(Brought to you by those fuckers at The Calendar UBC)
For legal reasons, this wasn’t sponsored by The Calendar. I’m just salty.
The stages of buying a ticket for the next hot UBC event you see advertised online has the same seven steps every time, so without much further ado, allow me to call you out on every single time you’ve tried to get said tickets.
Step 1 - Intrigue
You’re scrolling through Instagram, mindlessly double tapping, snickering at the occasional comment war, and you see something that catches your eye. It’s a post advertising The Calendar’s Anti-Valentine’s Maneater Party next Friday. Tickets releasing soon? They can’t be too expensive, can they? So you send it to your groupchat, leading to…
Step 2 - Recon
Everyone checks their schedules to make sure there aren’t any midterms the following Monday — you’re in the clear. You’re excited, you’re making plans for your pre-game and post-game. Outfits ideated (maybe a cupid with some blood on the dress???). Transportation decided. Tinder dates secured.
Step 3 - Price check
Ticket release dates and prices are announced. It’s fine. You don’t need to eat for a week. Who needs food? Maybe this is the week you’ll start eating the food that’s rotting in your refrigerator? You think of the lovely moldy blueberries at the back of your refrigerator. The frozen chicken and rancid milk. Your stomach turns. No, this is the week you’ll start eating at home and not eating Uncle Fatih’s everyday.
Step 4 - Panic
It’s the ticket-drop-day. You wake up early to prepare. It hits the designated time and you’re ready to click that button, credit card in hand. It’s go-time. You click the ticket number and are redirected to the payment page to secure the bag. Wait but what’s this — it’s sold out? No way. You try again. And again. And again until you finally accept defeat two hours later. Two hours you could have spent studying for the upcoming midterm for the class you’re pulling a solid 38 per cent in. The slight panic sets in. It’s fine, you won’t watch any Netflix and make up for it tonight.
Step 5 - Despair
No one from the groupchat could get tickets either. What’re you going to do when everyone else on campus is at the party? Study? You’re not nerds (you think). Maybe this is how becoming a social recluse starts. You go back to the endless pit of despair that is Instagram and laugh hollowly at ubcaffirmationz posts that are a bit too relatable at the moment. Then you see the same poster... there’s another tier being released?
Step 6 - False hope
Okay you can just get this tier right? No big deal. An extra 10 bucks? It’s fine, that's basically just one Sesame meal. Who needs Sesame chicken? Not you. You can skip it for this week. Life seems to have meaning again. You might be able to go after all!1!1!1! You remake your plans, replan outfits and with all that build up, you still can’t get the tickets in time. So you just stay in this vicious cycle through all the tier releases until it’s two days before the event.
Step 7 - Inflation and emesis
You get a panic call — someone found a bunch of tickets being resold at almost twice the original price. You buy them. You go. The event is fine. So now not only are you double broke, cold and way too sober, you’re also covered in your friend’s vomit.
Sighing as you put them to bed in your dorm and settle down to sleep on the floor, you wonder if this was worth the shit you went through. Probably not. But will you do this every single time there’s an event?
Damn right.