Dane Cook once called the movies cinematic adventures. And, honestly, that is a very good way of approaching them.
Cinematic adventures entail a sense of personal growth and excitement. It doesn’t allow the experience of watching a movie to be dumbed down to a visual medium of consumption. It’s something more than just watching a screen for a few hours.
And as such, cinematic adventures—and everyone’s experience of them—ought to be respected. So, if you see anyone talking or using a phone during such an adventure, please be a knight in shining armor and bring them to cinematic justice.
More Info: Reddit
Watching movies is an experience. One that can be easily ruined by folks who think cinema etiquette is overrated and choose to ignore it
Image credits: Warner Bros. Pictures
Well, this one Redditor chose not to deal with those who chose barbarism and told them to shut it (more or less politely) only to be told they’re “negative”
Image credits: u/deathcastle
The cinematic experience was ruined in the end, though the Redditor’s efforts did at least soften the blow for his friends who were first-time watchers of the movie
Image credits: Samuel Regan- Asante (not the actual photo)
A Redditor by the nickname of u/deathcastle recently shared a story of mild fury in the appropriately named r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit.
The story goes that he, his wife and two friends went to a fancy movie theater to watch that new Barbie movie. They happened to be seated next to a group of 3 younger folk, somewhere in their twenties.
All was fine and dandy until the trailers started, yet the young ‘un group kept blabbering away at a regular tone and volume—as if the cinematic adventure hadn’t started. OP took notice of it, but didn’t react just yet. Maybe they’d calm down for the movie.
Nope. They kept on doing their thing, talking the movie away and pecking at their phones, violating the sanctity of the cinema and all that it stands for. This is the point where OP decided that maybe they needed to be reminded of where they were. This seemed to be effective… for probably 2 or 3 minutes. After that, the chatterboxes continued with their regularly scheduled three dudes talking podcast.
Once again, OP turned to the group, now side-kicked by his wife, and they both told them to shut their noise holes. The group didn’t take that one lightly and came back with what’s your problem? and saying the dude was, like, killing the vibe with his negativity.
Now, OP seemed to immediately understand where this was going and cut to the chase: he went straight to the cinema staff to explain the situation and see if they could do something about it.
Well, that seemed to have solved the problem. Mostly. While the group was now more or less quiet, they did manage to ruin some key moments in the cinematic adventure and did some vibe killing of their own with chatting and that one forgot to mute my phone, sorry-not sorry moment.
Image credits: Tima Miroshnichenko (not the actual photo)
This was OP’s second viewing of the movie while it was his friends’ first, and he served as a sort of buffer between the two parties well enough to not have the experience be ruined for the friends, but OP still found it upsetting. Hence the post on Reddit.
And folks in the community shared the sentiment. Everyone and their mother agreed that it’s absolutely annoying, nay, infuriating to experience talkers during movies. So much, in fact, that some choose not to go to the movies at all at this point.
Others, however, take matters into their own hands and do what OP did, except with an increased degree of efficiency through what I would assume is intimidation. And if they are not the ones asking chatters to shut the full cup, then it’s someone else—like this teen with jewels of steel who took some inconsiderate guy’s business call, told the guy at the other end they’d be contacted at a time following the cinematic adventure, and hung up, returning the phone to the guy. Silence was bliss.
All of this begged a very legit question: why pay top dollar for a movie ticket if they’ll end up ignoring most, if not all, of it with chatter and gawking at their phone? Many considered it an utter waste of money. Probably time and everyone’s patience too.
Image credits: Krists Luhaers (not the actual photo)
Bored Panda got in touch with OP for an interview on the situation and how it all panned out. The post on Reddit was a form of casual catharsis that, as you can see, drew the eyes of many.
OP explained that he never sought out to take revenge on the obnoxious talkers—just to have them pipe down and let everyone else enjoy the movie. And OP wouldn’t settle for anything less than no talking: “No talking, period. It’s crazy that this is even a question to anyone. Respect the people around you who paid to see the movie—they didn’t pay to hear your dumb [shirt] conversation.”
Now, OP’s party and the party of 3 speech-craftians weren’t the only ones there (d’uh). So, we asked OP if anyone else reacted to the scene developing in their part of the cinema. And he had this to say:
“There were people sitting in front, and behind us, but I didn’t take the opportunity to see whether they were also bothered by the prats. My aim was to enjoy the movie, so after the altercation I went straight back to doing exactly that.”
OP concluded: “Posting it to Reddit was a great outcome—received overwhelmingly lovely comments and messages from others who also vented their frustrations, and hopefully achieved some level of catharsis as well. There were a tiny amount of fragile men who seemed very bothered that I, a man—enjoyed the Barbie movie. Losers!”
Image credits: Personal Creations (not the actual photo)
Let’s consider movie theater etiquette for a bit. While anyone can agree that it’s not polite to tell anyone to give their vocal chords a rest, it’s equally impolite to be talking or on the phone in a movie theater because it’s ruining it for everyone.
There’s this thing called Debrett’s Cinema Etiquette, released by Debrett’s, a British professional coaching company, publisher and authority on etiquette and behavior. It highlights 5 key rules for how to behave yourself in a cinema:
[1] don’t kick the seat in front of you; [2] don’t talk or whisper during the movie; [3] keep back-row seat romance to an absolute minimum; [4] be there on time; and [5] don’t be making that snack noise.
A spokesperson from Debrett’s pointed out that, over the last few years, experts see an overall decline in cinema etiquette. This in turn can be a real pain and can seriously ruin the fun of going to the cinema.
Turns out, the #1 problem—expressed by nearly half of all movie-goers—is seat kicking. Nearly 15% of cinematic adventure enthusiasts explained that they hate folks blocking the view, and the third biggest problem, expressed by around 12% of folks, is the phone. Now, nearly 4 out of 10 people are happy to discipline complete strangers if they happen to break any of these rules, but note that rule breaking shouldn’t even be a thing in the first place. By proxy, that would be a problem solved.
But, back to the story. In just under a day, nearly 30,000 people upvoted the post. You can check it out in context here. But before you do that, why not vent your frustrations in the comment section below, or alternatively share some pleasant cinematic adventure moments? Or movie recommendations! Those are good too.
The story landed in Reddit where the community shared their sympathies, frustrations and the mystery of why people pay for movies if they’re not gonna watch them
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