This week, I’m going to write about something completely different than what I’ve written about in previous Thursday Open Thoughts Threads here on firefly-dreaming, but it’s something that affects pretty much every moviegoer (myself included) who’d much rather view movies on a great big, wide screen, in a real movie theatre, with the lights down low, among other people, whether one knows them or not; cellphone use and texting. This is a practice that, whether or not the offender’s cellphone is on “silent” or vibration, is offensive and distracting to other nearby movie theatre goers, because the light on the cellphone, although it’s quite small, is also quite bright, and somewhat blinding and distracting.
Although this problem is especially acute in the great big multiplex cinemas that dot the highways and byways of the United States, it seems to be considerably less of a problem in the movie theatres that show better-quality movies. This is not to say that people don’t ever text or use their cellphones in these particular movie theatres, but, from my own personal experience with texters/cellphone users in such theatres, just politely and matter-of-factly asking the offending person to please stop is enough to produce results. Yet, I’ve also read/heard of other, nastier results in the multiplex, antiseptic-looking cinemas that show junkier movies, where parents either drop their kids off when they can’t find a sitter, or want to get the kids our of their hair for awhile, or where people, including the offenders just simply don’t care. One woman I read/heard about who attended a movie in one of these multiplex theatres and asked a person to stop texting and using their cellphone not only got a huge bucket of popcorn dumped on her head, but also woke up in a hospital emergency room! Another person I read about was actually shot in a movie theatre for speaking up against an offending cellphone user/ texting individual. As it turned out, however, both of the people involved in this particular altercation knew each other, and had an ongoing vendetta between them.