A plainly-obvious and destructive characteristic of public experience has been festering over the past decade or so. You’ve seen it. Perhaps you’re even a contributor. In any event, so far as I’m concerned it has begun to reach critical mass. Here’s just one example of what I’m talking about…
I can’t go to the cinema anymore
Spending a couple of hours in a movie theater these days is eerily similar to spending a couple of hours in a children’s daycare center. Sadly, fewer and fewer of us have any grasp of appropriate public behavior or, apparently, the concept of contextual decorum.
Parents are to blame, but as we each are responsible for our own behavior I rightly hold their children accountable; children ranging in age from 10 to 40 years old. Yes, there are far too many 20 to 40-year old children today. They look like adults, but they’re nothing of the sort.
Despite long-standing tradition and even the clear rules of the cinema while the feature is playing, 25-year old children now too often behave as if they’re in a private viewing. Whole conversations, either with companions or on mobile devices, are common during a movie now. Despite the pre-feature, automated, polite request for those in attendance to silence and turn off their mobile devices I notice that many stay on; and the number grows each time I go. Throughout the movie, obliviates of all ages now make a habit of checking their email or other social media every few minutes.
This childish and inconsiderate behavior is accompanied by an increasingly-common sociopathic disorder. Immersed in the cocoon of self-centricity and mobile device fetish, these grown children are oblivious to the affect of their behavior on the world around them. In fact, often if you ask someone to curtail their conversation or to put the phone away, they react with surprise and even anger that you would dare to intrude upon their hermetically-sealed private world.
In the minds of these obliviates, it is your behavior—not their own inconsiderate behavior—that is problematic. The clinical term for this sort of person is sociopath. Clearly, more and more of today’s parents are quite deliberately raising sociopaths.
The result of this rise in sociopathic behavior is that the quality of public life is being destroyed. This ongoing destruction is causing people to increasingly abandon public venues of all sorts. I’m not speaking of theory; we all see this happening right now. With the death of public venues, much more will be destroyed. Few if any of us will enjoy what comes with that.
Parenting used to come with a societal mandate for you to instruct your children in proper public behavior. By evidence, this facet of American society is no longer widely acknowledged. I’m not certain what specific factor in modern life is responsible for this epidemic of parental incompetence, but surely the inane idea that “it takes a village” has helped to ease the mental trauma that comes with parental capitulation.
Parents: the village didn’t take your children to raise. That’s your job. Start doing it.
Mobile device enthusiasts: reflect on your relationship with your mobile and know that there are social contexts where checking it or taking calls is wholly inappropriate…like at the cinema or when you’re in the company of other people.
In public you do not exist in a cone of silence and your public behavior should follow the common rules of contextual decorum; something your parents should have taught you. Also, when you’re with other people, every time you check your mobile or take a call, you insult your companions and tell them very clearly that despite the fact that they’re with you here and now they don’t matter as much as someone or something else that isn’t here now.
Don’t be a sociopath. You’ll be amazed at how rich real life can be when you don’t spend it distracted by virtual life.
A good one! Extend that to bad behaviour at supermarkets and the streets in general.
There are a lot of dynamics at play here. There’s an idea circulating that children need to be treated like little adults (for better or worse, but I suspect the latter). At the same time, an increasing number of adults are neglecting their responsibilities in some significant (and troubling) ways. At some point, we are going to have to grow up – and not just when we go to the movies or the supermarket. It means more than putting down the cell phone. It will also require us to be aware of the folks around us.
Well played, Andy. Well played.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Rutledge, Elia King and Michael Burgstahler, Cliff Huizenga. Cliff Huizenga said: RT @andyrutledge: I fear we have a sociopathic future http://bit.ly/gEc96o [...]
Thank you for writing this. I can’t stand to be in the back/middle of a theater and see that little glowing screen in front of me when someone flips on their phone. I agree it’s the responsibility of the phone user to end this bad behavior, but I love it when theaters are built to banish reception.
For example, the fairly new opera house at the University of Denver built something into the walls of the building that literally kills cell phone reception, and since moving to this new theater they have never had a performance interrupted by a cell phone ringing.
Another side note for movie theaters: Since when is it okay to leave all of your garbage on the floor and at your seat? My mom taught me to take that to the trashcan myself. Apparently this is not common practice and it drives me insane.
Well agreed. I think this is an extension, though, of what the “connected world” has turned into. There’s simply too much to choose from at any given point, so nothing is regarded as important – or valuable, or worthy of attention, dedication and respect. Including other people getting in the way.
Distilled; for quite a few people I think telling your “followers” you are at the movie might be more important than watching it…
This starts getting scary when you get texts a la “out driving a Ferrari, it does 0-100 in 5 secs…wow”.
If movie theater chains were smart, they’d all install cell jammers like the ones Bekka mentioned – for the benefit of ALL the movie goers. There is absolutely no discernible need for a mobile phone in a movie theater. Not one. And, in fact, one of the main appeals of going to a movie is disconnecting from the real world for a few hours.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, no one had mobile phones at all, and we managed to survive. I’m starting to forget what those days were like…
Andy, you’ve hit on something that goes a lot deeper than you think. Unfortunately it has a lot to do with that capitalism you profess love for so much.
Now, I’m not one to romanticize or whitewash the past, but the objective and subjective quality of life of both cities and small towns that we idealize as having been better in the past,were permanently degraded by the move to tract-home suburban development and car-centric urbanism, and this has real implications for social interaction.
Kids today grow up in mind-numbingly dull, inward-facing houses (where the garage is the central front feature) on cookie-cutter streets, far too far to walk to anything like a “Main Street,” if something like that still exists nearby. They are likely driven everywhere and drive themselves the minute they can get a license, not as a privilege but as a necessity to navigate the built environment. If there’s no main street, then there’s just The Mall.
In short, they can grow up nearly entirely in a bubble, without exposure to what real public space is, and without learning the social codes that go along with it. You see this whenever native New Yorkers curse the herds of overfed rubes who take up the whole sidewalk; the tourists who don’t know how sidewalks work because there aren’t any in their home town. For them, the city is some sort of Disneyland theme park and not a place where real people live and work.
Likewise, the real small town – the town with a connection to the agrarian hinterland, that serves a centralizing role with a market, public amenities like Main Street shops, restaurants, schools, libraries, the town hall and courthouse, etc, has slowly been eroded by exurban development. All it takes is something like a big employer closing, or Amtrak no longer stopping in that town, for it to wither.
In short, kids are ruder today because they have grown up in a world that prized convenience and cocooning (cars and malls, home theatre vs. actual theatre) over an urbanism that was predicated on real social interaction. This is because The Sacred Capitalist Market demanded that kind of development, and no-one thought Government ought to have a role in shaping that development with the wisdom of the previous 5,000 years of urban place-making.