There’s a time and a place for live tweeting. Commentary and quotes that remind you of your family’s silliness is appropriate for the holidays, but you can–and should–use different tones for different events.

My best friend Julia and I went to a concert earlier this week at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland. Smallpools and Magic Man were headlining, and Panama Wedding was the intro band.

Julia knew one song each from the headlining bands, and she’d shared those two songs with me when she asked me to join her at the concert. I said I’d go–the show was relatively cheap, and I figured why not?

Here’s why not: going to see your favorite band play a concert is fun. Going to see a band that you’ve heard literally once is not. 

We had a good time regardless, but the best part wasn’t the music. The best part was live tweeting about the ridiculousness of both the other concertgoers and the experience as a whole.

(Most of our commentary about other people–including a couple wearing matching galactic shirts and a guy with a camera surely wasting his film on low-light photos that won’t come out–is on Julia’s account, so it isn’t included here, but you get the idea.)

Live tweeting is a great way to make humor out of less-than-ideal situations, and our giggling about the absurd characters around us saved us from hours of being bored by music we didn’t know.

I suppose the lesson here is that when life gives you lemons…live tweet about it.