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Comment by knicholes | Hacker News Reader

I have an idea to fix this.

- Start the movie on time - Don't play trailers before the movie - Don't play ads EVER for people paying for their ticket

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This is the best part of indie theaters. You show up and when the clock hits about the time shown on the ticket, the lights dim and the film just... starts

My local indie cinema has locally produced indie ads for local businesses. It’s cute and part of the charm! They also play trailers, but just 1 or 2, not a whole bunch like big chain cinemas.

Playing ads in general is fine - I like to see trailers for OTHER soon-to-be-released movies ... BUT, don't show trailers for the movie that is actually playing, or maybe simpler (no need to make it movie specific) just don't show trailers for movies that have already been released.

I like previews and trailers before the movie... sometimes it's informative (new movie that I didn't know about). But really, for me, they act as a palate cleanser of sorts. It sets the stage that I'm about to watch a movie. It serves to separate the "before movie" time from the "movie time". They let my mind shutdown the outside world.

But showing documentary footage that spoils the movie I'm about to watch? Yeah... don't do that.

If you consider the trailer for the movie you are just about to watch a spoiler, then I would expect that trailers for other movies that you might watch at some other time would be considered spoilers as well, no?

What's the difference? (Other than the probability of actually at some time watching the movie being spoiled.)

I don't tend to remember details of trailers - just that it looked good (or not), and then the name of the movie may stick in my head (or I may mark release date on my calendar). By the time the movie comes out months later, I'm not going to have remembered much about the trailer.

I don't know, if the film starts at 9, start it at 9, don't start it at 9:15. I don't want to see the trailers, I'm just there for the film. Start the trailers at 8:45 if you want, but have the actual film start at the time it says, so I know how to skip the trailers I don't want to see.

Unfortunately, the lost revenue from marketing would just add cost to tickets. It's likely the theaters get a portion of that revenue if not most of it since it's time spent in their seats.

That ignores the lost revenue from my butt missing from the chair. I watch at home lots more because of such shenanigans.

How likely is it really that you'd go to a theater to watch a movie if they didn't have previews? If you want to see a movie in theaters, that's where you're going to be. If you're taking that view, you're probably not in their target (ahem) audience.

I suspect that people are more sensitive to ticket prices than they are seeing ads, so if you're trying to maximize revenue, you'd want to limit increases in ticket prices to keep getting viewers in the seats. Then once they are there, try to extract as much additional revenue as possible (concessions, ads, etc). The theaters showing ads aren't trying to attract new viewers, they are trying to extract as much revenue as possible from their existing customers.

(For better or worse)

I'd say your explanation is accurate, that's the calculus. It's the same everywhere.

Unfortunately, the calculus never factors in the fact that it's unsustainable and over time destroys the medium, by changing peoples' and society's relationship with it.

C.f. all the stories about "good old times" that are just remembrance of things before they got enshittificated.

If your time is worth a lot of money, you'll buy a home theatre anyways.

Only if you have the money to spend. $30.00 to see a movie every so often is a lot easier to afford for someone living paycheck to paycheck. A person could probably see movies for several years without reaching the price of a good home theater system.

Even all that won't fix:

- assholes looking at their smartphone during the movie

- assholes who won't shut the fuck up

Gave up the whole movie theater experience. My fancy reclining sofa and huge 4K OLED TV are way better already.

sure, those are completely separate issues from what's being discussed.

I think the point is that instead of asking cinemas to self regulate one could simply watch to movie at home.

I see it as part of a general trend where public spaces are tarnished by a general public that is unable to behave itself.

I think in time the process will accelerate and more and more public spaces will be replaced by private spaces. This is fine for people like myself who can afford such private spaces but I think it’s bad for society which I still have to live in.

> I see it as part of a general trend where public spaces are tarnished by a general public that is unable to behave itself.

It's easy to blame the people, when it comes to the folks who can't stop pulling out their cell phones many of them have been conditioned to act that way from a very young age. If we keep letting companies turn people into anxious iphone addicts it'll only get worse. They can't stay off their phones while driving, asking them to go for an hour and half without looking at their phone violates everything their phone has taught them about how to behave

We need to stop excusing bad behavior (by people with agency and control over their bodies) with "well, corporations made them do it!" Cell phone companies are not turning people into inconsiderate jerks--they already are inconsiderate jerks, and their phone just provides them another way to be jerky to everyone.

> they already are inconsiderate jerks

I've seen good people do it, and be embarrassed by it after I told them to put it away.

It just doesn't make much sense that we've allowed behavioral conditioning to be carried out on the population multiple times a day, every single day, since before they could even read, if we're then going to be mad when some percentage of those people go on to act in exactly the way they've been trained to.

Not everyone has been conditioned to that extent, or will be as susceptible, or at least not as susceptible to it all the time, but this should be the expected outcome. It'd actually be very weird and unexpected if no one ever pulled out their phones in theaters.

If you're suggesting that accidently additive products and services be banned from use for the public good then I'm in 100% agreement. What I'm not sure of is how that could possibly be reliably achieved. I guess 'sin' taxes would a blend of freedom and prohibition but then you get a government that depends on the sin for it's revenue which sets up a rather perverse incentive. Like an alcohol tax in Russia, or indulgences for the Catholic church.

TikTok is slowly destroying my sisters life and there is nothing anyone can do about it since she does not think it's a problem and she is an adult.

>accidently additive

Zynga and King do not hire psychologists because their products are "accidentally" addictive.

None of this shit is "accidentally" addictive. They explicitly track "engagement" and screen time as metrics to increase.

Addictivity is not an accident! This isn't like with drugs where we just pulled a chemical that already existed out of nature and it just happens to press the same pleasure center buttons as chemicals in our brain.

These companies make their products addicting and addictive on purpose. It is the intended goal of most businesses today.

The accidentally addictive was purely to make it clear that intent is not required to be shown for a ban, only outcome. Accidentally or accidentally on purpose it does not matter.

Unfortunately, society in general, not just cinemas, has decided not to hold assholes accountable to their assholic behavior, so behavior is only going to get worse. It's something voters (and consumers by voting with wallet) have the collective power to change, but we refuse to.

There is a general loss of civility, in my view nothing can be done about it and those who try will be simply throwing themselves against the gears of the machine to no avail.

If I was responsible for maintaining behavior in a public space, say as a restaurateur, the law would not be on my side. If I tell a minority woman that she needs to behave is that a hate crime or criminal misogyny? I'm sure my life would be destroyed while we found out. The state has in effect taken over the role of policing behavior and has done an incredibly bad job of it.

This isn't a figment of my imagination - I was pulled into a tribunal because I expressed amusement at something my female colleague said, I thought it was funny and I thought we were friends, she made a misogyny complaint to hr. Trying to explain why I thought it was funny didn't help nor did the explanation that I would have acted the same if a man had said what she did. I've since avoided working at large companies which has been an impingement on my career but at least I don't have to be stressed each day about some possible perceived microaggression.

Perhaps an intentional community which can use ostracism as a punishment to police behavior could be effective.

Care to share what the joke was? I hope it wasn't dark humor.

It wasn't a joke, she asked for help in the form of how do I do X without using Y. I just went 'ha - yeah everyone has trouble with Y when they first see it. It's a bit tricky, let me show you how it's done using Y and then how it's done without using Y'. I correctly assumed she was avoiding the use of Y due to her unfamiliarity with it. She was a band new intern and I had many years of experience. She had been regularly coming to me for help which I had been doing after hours on my own time. She did not understand the seriousness of the hr thing and expected me to continue mentoring her like nothing had happened.

Oh, I think there are a lot of us voting with their wallets already and that's one of the reasons the assholic behavior is getting worse: those that care have given up and don't show up anymore.

Exactly, thank you for explaining way better than I did.

That's when you call the staff over

In the past, maybe, now I don't care about causing a scene when all I want is watch a movie.

I go during the day on the rare occasions that we go. My kid randomly decided that he wanted to see Deadpool & Wolverine while we were out doing errands, so we went to the theater on what turned out to be the opening day.

No way were there even 10 more people in the theater at 1PM on a Friday.

At least around here, the cinemas are never crowded during the daytime.

Now that's a good experience, I'm sure your kid had a great time!

He had a blast. I dozed off a few times :-)

> - assholes looking at their smartphone during the movie

Solved by arranging seats so that the backs of the seat in front of you blocks off from seeing anything below the next rows' head level, and so your head is looking at the screen in resting position anyway.

> - assholes who won't shut the fuck up

Solved by turning up the volume.

Big cinemas with large viewing halls have a big advantage over studio cinemas here.

Where I am, this is deterministic: the "be quiet, the movie is starting" pre roll starts exactly 30 minutes after the claimed start time. I haven't seen an ad at a theater in years.

this is how it is in bay area. we just arrive 30 mins late.

there was a time when bumperclips were used, a time of film so merging between rolling projectors was an arcane ritual, the jumping hotdog is difficult to unsee

https://yt.artemislena.eu/search?q=theater+intermissions [VIDEO]

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