MIKE addresses chess meme stunt in the front row of his Italian show

nme.com:

Tool meme which saw the phrase “TOOL mosh pits” emblazoned across a photo of men in suits playing chess.In a now-deleted TikTok from the show, the young fan pulled out a small chessboard while in standing in the front row and initiated a short game of chess.

The clip also had the phrase “MIKE Moshpit” overlayed on it in white text.A tweet of the TikTok that was captioned “I hate this so much,” ended up going viral and led the kid to share an apology for his actions that were intended as a joke. “I’d like to clear up some things about what happened at MIKE’s concert in Milan, because it turns out there’s been a huge misunderstanding about my intentions.

First and foremost, I owe an apology to the man himself, who had an astounding performance and had a fantastic way of keeping us engaged,” he wrote.I hate this so much pic.twitter.com/Gf3XJA4v0I— fuzzy… (@fuzzytincan) March 26, 2025“It wasn’t my intention to offend or disrespect MIKE in any way, the act of playing chess during a MIKE concert was a reference to a meme that had gone viral on socials about a year ago, and I was sure MIKE would’ve recognised it.

I paid for the ticket to the concert just so I could enjoy the show and genuinely have a great time, MIKE is one of my favourite artists so it would make no sense to just pull up to mock him.He continued: “I’d like to make things as clear as possible: when I posted the video, the drawbacks it would have were far beyond my consideration.