#public behavior

So my wife and me went to see TADC in cinema yesterday and i really liked it.

I liked how they wrapped up the story, i liked the jokes (as usual), the characters, just all in all good movie. Can recommend.

What DID fucking annoy me was the audience. I don't wanna sound like one of the 'back in my days kids didn't behave like shit'-crowd but for fuck's sake.

There were two groups of teenagers to my right and in the row in front of us and they fucking squealed EVERYtime Jax appeared. They were loudly talking to each other and commenting on the jokes or characters. People were on their phones - can you maybe just NOT check your messages during a 90 fucking minute movie?!

Like come the fuck on.

I get the fangirling, I truly do. I understand that you wanna talk to your friends but please be aware that people around you also paid to see that movie?!

Also if you come in after the movie started be fucking quiet about it.

And society has struggled to keep up. Is it okay to play a video without headphones? What if it’s a busy street? What about FaceTime? Is that really different from talking to a real person in front of you? What are the rules for behavior?

...Private action to set the rules for behavior is more important in a multicultural society, not less. Having a clear set of rules gives people something tangible to debate over. Everyone knows the discomfort of realizing you’ve broken some unwritten rule and struggling to figure out what you did and why. It’s much better to know that there are strong expectations; then you can decide whether it’s worth it for you to break them.

...More artists should follow Bridgers’ example, but also, more people should get comfortable voicing their opinions. I was sitting in a diner doing some work a few weeks ago, and a couple began watching TV on their iPad. So, I just asked them if they could use headphones, and they turned it off. I did the same at a coffee shop a few days later, and the other person apologized and turned it down.

We're talking the single room gender-neutral bathrooms. It's just a door that leads to a small room with a toilet and sink, there's no multiple stalls inside.

Sister says it's rude to knock, that you just try the handle and wait your turn if you find that it's locked, that knocking is a disturbance.

I say it's rude to try the handle before knocking. Some people forget to lock up and you don't want to walk in on a stranger. (This has happened to me before. It sucks.)

I ask bc I knocked politely on a door today and got bitched out by a stranger who claimed i was "banging on the door" (i gave two raps on the door, your basic tap-tap) and Sis was like "yeah obviously, that's rude."

I was flabberghast. I have never in my life not knocked on a door before entering, and I have been increasingly appalled by society's movement towards not knocking on public bathroom doors. I just wanna know if this is more common than I thought it was.

"At the Party," by W.H. Auden

While I was in the bathroom, washing my hands, some guy started playing music on his phone. I could have just ignored it, but I did not like the trash he was playing, so I said to him "You know, this is a public space, and not everyone wants to listen to your music."

The guy got defensive, and acted like I was weird for not wanting to hear the sound of marbles being dropped on a granite countertop come out of his shitty phone speaker in the room I go to shit and piss. I told him it wasn't unreasonable to have standards of public behavior and that it was rude to inflict his music onto others when headphones exist.

His friends reacted in a way that I guess embarrassed him, because he started threatening me. It wasn't something to be taken seriously. When you get old enough, you learn to recognize bluster. After I was done washing my hands, I started walking to class, when he said "That's right, walk away."

I don't know why I turned around, but I did, and the guy immediately started trying to mad dog me, but it was so bizarre and he was so clearly putting up a front that I just started laughing at the guy. If I believed he was capable of throwing a first punch, I wouldn't have done this, but I told him he was pathetic. Maybe I should've been more understanding. I know it's a bit mean, but if you ever saw a guy utterly fail to intimidate you, saying all the tough guy phrases they say in old gangster movies, you would do the same.

I walked back to class, and I look out the door to see the guy from the bathroom again. Now, I wasn't intimidated by this guy before I had a classroom full of witnesses, so I just smiled and gave him a cheeky little wave, expecting that to be the end of our interactions, but this guy said "I'll smack you in front of your teacher." And didn't account for the fact that my professor was within earshot.