Texting: The New Heckling

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 11:10am

It's about stand-up comics bothered by texting in a darkened theater, but I figured this crowd might agree:

"People are silently firing up their smartphone screens in darkened theaters everywhere. At the movies. During plays. At concerts. And it shows no sign of going away.

"I always ask, 'What are you texting right now?'" said Burr by phone from Los Angeles. "One guy said, 'I just texted someone and told them you were funny.' It's like, well, can't you do that after the show? It's like they have to — in real time — talk about what's going on their lives."

That compulsion is real, and there are a number of societal, psychological and physiological reasons more and more people are reaching for their smartphones without giving it a second thought — frequently to the irritation of those around them.

"I always say, 'You're lit up like you're in "Avatar" all of a sudden,'" said Burr, prompting him to wonder during his act why "half the world is acting as if they're documenting events for a magazine they're not working for.""
The incredibly rude becomes normal

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 11:41am

I agree wholeheartedly, especially concerning the self-importance people project when documenting things needlessly.

I have one friend who is so kind and sweet, but he takes about 500 pictures at every outdoor event he goes to. Why bother? My question is always "What are you going to do with them?" To me, it's a terribly un-bright thing to be doing. It shows adherance to group mentality and takes away one's mystique. Instead of being one who experiences, he is one who catalogues.

I was at a Lucinda Williams concert in March at Webster Hall and one man was very annoyingly texting on the phone. I overheard him mention to a girl that his friend stood him up that night, which makes me understand why he was on the phone, texting away - the need to feel occupied and busy, even at a music event where he was supposed to be experiencing, not "doing." Not having someone to see the show with made him feel like he was not busy enough.

A great essay related to this topic, way ahead of its time, is "Loss of the Creature" by Walker Percy from his book "Message In the Bottle."

[BillyButler]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 12:21pm

wah wah wah. really? get over it and stop self-aggrandizing. pay attention to your world and stay out of others if you have nothing nice to say. complaining about texting is just another reason for you people to look down your nose at others. ugh! :p

[Ajpuppypal]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 12:30pm

My god BillyButler it is just an opinion which i happen to agree with.it is really annoying to be in a dark theater and have the person in front of whip out a phone.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 12:35pm

Texting in a dark room filled with other people is rude. Period. The bright light of your phone is distracting to other people trying to watch a show. If it's a live performance, it's dangerous to the actors as the bright light could distract them enough to throw off their judgment and injure them. This isn't a "you're looking down on me mind your own business" issues, it's a "you're a rude little snit who has no regard for anyone else's experience but your own, gains some perspective" issue.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 12:51pm

Agreed. When someone takes out there phone in a darkened theatre it immediately pulls my attention from what I'm watching to their bright screen. It's rude.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 1:19pm

"wah wah wah. really? get over it and stop self-aggrandizing. pay attention to your world and stay out of others if you have nothing nice to say. complaining about texting is just another reason for you people to look down your nose at others. ugh! :p"

Wow, self-centered much?

Do you not even realize how annoying it is to have a light shining in your face in a darkened theatre?

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 1:27pm

I bet Billy texts during shows.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 1:40pm

Ya think?

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:00pm

There is an anti-intellectual streak in the whole "Wah wah!" attitude that Billy is projecting here, as though those of us who want to concentrate on a play and have opinions about it (or anything) which may conflict with those of others must be defined by some weird eccentricity.

Some people, like Billy perhaps, aren't necessarily of the uncivilized, rude ilk, but are apathetic about those who are. You've heard the buzz phrase - "Hey, nothing wrong with that!" Some times it is difficult to strike the fine line.

However, since we live in a society where education is terrible and people are literally being mind-controlled by the media, with gadgets, gizmos, apps and reality TV, we who have opinions and express them with coherent sentences are fighting an uphill battle. For that reason I forsee a future with theatres full of glaring blue lights. For the half the audience which wishes to concentrate on the play, well, "Too bad for them! I want to text my mother about how cute this TV star is in person, and I have to do it now!"

"Inconsiderate" is not a word these people know or recognize.

For heaven's sake, you know times are bad when you're in a theatre watching a dramatic, dialogue-intensive play and turn around to shush the people behind you talking at full-volume, only to discover you are shushing the *ushers*! Someone needs to tell these people they are not ushering a movie and that if they're so bored seeing the show for the 100th time that they cannot stop themselves from talking, maybe theatre ushering is not the correct job for them.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:16pm

In reference to the people who need to photo document everything, "look Im getting an ice cream cone, look Im getting a toilet seat at home depot." Who gives a f#@k?! This narcissism is insane. I've taken to becoming the troll who says, "no I dont want my photo taken when Im out to dinner with my friends or going out for a drink." Im a private person who loves intimacy and the incessant picture taking has fried my nerves.

[littlegreen2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:27pm

It's not even the texting during the show that bothers me as much as cell phones going off during the show.

At the last matinee of next to normal on Broadway, I swear, at least six cell phones went off. I hate that people completely disregard the cell phone announcement and leave it on so that it could ring at any time. The woman next to me was on her phone for the entire show. Did it make me upset? Yes. But she clearly was not enjoying herself and could not get into the material. But it rang during "I Am The One (Reprise)" and she ANSWERED IT. It was brief, but c'mon. Completely inappropriate. Just the night before I was in the right box and there were people making out right in front of us, but that's another story. I just don't understand.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:33pm

Social retardation = WINNING!

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:39pm

Wanna bet Billy Butthole is a girl?

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 2:40pm

I'm with BB. I remember seeing that one display in Times Square - I don't remember if it's still there; I saw it in mid-March - where different images of Times Square visitors are projected onto a tremendous screen that everyone can see. People stick out their tongues and act like buffoons as they pose for the picture of them that will be projected out onto the crowd.

What all of this constant photo-taking and gadgetry says to me is that someone out there wants all of us to get comfortable with our constantly being monitored - not only to get us comfortable with it, but to indeed engage our narcissism so that we actually learn to *enjoy* it.

It's the same thing as Facebook applications where people log in to say precisely where they are, or those tracking devices car insurance companies are giving out that can help decrease your rates by logging driving habits.

None of this makes me feel comfortable at all. Where is the privacy? Is anything off limits? The implications are very worrying.

Also, as far as cell phone lights and cameras being whipped out in a theatre, aren't we generally supposed to be going to the theatre not necessarily to escape reality, but to leave it aside for the length of the play, as the case may be? The production should be well-oiled enough that we do not feel or consider that we are in a theatre. The audience should be allowed "in." A neighbor texting on his cell phone destroys that intimacy and (as a great actress once described it) "innocence" that one is to hopefully experience in the theatre, and that goes not just for the audience but for the actors on stage.

It is only an observance, but I have noticed that technophobes often are more productive - and happy - when compared with the rest of us. I had the great pleasure of supporting one actress in an excellent play back in January, and she was on the brink of 50, seemed 40, handled a tour de force part with astonishing grace, discipline and professionalism, held her own (to put it very mildly) among a cast of mostly younger actors and actresses and yet did not own a computer, GPS, digital camera or know how to use her cell phone to text. She's practically in 1990, but she is far from suffering or unproductive.

Updated On: 7/6/11 at 02:40 PM

[Nettik]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 3:03pm

I personally am very bothered by texting in a dark theatre because I wear glasses and the light from cell phones tends to cause a major glare if it hits me at the wrong angle, meaning I can't see the show.

Besides that, why would you even pay to sit in a seat and text the entire time?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 3:05pm

I need to say something about what Rudy said about the ushers.

When I saw HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES the other week, I was seated in the rear mezz and the ushers did not stop talking the entire show. Each time people would shush them or give glances back they would move a little further back and keep talking. Also, that damn door on the left side of the rear mezz where ushers go in and out and in and out and in and out for two and a half hours so they can talk and laugh is perhaps the most distracting thing in any theater I've ever been in. During intermission a woman came over to me and asked me if I wanted to change my seat because she knew how pissed I was. I looked around and only saw a few seats that were worse than where I was so I told her no and she just looked at me like "Well, your loss" and walked away. And the talking continued non stop through Act 2. I went on vacation the next day and didn't think about it but I really would like to file a complaint with someone about that because it wasn't the first time those ushers have had to be told to shut up during a performance. Should I send a letter to the house manager?

[Patash]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 3:22pm

So why give Billy Buddy a hard time? It was just his way of saying, "I annoy people by texting all the time and it's none of your business". His rude answer was just typical of his rudeness generally (ie texting).

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 4:11pm

Jordan, I like to think if it had been me instead of you in that position, I would have stood up for myself and demanded to speak to someone in charge to complain. However, I can't be certain I would have done so. Not only does doing that force one to infringe on one's own pleasure of being there to see the show, but it also forces one to make a spectacle of oneself, and who wants to do that in a dark theatre?

In any event, what happened to you is terrible and way worse than what I experienced (when seeing "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at the Belasco).

Another complaint I have about ushers lately - the younger, the more likely - is that they walk around a lot during acts, changing seats, alternating between standing and sitting, etc. Part of the job is to be *inconspicuous* while the curtain is up. Am I wrong? Why is this not being enforced? It's distracting. If you're restless, get another job.

When I went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest" last month I was also told by an usher in the lobby during one of the intermissions (during a not nearly sold-out matinee, mind you) to not go outside without my ticket, because they would check for them when we returned. One woman and me both went all the way back to our seats (mine was on the top floor of the venue), got our tickets, briefly went outside and came back in without that woman being there to check our tickets at all - a power-trip.

Just. Plain. Rude.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 4:38pm

I thought this phrase hit it RIGHT on the head: "half the world is acting as if they're documenting events for a magazine they're not working for."

Of course I might just be cranky because a Facebook friend posted 47 pictures of her sick kid this weekend.

[Patash]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 4:45pm

"When I went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest" last month I was also told by an usher in the lobby during one of the intermissions (during a not nearly sold-out matinee, mind you) to not go outside without my ticket, because they would check for them when we returned. One woman and me both went all the way back to our seats (mine was on the top floor of the venue), got our tickets, briefly went outside and came back in without that woman being there to check our tickets at all - a power-trip.

Just. Plain. Rude."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I'm confused. Are you saying the usher was rude for telling you that, since no one checked you? If she had told you that, and then someone WAS there and made you show them or refused to allow you back in without your tickets, would you still have thought the first usher was rude for telling you that?

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 5:13pm

^ Well, there were two of them handling the lobby for that matinee, and both were present for this encounter.

The point is that no one should be doing this to paying customers at a theatre. If 50 people left to go outside, would they physically check each person's ticket as they wandered back in for the next act? It is simply against theatre protocol. It's not as though there were people wandering the streets just dying to second-act "The Importance of Being Earnest," although it was a good production...and even if there were, it's just not done. I believe it to have been intentional rudeness, and I do believe had I been another demographic I may not have been bothered, although that is neither here nor there.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 5:27pm

I always take my ticket if I'm gonna go outside. I almost never need it, but I figure it's best (and painless) to err on the side of caution.

[Rudy2]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 5:37pm

I do too, Phyllis, and was surprised I did not have it on my person as I usually do.

I nonetheless think the action, like a lot I see from mostly younger ushers, was in poor taste.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 6:47pm

This thread made me relive my anger after I went to the movies this past weekend. I saw Midnight in Paris and there were about 20 people in the theater. I'd say 10 of them texted throughout the entire movie and 4 - 5 had cell phones ringing and were talking on phones.

I understand it's different that live theater because it's not like your disturbing the actors, but they certainly disturbed me and the few other people there who actually appeared to want to see a movie, shocking I know!

I went to the manager afterwards and was given a voucher for a free movie, I think that's what they do whenever someone complains. He said they'll look into it, I'm sure they'll do nothing. It makes much more financial sense for them to just offer me a free movie next time then anger a lot of their base. Same is true for live theater.