Asking for free playbills on Instagram

Yesterday I took my little sister to see a show and she loved it. She was vibrating with excitement the entire day; and I took some cute pictures of her at various posters, holding her playbill, and at the stagedoor to share with our family and friends.

I have a personal Instagram account which I use entirely to share experiences in my life (it is NOT a playbill or fan account) and I posted the pictures there. I tagged the location of the theater because that's just what I always do and I didn't give it a second thought...that is, until I received a comment from an account that I do not follow and which does not follow me asking if I could send them a playbill.

I was confused and a little bit amused at first. I consider myself very lucky to be able to see shows so often and as a playbill collector myself I can understand really yearning for a playbill. I considered offering to send them one if I ever saw the show again (I did not pick up extras at the show). But then I found out that several of my friends had gotten the same exact copy and paste request on their posts. In fact one of my friends had even written back saying that they never pick up extras and they were still receiving pleas for playbills. That got me thinking that maybe this person was legitimately just surfing theatre location tags and asking everyone if they could have a playbill. I wondered if this was just some kind of resale scheme.

It was all just very bizarre and there wasn't even a trend. The person wanted everything from Waitress to Beetlejuice to Be More Chill and Chicago even. They didn't follow the people they were asking for things, and when you said no the first time they just asked again on a different post. It got me worried that if this person was successful asking for playbills on other people's posts this activity could become a trend that many partake in. I don't want to make my entire account private, but if this was the case I would probably become more hesitant about posting when I go to see shows.

Has anyone else had this experience? Is this an okay thing to do? If you received a message like this what would your response be?

The same person has done this to me 4 times in the past two weeks.

I finally replied to them saying it's BC/EFA season; they can write to the theatre with a donation or purchase from Playbill.com.

If they do it to me further I will be blocking them.

I see the user is now apparently...giving away Playbills/flyers as some kind of a contest?

dramamama611 said: "Gee, what harm is there on asking? You dont have them nor want to share move on. We've had people on these boards ask for them."

There's no "harm," but it's incredibly irritating and I definitely understand not wanting a stranger borderline begging for freebies every time I post about seeing a show. I've seen this person comment on several posts made by friends and family. There's no rhyme or reason to what they ask for; it's like they searched the tag "broadway" on instagram and tried to get something from every single person who attended a show. It's the same exact copy/paste comment: "Did you get any extra playbills? I'm a HUGE fan and sadly will not be seeing the show anytime soon because I live in Alabama." In one instance, after my friend said no, they responded rather rudely as well.

People ask for free playbills here, yes, but this is a Broadway/theatre forum where many people buy/sell/give away playbills and memorabilia. Many of these comments have been on personal posts from personal accounts and I feel like that makes this more annoying.

I feel like it's as if I were to go through every instagram post with a dog in it and ask if there are puppies available because I really love that kind of dog.

dramamama611 said: "I hear ya, but it could be a kid, or someone with special needs. I guess I feel it's easy enough to ignore."

That's a valid point. Having run into this particular user through other avenues before, I'm almost certain this is not the case here, but it's certainly something to keep in mind for other instances.

I've seen this person on Instagram. Sometimes I get bored and scroll through tags for my favorite shows, and I see the same person just filtering to "most recent posts" and copy/pasting the same exact comment, post after post after post to people who he/she clearly doesn't even know.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with asking for freebies from friends, or even strangers on occasion; but this sort of stuff could not be more inconsiderate and rude in my opinion. I implore those who have also encountered this/these posters to report this account for spam.

Updated On: 4/15/19 at 11:56 PM

dearalanaaaa said: "It's insane how people conduct themselves these days. I ran a playbill selling account and so do many of my friends and the amount of people who ask for freebies is ridiculous. I grab lots of extras but why should I cover shipping just to send you one? How about you cover shipping and some of my ticket and I'll send one your way. Otherwise, begging gets these people nowhere."

Imagine the nerve of these people asking for a free playbill from someone who went to the trouble of grabbing many more playbills than the one her ticket entitled her to. It's insane how people conduct themselves these days, I tells ya!

I've been getting Instagram comments like these, too. Every time I post about being at a show. I'm assuming based on what everyone is saying that it's the same person. Glad it's not just me, I felt badly because I don't take extra playbills, haha.

I haven't been asked for a playbill but I have had someone message me and ask if I could record (audio) the show for them.

No I don't. I guess I don't know how to do so and probably better that I don't know! lol

Honestly, I would be okay with it if this person just messaged me asking for a playbill. I could tell them no, and then if they found me in a location tag again they would see that I'd already said no. What I think is the problem here is that this user is just blindly commenting on everything that's in the tag. It's just way too much.

And as someone who collects playbills and sees a lot of shows, I can at least understand what this person is asking for. It's got to be kinda freaky for someone who maybe came to New York on a trip from Alabama for other reasons and just happened to see a show. When they went to the Museum of Modern Art they didn't have someone ask them to send them a free brochure.