Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
DON’T BE SO ANNOYING!
Alot of cinema etiquette comes down to common sense. Don’t talk – it’ll annoy people who paid to hear the film, not you.
Don’t play on your phone – it’ll annoy people trying to concentrate on the big screen, not your small screen. Don’t kick the chair in front of you – what kind of oik are you?
These are all rules that the regular, functional, grown adult should have no trouble getting their head around. But there are people who need more precise cinema rules because, for some reason, common sense goes out of the window once they’re in a darkened room.
For example, most of us wouldn’t need to be told “don’t try to open a beer using a can of pepper spray”.
But there’s a guy in Germany who does. Or at least, did, because I doubt he’s going to make the same mistake again.
A cinema in the German town of Osnabrück was evacuated after a man tried to open a beer with “personal protection” pepper spray. The spray can broke in the process, which effectively turned it into a tear gas bomb, and 200 panicked filmgoers were forced to flee the cinema. Amazingly, nobody experienced problems with their breathing or vision and despite the police arriving, nobody was arrested. The film restarted 30 minutes later, which speaks to German stoicism. I can’t imagine a UK cinema in 2017 embracing the “show must go on” concept so whole-heartedly.
So, just to be absolutely clear, taking pepper spray into a cinema screening and then trying to open a beer using the pressurised can of toxic gas, is a bad idea. Don’t do that.