Photo: Emma Viola Lilja

Father John Misty isn't a fan of phones at his gigs. Earlier this week, he mocked an audience member filming his show, by starting again several times to ensure they got the perfect shot. "It's just like you were almost here," he proclaimed, sagely. I'm surprised he didn't add, "Makes you think, doesn't it."

Many of my favourite artists have taken a stand against phones at gigs. Savages banned them, because they "prevent all of us from totally immersing ourselves." On her Digital Witness tour, St. Vincent preceded shows with a message requesting that fans not use their phones. 

I'll get this out of the way first - it can be incredibly annoying when someone doesn't put down their phone for an entire gig. If nothing else, they're probably obscuring the view of everyone behind them. But the knee-jerk reaction against any use of phones at a gig is quickly developing into one of sheer snobbery.

There are a few well-worn cliches when it comes to the case against modern technology. You'll have heard them all countless times before - usually at a house party as someone proudly thrusts their Nokia 3310 into your face, solemnly explaining how you've become a slave to social media. "You're living life through a screen," they'll tell you. "No-one's really present anymore."

We are all still present, of course. It's easy to glance at a train-full of people on their phones and despair about the death of human interaction. But what would we be doing otherwise? Before smart phones, did people jump onto their commuter train every morning with a tray of cupcakes to hand out to strangers while they ask each person, in turn, about their hopes and fears? I wasn't there, but I imagine it was more a case of staring out of the window - or down at their newspapers.

On that train-full of people, one might be reading about MPs' fracking vote on BBC News, another might be on Tumblr learning the difference between transgender and cisgender, and another might by Whatsapping their ailing grandma on the other side of the world. Technology is an absolute wonder.

And at gigs, when people deign to lift their phones into the air for a few seconds, and take a photo or a video, they might have a brilliant reason for doing so. They might, and bear with me on this because it's quite a radical notion, still be appreciating the actual experience. Perhaps it's just that their aforementioned ailing grandma is a huge Father John Misty fan. Then again, they might just want twelve blurry photos and a video clip to flick through on the tube on the way home and never look at again. That's OK too. Life in 2015 is a multi-media, multi-sensory, multi-coloured experience. Try and get on board.

Foolishly, I wasn't expecting a huge amount when I went to see Madonna at The O2 Arena earlier this month. Her every euphoric dance move, wildly unnecessary costume change, and anthemic chorus proved me wrong. When her dancers shimmied their way up twenty foot poles and launched themselves back and forth, practically brushing the heads of the crowd, I gazed in wonderment. And then I got my phone out, and I filmed it for a bit.

The next morning, I showed the clip to anyone who even glanced in my direction. Now I can watch that clip whenever I like - such as at a rubbish house party when I'm being lectured by someone who was "born in the wrong decade" about how much I'm missing out on life because I have broadband. Photos and videos don't mean you've missed out on the real experience, they just allow the memory of them to be preserved a litte better.

There's a reason people always reach for the photo album when their house is on fire. And mine is going to be filled with badly framed, out-of-focus pictures of Madonna.