From human ashes to cellphones, what’s going on with concert fans lately?

The Associated Press interviewed David Schmid in an article about how many concert fans have gone from throwing flowers and various objects on stage to heavier items, raising concerns about extreme fan culture and safety. Schmid said the idea of tossing items on stage historically goes back to the etymology of the word “fan.” Short for fanatic, it was a term originally associated with religious devotion. And many tend to see celebrities “as if they are gods or at least semi-divine beings,” he said “From that perspective you can read the stage as a kind of altar and the objects that are thrown onto the stage as devotional objects,” Schmid said.