On thoughtlessness

We went to see Angels & Demons last week with R and for some odd reason I always get very annoyed at the movie theater. Granted, the movie itself wasn't as horrible as I was afraid of, but it seems that the typical moviegoer these days is not capable of being in any way considerate when it comes to the experience of other viewers. One of my pet peeves is how people are checking their phone in a dark movie theater. Just maybe it's not a good idea, namely because when the backlight of the phone's screen kicks on in a dark room, your movie viewing experience is degraded as your view is automatically turned to the new source of stimulus. And when this happens every ten minutes you can't help but complain to the person (if they are close to you) and wish that you'd have a bottle to throw at the person if they're sitting further away.

Another brilliant thing to do is to leave the movie theater in the middle of the movie in disgust. Nothing's better than directly and immediately protesting against the shitty quality of the plot and acting than to march out in protest. That may work in a theater where the actors are present and attempting to perform (and I have to admit that even I haven't dared disrupt theater presentations in this way, even though I've seen quite a few rather appalling ones in my time), but for some odd reason I think the protest is lost on the fact that at movies you don't have a direct feedback channel available to the actors or the producer or the director. So please, fly to California and bitch and moan at them, but please don't do it in the movie theater. The only thing you accomplish is the same that you get when you play with your phone: the other moviegoers will be wishing that someone would decapitate you.

It's funny since I recall that I've bitched and moaned about these things before. But all seems to not be lost yet as the people playing with their phones seem to know on some level that they're doing something wrong. Or at least I get this feeling when I tell them to lose the phone and shut up. In my experience everyone thus far has put their phones away without trouble. Maybe it's because we Finns inherently adhere to rules or maybe it's because I look scary or something. But from my point of view it doesn't matter what the reason is as long as it continues to work in the future as well.