling me he’d gone to see Twilight one weekend. He’d somehow gotten it into his head that it would be like Interview With a Vampire. Noticed while he was waiting to go in that he did not match the demographic of the other viewers of this particular film and chuckled to himself thinking they were going to be disappointed. They were not.’
–sabre-tooooth

11.

‘I got tickets for my girlfriend and myself to go and see the post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I like em, I thought it was a really weird pick for her but she was really up for it.

There were warning signs early, she kept making comments about how weird the audience was which I didn’t really understand, but by minutes into the (22 minute long) first shoegazy instrumental she is losing her shit. Turns out she’d seen the advert which was laid out like

Godspeed
You Black
Emperor

And she was a massive, massive fan of black metal titans Emperor, and also dug the stoner metal band Godspeed, though she’d never heard of You Black.’
–Northwindlowlander

12.

‘Me and my sister in law thought we were going to see Phoebe Waller Bridge do a revival of the OG Fleabag show, but it turns out it was just a recording of the original being played on a projector. We were in stitches when we realised.’
–spaceandthewoods_