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If You Hate Ticketmaster, Soon You’ll Hate It on Facebook, Too

Many people hate Facebook for its enormous size and inescapability. Everyone hates Ticketmaster for more or less the same reasons. (The big difference between the two seems to be that Facebook usually works.) So it is with great trepidation, bordering on outright despondency, that I inform you that Facebook and Ticketmaster — two of the internet’s most widely disliked companies — are joining forces: You will soon be able to buy tickets from Ticketmaster directly through Facebook and its accompanying apps.

By putting the ability to buy tickets directly within Facebook we hope that we’re going to provide a more seamless purchase experience and sell more tickets,” Ticketmaster executive Dan Armstrong told BuzzFeed. Extremely cool. I definitely want to help perpetuate a frustrating ticketing system —  “the product of what even Ticketmaster executives acknowledge is 30 years of patches and workarounds,” as a 2010 Wired article put it — make more money through outrageous service charges and give Facebook the inside scoop on my musical interests, so it can then sell me more tickets.

This is just the most recent example of Facebook’s current pitch to be the medium through which everything else on the internet happens: Tickets through Facebook, customer service and other kinds of shopping through Messenger, easier media distribution via Instant Articles, and so on and so forth. Think of it: You can try to buy tickets on Facebook, encounter an unhelpful Ticketmaster customer service representative, and complain about the entire experience, all without leaving Facebook.

The internet was supposed to be a great equalizer. Now the largest social network and the largest ticketing enterprise have combined into a horrible Voltron of commerce and cultural capitalism.

The worst part is that I know I’m probably going to use it.

Soon You’ll Hate Ticketmaster on Facebook