Madison Square Garden Has Been Secretly Tracking Queer Musicians | The venue’s database also assigned a “high risk” label to Freddie Gibbs, Lil Jon, and other rappers

do they mean high risk like someone might commit a hate crime when a queer artist is performing? like, if Freddie Gibbs is doing a show they need to hire extra security in case Griselda comes to shoot up the place

Please let this be what finally brings down Dolan

They track everybody, FYI. Once you’ve been kicked out of any event and banned from the venue, you can’t try to sneak in low-key for something else you want to attend in the future. They were one of the first major venues to start doing this. Plenty of people have been ejected after trying to attend an event after being previously ejected.

Weird headline. It seems like they track all artists but it’s worded as to seem biased against queer artists. And no I haven’t read it yet , just judging off the headline before I go read it.

Yeah this doesn’t seem that weird to me. MSG is a major venue in the biggest city in the country. It’s not like NYC and event venues have not been the targets of mass casualty events before. Keeping a database of potential performers who may necessitate higher security seems like a pretty obvious thing to do.

Marking people’s sexuality also reads weird, and I’ll admit as a gay man that the concept of databases of people with indicators like this does cause a degree of unease, but it’s also easy to imagine benefits to something like this. It could help identify who to seek to book for Pride, or guide how an event might be decorated, etc.

The only thing in this article that actually seems a bit off is the presumption that speaking ill of Dolan gets you shadowbanned. I’m not familiar enough with MSG’s financing structure to know how egregious this is, but I assume there is some degree of taxpayer subsidization going on, so the personal gripes of its management should not have influence over bookings.

If you think this is invasive wait till you find out how much Major League Baseball is tracking us.