Funny, I had an old friend who did exactly the opposite. In general, he was always kinda, you know, twitchy. Like Tweak on South Park. He blinked a lot, scratched himself very particularly with his pinky finger, cracked his knuckles, neck, back, elbows, shoulders, face, nose and other parts that I didn’t even think could crack. He also suffered from the devastating-syndrome-which-until-recently-had-no-name now known as Restless Leg Syndrome. And he’d do this all in the theatre. Sitting next to me. He’d even go digging for nose goblins once in awhile, but try to be stealthy about it, as if I couldn’t see him do it out of the corner of my eye. If you want to pick your nose, just friggin’ pick it … it’s twice as stupid-looking when you pretend like you’re not picking your nose or trying to disguise the fact. He’d drive me nuts with all his restless, twitchy squirming and peculiar picking/poking/cracking habits and I’d have to tell him in almost every occasion at some point halfway through the flick: “Dude, could you fucking sit still and relax for a minute?”
I’ve also stopped going to the theater because the decorum from the general public is largely nonexistent. The bits at the beginning of the film which ask people to turn off cell phones couldn’t fall upon deafer ears these days. What goes through the heads of the people who see these messages at the start of every film, only to have their phone go off later on? “Oh, my cell phone’s off, I needn’t worry! Oops, no it isn’t, it’s ringing! I suppose I should have checked it like the courtesy message said, but those don’t apply to me, those are for everyone else.” And then of course, there are the people who don’t just passively defy this request, but actively defy it by opening up their phone, with the display set to full brightness, and proceed to to text everyone in their phone list or play a game for at least an hour. Or, you know, make a phone call, because they’re obviously important people with very important things to say. I never quite fully understood the inability for certain folks to be without contact from those they know for more than twelve seconds nowadays, and this sort of lack of social courtesy is a direct result of it. It’s really to the point where I’ve considered purchasing a short-range cellular jammer to bring with me to the theater, and I may very well try it one day soon. Next step will be an electromagnetic pulse generator as well, though the pocket sized ones don’t quite exist yet and if they did I imagine they’d be quite expensive.
In every MMORPG I’ve played, LFM = Looking For More. I’ve never played Lord of the Rings Online, though – I suppose it could be Looking For Mordor.
My ex-wife constantly asked questions about movies regarding things that hadn’t yet been revealed. Drove me nuts until she did it one time with a movie she knew I hadn’t seen before. Turns out she wasn’t really looking for answers, she was just wondering out loud.
My mom would constantly stroll into a movie that I’d be watching for 45 min to an hour on IFC or Sundance then casually ask, “Whatcha watching?” If it doesn’t have either the word romantic or comedy in the genre somewhere she doesn’t know it and doesn’t care, yet she would always ask and interupt the movie. It always made me want to snap and yell that, “It is a completely irrelevant question about a movie you’ve never heard of, with actors you don’t know, in a movie you won’t watch all the way through. Leave me alone, I’ve just missed a plot point!”
I had to google it when my sister sent me an email with it. It’s the only acronym I’ve ever seen her use. I hate it with all my heart. I did not recognize it during this thread, and will forget about it again until the next time it comes up and my head will once again explode.
I have found that when watching movies with my family, they will occasionally ask questions like, “What was that guys name again?” “Is he the girl’s brother?” etc. Amusingly, with near-perfect consistency the show itself answers the question in the next five seconds after they ask. One supposes that they shows are designed for people just slightly more attentive than they are.
One of my housemates has the habit of working on his computer while watching movies, and is also really bad at telling actors apart, so is constantly asking questions. His wife and I now just tell him: “If you’re going to watch the movie, watch the movie.”
If he’s actively watching and still asks questions about the characters, I don’t have a problem filling him in; I feel like he’s making an effort.
We do 98% of our movie watching at home, so it’s no problem to pause or rewind if we miss something.
Another friend always falls asleep during movies. Every time. It’s weird that he’ll have me over to watch movies, and then fall asleep. But he has a really stressful job (and life), and I think that lounging on the couch watching a movie is one of the only places he really relaxes, so I got over it.