Fearless (Sarah's Version)
I sat down to write my monthly newsletter and instead came out a lot more words on Taylor Swift than I thought I had in my head. So, here you go.
A few months ago, I was on-site at a big work event. We were doing final technical testing before opening a new location, and things were working great. As we wrapped for the morning, I started pulling up pages on pages on pages of ticket listings to try and see The Eras Tour - Taylor Swift somewhere. I was looking at Houston, Arlington, even considering a trip out to Chicago or LA. Sadly, all hopes were dashed and I didn’t get tickets. I won’t belabor you with my tale of frustration with Ticketmaster and SeatGeek, but let’s hope that investigation goes somewhere.
Fast forward to Monday afternoon: I got a text that appeared suspicious.
I have been seeing a skyrocket increase in the number of spam calls I am getting lately. I don’t know what service I subbed for recently that betrayed me in this way, but, whoever you are, you’re on my sh*t list. I use ActiveArmor with AT&T to keep a lot of these from actually getting to me. Looking over just the past week, I get between 3 and 10 calls a day that are flagged as “Spam Risk” or “Telemarketer.” Is someone using ChatGPT to troll me? Who knows.
I had about 10 seconds to process the above text message. Was it spam? How did they get my phone number? Are these real tickets? What should I do? I opened up the email inbox they referenced, and there wasn’t anything from Ticketmaster or SeatGeek that aligned with the text. I was betrayed before. Rapid fire, I made the decision to tap the link and see what happened. It fired up a real SeatGeek page (one that I had spent many hours staring at before). I had been willing to pay upwards of $300/ticket for primo seats during the first go around. After the first tour date, I sat and listened to the set list for the full three hours. I imagined myself sitting in a concert venue, listening to the first notes of “…Ready For It” I had chills in that moment. I couldn’t believe I was going to miss the tour for someone whose albums have been my life soundtrack since 2006.
Looking at the text and webpage, I made a decision. F*ck it. If this is spam, I’m taking the risk. I snagged two Standing Room Only tickets in the West End Zone, for only $50 a pop. I sent 15 rapid-fire text messages to my friend, confirming it was real, and that we WERE GOING. The excitement is building!