The baseline for what’s considered decent human behavior has been slowly slipping to lower and lower levels ever since Elvis Presley got up on stage and violently gyrated his hips on national television. There used to be a time when you went to the cinema and were able to order a beer, smoke a cigarette, and people who were misbehaving were kicked out by men dressed in funny uniforms and donned a red hat. Those times are long gone, replaced by expensive unhealthy food and teenage girls sucking their boyfriend’s face and laughing at a frequency that can break a wine glass, all while you’re trying to enjoy the 34th or 35th Jaws movie. People have since stopped talking on their mobile phones, and finally cracked open their instruction manual to learn how to silence their little black pieces of plastic, but Harkins, a national theatre chain, is beginning a campaign to end the scourge of texting during a film.
Dubbed “NTDM”, shorthand for “No Texting During Movie”, Harkins theatres in Arizona are the first to get a taste of this new attempt to get people to do the right thing. By Christmas it should go national. “We’re asking that moviegoers have respect for other guests around them,” Harkins spokesman Bryan Laurel said. “People feel they aren’t disturbing others but someone getting on Facebook or Twitter, that quick burst of light can be distracting,” Laurel added. “You wouldn’t text in church or in an important meeting, and we’re trying to create some social rules here, too.”
It’s nice to see that people are reacting quite favorably to the small request. The rebels out there will keep on being douche bags, but Elizabeth Hampton, age 12, says she loves texting, but there are times when you need to stop. She went so far as to say that texting during a movie is straight up “rude”. Maybe the next generation isn’t quite as bad as I thought they’d be.
[Via: Textually]