AMC Quickly Backs Away from Idea to Allow Audience Texting In Its Movie Theatres
So AMC Theatres head Adam Aron revealed in an interview published on Thursday in Variety that the movie house chain was considering allowing audience members the opportunity to text during film showings; specifically, he said that his company was kicking around the idea of making ���more texting friendly��� some of their ���specific auditoriums.���
By Friday, the very next day, AMC made it clear that they were no longer entertaining the idea.
It turns out that when news of what AMC was pondering became well and widely known, the Internet backlash against the idea was cacophonous, to say the least.
The aspect of this whole thing that struck me, in particular, was what appeared to be the company���s underlying justification for considering the idea in the first place: to simply give in to the entitlement mentality of a mega-spoiled generation. Note carefully the following words of Aron, when this was still (to AMC) a viable idea: ���When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don���t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can���t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That���s not how they live their life.���
A private business ���can���t tell��� an adult to abide by a rule itself so rooted in common courtesy that it should not even have to be a rule? That is how far off the rails we���ve now gone? What is especially bad is that his statement to that effect really implied that society, as a whole���not just a given private business���can no longer expect to demand basic courtesy from other people.
Sorry, no sale.
As it happens, I don���t spend much time in movie theatres any longer, and that is due in no small way to the unfortunate discourteousness exhibited by a number of patrons, and exacerbated by the reluctance of theatre staff to actually do anything about those being rude. All of that is bad enough, but when theatres actually go as far as to seek ways to earnestly become part of the problem, then that is our cue to collectively push back as hard as possible. If we���re not inclined to do so at that time, then we each, truly, deserve everything we get.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
