Now revealed why Iron Maiden asked fans not to film their performances during the “Run For Your Lives” tour

Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson discussed how the widespread effect of social media has been more closely associated with the exaggeration of narcissistic qualities in a recent interview with Charlie Kendall of Charlie Kendall’s Metalshop.

Now we have the crazy thing where people are observing themselves and TikTok and all the rest of it, and the influencers who need no qualifications whatsoever to be an influencer and influence people with oftentimes dumb opinions. This crazy world in which we’re so obsessed with influencing other people. And this kind of narcissistic [attitude of], ‘Hey, look at me now. ’  I stand in front of like 50,000 people and go, ‘Hey, look at me.’ But when I step off stage, that’s it.  It’s over. It’s done. I don’t think that that has any value other than what I’m actually doing. The reason you look at me, hopefully, is ’cause I’m singing some stuff or I’m telling you a story or whatever, but when it’s done, it’s done. I don’t need to walk around with the equivalent of a mirror attached to my face to know that I’m a good person. I just get worried about people’s mental health with the stuff that goes on in the web. I just think it puts too much pressure on people and people forget how to be a community anymore. That’s why in Maiden, we’re trying to say to people, ‘When you come to a show, why don’t you just keep your phone in your pocket and try and look at everybody else around you and join the show and be there for the people that you are with?’

And about the policy of putting phones away during their shows…

It’s not a requirement. It’s a request. It’s a polite request.  What is the point in paying all this money and turning up and staring at a tiny little box for, like — I don’t know — however long. I mean, first of all, Maiden show is two and a bit hours long, so your arm’s gonna get real tired.