Hamish became the subject of a Twitter storm after trying to sell tickets online
Parklife Festival announced that they would be revoking the complimentary tickets they had awarded to a competition winner on Wednesday morning, after he tried to sell tickets to the festival through Twitter for a profit of £200 per ticket.
https://twitter.com/parklifefest/status/1374671574553493508?s=21
Hamish Wigley-Smith, 19, won two free tickets to the festival through a competition that rewarded the funniest group chat name punters could come up with. Wigley-Smith entered with a screenshot of his friends’ group chat for the festival, named ‘Turn the Heaton On’, alluding to the festival being in Heaton Park. Pretty clever.
But since the festival caught wind of him trying to sell tickets to the festival for more than face value, they quote tweeted him, announcing that “your tickets have just been cancelled pal.”
This prompted thousands of Twitter users to bombard Wigley-Smith with hateful messages, labelling him a scumbag and a ‘Tory’.
Ticket touting is undoubtedly a problem in the events industry, but social media pile-ons can have disproportionate effects on people who have not sought to be in the public eye.
Wigley-Smith spoke to JOE to give his version of events.
“It’s getting to me a bit,” he said. “If it was someone else who was depressed, it could have been taken differently.
“I’m getting thousands of messages, a load of trolls calling me out.”
He then clarified that the tickets he was intending to sell were not the tickets he won, but tickets he had bought beforehand, which then became surplus to his group’s needs.
“Obviously I was selling them for quite a lot of money, but everyone thinks I’m selling the ones that I’ve won, which I’m not.
“Of course I understand people’s frustrations, but I’m still getting messages now from people wanting to buy them. I think if people were in my situation, they would have done the same thing.
“I see where people are coming from, but I think it’s really been blown out of proportion, just because Parklife want a few likes and retweets.”
Wigley-Smith has clarified to Parklife he wasn’t trying to sell the complimentary tickets, but tickets he had already bought, but has not heard back from the Festival at the time of writing.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous how Parklife have blown this up and I’m getting all the hate for it,” he says.
“I don’t think it’s fair how it’s been dealt with at all.”
