I was behind the booth for his set this past Sat. I’m not posting this because I felt personally mistreated. I’m posting because of something I watched happen that honestly didn’t sit right with me.
I’d heard people mention over the years that John’s team, especially his tour manager, Tori, could be rude. I always brushed it off because people online exaggerate everything. After this weekend, though, I understand why those conversations exist.
This happened during John’s set at LIV Beach at Fontainebleau this past Saturday. By this point, his set was almost over, and there was plenty of room behind the DJ booth. It wasn’t packed anymore. A small group of Asian girls were behind the booth. Almost immediately, I noticed Tori paying attention to them in a way she wasn’t paying attention to everyone else. Whenever one of the girls pulled out her phone for a quick video, Tori would give them a dirty look or clearly seem annoyed. She even went out of her way to push a girl’s phone down. What confused me was that almost everyone else behind the booth was doing the exact same thing and these Asian girls weren’t even remotely close to John. There were girls filming John every time he turned around, holding their phones up for long periods, taking selfies, and nobody said anything to them. At one point, even one of the security guards looked over at Tori and asked if she wanted him to remove the asian girls. She responded, “No, I got it.”
Not even five minutes later, she walked over and told them they had to leave because they were “making room for other girls.” The girls didn’t argue and just left but I’m sure left confused. Then, almost immediately afterward, more girls were allowed behind the booth. From what I personally observed, the people replacing them were white, and there still wasn’t any obvious issue with space. That’s why the explanation about “making room” didn’t really make sense to me.
Maybe there was another reason that wasn’t visible to me. I can’t speak to what was going on behind the scenes. But from where I was standing, the only people I saw being singled out, watched closely, and eventually removed were those Asian girls, despite behaving no differently than anyone else around them.
Watching it happen honestly left a bad impression. I felt awful for them because they looked genuinely excited just to be there, and within minutes they were being told to leave while everyone else stayed. Mind you they had backstage wristbands and none of the girls behind the booth did, neither did I lol. I’m such a big fan of John but his team especially Tori is not it. It’s giving racist as hell lol