I Haaaaate Printed Out Tickets For Games and Concerts

I wanted to blog this after going to the Red Sox Monday night but thanks to some extenuating circumstances I was unable to until now.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this but it needs to be said for eternity. Printed out tickets at home for games and concerts are the absolute worst. Don't even get me started on tickets on your phone. 

Now I'm not an idiot, I understand why they exist. They make it much easier to get tickets for when you buy something last minute, as someone who has bought many tickets the day of or days before I understand they make it possible to get your ticket in time, but it still doesn't change how I feel. I'm cool with them for that. For convenience's sake I almost like that. 

But overall I just hate printed out tickets. It's simply not the same. I've felt this way for a while. Look at
"tickets" from the day I went to the first game of a Red Sox double header in the morning, then caught game one of the 2014 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals between the Bruins and Canadiens.

I hate how tickets work now, it's all printing at home, I want the actual stub. Sometimes technology is too much.

— Ryan (@rhodydoz) April 30, 2014

Not as cool with paper tickets pic.twitter.com/SG5xLyqjmX

— Ryan (@rhodydoz) May 1, 2014

Maybe I'm just old school but I love ticket stubs. I try to keep all of my tickets from everything I go to. My bulletin board is plastered with ticket stubs from Sox games to comedy shows. I try to keep everything: concerts, games, comedy shows, even movies. I'd say I have at least 60% of the movie stubs from everything I've seen the last decade or so. I guess as a history guy I just like being able to have a piece of that night with the date and event written on it commemorating the experience. It's cool to look back and be able to say "Oh look on July 9th, 2013 I saw the Black Keys in Hartford".

Obviously that could be done with printed out tickets but it's just not the same. Look at this section of my bulletin board. ​

Look at all that history (and also the save the date to a friend's wedding). That is cool (to me). To have all that documentation of shit I've gone to in my life. It's simple but something I really enjoy.


​
Then look at how lame this is:

I tried to do it with printed out tickets, it's just not the same. I have two paper tickets saved, that one in the picture and my paper ticket from the 2013 ALCS. And it sucks because some of the biggest games I've gone to featured the printed ticket. I saw the Red Sox win the 2013 Pennant from a top the Green Monster, and while printed out tickets allowed me to experience that (my friend photoshopped copies of more standing room only tickets) it would've been nice to have the real stub from that. Same goes for David Ortiz' final home game and the Bruins and Celtics playoff games I've gone to. 

I don't know, maybe this is a first world problem or something I wouldn't deal with if I didn't buy shit online but I just hate paper tickets. Technology is a beautiful thing, but at the same time it is ruining some of the better things that were around before it existed, and actual ticket stubs are one of them.