Today, kids, we’re going to talk about the pregnant clusterfuck that is the Internet.

It used to be that buying concert tickets was part of a larger experience that began with the release of a new album and ended in the parking lot of a smoke-filled arena.

The experience, for all intents and purposes, began and ended in a parking lot.

First you’d hear that your favorite band was putting out a new album. You’d hear this on your car radio.

On the day the new album came out, you’d pull into the parking lot of your local record store, pay for the thing in cash, carefully examine the cover art, and race home to listen to the album from start to finish, following the lyrics to each song as it played and reading the liner notes like they held a secret.

Soon thereafter, you’d hear on your car radio that your favorite band was coming to town.

The night before tickets went on sale, you and a friend would pull into the record-store parking lot with wallets full of cash, hot coffee, and plenty of cigarettes and take your places on the sidewalk next to the record-store door. Then others would start to arrive, and they’d congratulate you on being first in line. It meant that you were a serious fan. Someone always brought along a boom box and all the band’s albums, on cassette of course, to provide a soundtrack for the hours ahead.

Everyone would chip in for coffee and doughnuts. A cop car would cruise through the parking lot every few hours making sure that everything was cool, and it always was. Sure, some folks would drink beer and smoke some grass, but the scene was always mellow.

At some point, usually when there were fewer hours until the record store opened than had passed, people would start looking at their watches. And before long, a store manager would arrive, unlock the door, go inside, and lock the door behind him. Not too long after that, he’d come outside and ask everyone to form a single-file line. This had been done hours before. Everyone knew his or her place in line, knew his or her number. Order had been established and maintained. Still, following the manager’s directions was part of the experience, even if the clock he was looking at was slower than anyone’s watch.

Once he started letting people into the store time would begin to race. No one said anything, but everyone felt like the manager could move a little faster as he processed each ticket order.

Finally, it was your turn, and before you knew it you were handing the manager a wad of cash and walking out of the place with tickets in your hand, memorizing which section, row, and seat you’d be sitting in when your favorite band arrived in town. This was when arenas had generic but place-specific names like the Hartford Civic Center, New Haven Coliseum, Providence Civic Center, Centrum in Worcester, and Springfield Civic Center.

Today, of course, these places (the New Haven Coliseum no longer exists under any name) are called the XL Center, Dunkin’ Donuts Center, DCU Center, and MassMutual Center. Tickets are purchased online, through Live Nation. “Presales” are open to people who hold certain credit cards. Moving through an orderly line of serious fans was quicker than finding seats that don’t suck on the Internet. While the no-bullshit record-store manager was usually not much to look at, interacting with him beat trying to decipher blurry “Security Check” codes like “sumption prier.”

And no matter how slow the manager seemed to move twenty years ago, he was faster than the goddamned Internet. He certainly didn’t say things like: “Searching … We are working on your request.”

Today, serious fans have to search a few times before finding seats that don’t suck. And each search means going through the whole process again and deciphering another blurry “Security Check” code like “exendine additional.” And it means thinking about things like aneurysms each time Live Nation says: “We are working on your request.”

This is not the experience it was twenty years ago. The only parts of it that remain unchanged are the concert itself and the welcome tinnitus in the parking lot after the show.

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