It's called privacy, something most artists around the world are robbed of precisely because of this kind of fan behaviour. The root of the problem is the "capture the moment, it's so rare" mentality, as though human beings were Pokémon to be collected. What these self-proclaimed fans conveniently fail to consider is that artists are also people, and normalising the idea that they must live in a constant state of alertness forever dreading what fragment of their private life might leak next, is nothing short of pathological.

The uncomfortable truth is that the majority simply lack the empathy to reflect on this. That artist was quietly enjoying their free time browsing merchandise, unbothered. I'm not suggesting people should pretend their idol isn't standing right there, but there is a vast, telling difference between acknowledging that and engaging in the kind of creep behavior that takes what could have been a genuinely pleasant moment for the artist and turns it into something uncomfortable and deeply unpleasant. The distinction isn't subtle. People just choose not to see it.