I feel like every touring musician with a mostly youth audience at least up into the 2010s was taking advantage of their underage fans. It just wasn’t as big of a deal, culturally. I graduated in 2009 and had plenty of friends and classmates dating older people, and I do think it’s creepy now as an adult but the adults in our lives at the time certainly didn’t seem that bothered. The fact that some artists have been crucified over relatively benign behavior while others are still revered despite their repeated flagrant abuse of minors I think speaks more to the fan bases of those musicians than anything else. MSI and Brand New fans are more the types to hold people accountable for their actions than RHCP fans, for example.
I feel like every touring musician with a mostly youth audience at least up into the 2010s was taking advantage of their underage fans. It just wasn’t as big of a deal, culturally. I graduated in 2009 and had plenty of friends and classmates dating older people, and I do think it’s creepy now as an adult but the adults in our lives at the time certainly didn’t seem that bothered. The fact that some artists have been crucified over relatively benign behavior while others are still revered despite their repeated flagrant abuse of minors I think speaks more to the fan bases of those musicians than anything else. MSI and Brand New fans are more the types to hold people accountable for their actions than RHCP fans, for example.