Teens must text!

So, I went to see The Mist last night with a friend. It was Friday night and the theatre was full of teenagers or people who’d just left their teenage days behind. I don’t want to sound like a complete geezer but what a miserable experience it is to sit among a throng of teenagers at a movie as they are, for the most part, a complete bunch of morons!

First off is the endless chatting away that some of them have to do during the film. Who needs the director’s commentary when some nitwit, pimply-faced group of 18 year olds in Tulsa think they can provide it? I remember talking a little bit as a kid but these people talk seemingly the entire film about who knows what. I can assure you it's not interesting or funny unless you are one of the braindead friends sitting with them.

The thing that really irks me is their devotion to the cell phone and reading/responding to text messages. I admit, I do not own a cell phone and have never made a text in my life so don’t see the appeal. These teenagers though, they must be getting very important messages on their phones that MUST be checked over and over even as the film reaches its conclusion, right? Wrong.

One idiot girl in front of me kept checking her phone and got the awe inspiring texts such as “where r u?” and “I’m bored”. She not only had to open her phone but had to respond to them! It forms the opinion that these teens today are nothing but self-absorbed and full of themselves, with attention spans so brief that they can not turn their phones off and watch the film with respect to those around them.

I could see the need if these were med students or someone who needed to be urgently contacted but these are just goofball teens being themselves and what do they do best: text and talk, text and talk, text and talk. I think the next time this happens right in front of me I’m going to lean over the seat and ask in my most gruff, possibly unhinged way: “What do they say? Is it important? You better answer that right away! Hurry! You have one of 134 texts for the day coming to you and don’t you feel loved!”

Going to see this film at this time of night and on this particular day makes me dream of when I was in Finland earlier this year. Ah, the wonderful Finns. No phones. No texts. The Finns are shockingly there for nothing but the movie and the projector and the story. It's a bizarre concept that alludes Americans it seems and I wish I could say the same about American audiences but we’re a culture of “self” interest first. When you add some teens to a movie theatre that means texting, texting, texting.