This past weekend, kids of all ages flocked to Las Vegas hoping to achieve their wildest dreams by hearing their favorite albums live, in full, at the When We Were Young Festival. Though mildly gimmicky, this approach built anticipation from the start, encouraging audiences to attend events beginning on Thursday evening as they touched down at Harry Reid International. Scardi B (Scarlet), a frequent collaborator of GSM and host of the Sugar, We’re Going In Podcast, hosted an Emo Bingo event at Ferguson’s on Fremont to kickstart the epic weekend of good-hearted debauchery. This community-based event called forth a slew of Fall Out Boy fans, most of whom were already friends from time spent on a specific corner of the internet. Immediately, this warm, welcoming environment suggested that the good times would, in fact, roll!

Scardi B proved to be the hostess with the mostess as she utilized her natural sense of charisma to guide players through the themed bingo cards. It was a combination of digital and virtual layouts, resembling her Zoom bingo events. The first half of the evening they featured a medley playlist, where fans would match songs to their bingo cards as they played at random. Mainly highlighting the WWWY lineup, the target audience responded accordingly as each of their favorite songs played to a sea of their “oomfs” (social media followers…). Plus, thanks to Scardi B’s format, multiple winners took home prizes from the community attending the game. Sadly, I could not bring home a prize but works from some of my best friends were featured in the lineup of prizes, asserting that the main focus of the evening was uplifting the community that raised us.

The latter half of the game featured a playlist of exclusively Fall Out Boy songs, from deep cuts to mega-hits like “Centuries.” It was nothing short of magical being able to stand alongside “these kids that I grew up with” as we all waited for our first event-sponsored programming of the weekend to begin down the road at the Brooklyn Bowl. Scarlet’s sense of confidence, whether natural or forged, allowed everyone else in the incredibly aesthetically pleasing outdoor venue to feel excited about the festivities ahead while still living in the moment.

This kind of event also makes way for new formats of live entertainment to take over local scenes, whether niche like this or broader in scope. There is plenty of room for themed nightclub events, but thinking outside the box like this rebukes an essence of staleness. Scarlet isn’t looking to make a quick buck; if anything, she is just as excited to meet her online friends as the rest of us are. I was so excited to know everybody in the “room,” despite consistently fighting persistent social anxiety. My job forces me to break through these barriers, but supporting my friends doing incredible things like this event makes it way easier to calm the heck down.

Sadly, I had to leave before the night's end to get my will-call ticket at the next venue. However, the hour and a half I spent at Sugar, We’re Going In’s Emo Bingo was the best way I could have spent my sleep-deprived entryway into When We Were Young Festival. Hopefully, festival promoters will begin to take notes; smaller, independent, non-sponsored festival programming deserves just as much praise as the high-budget stuff. If this is what Scarlet can achieve via independent funding, one can only imagine what she could have done with a big festival budget.