I'm reading "Chatting in Movie Theaters Is a No-No. But What About Chatbots? Blumhouse, the horror movie studio, has teamed up with Meta on a chatbot that encourages people to use their phones while watching a movie" (NYT).
The delusion is over.
4 మే, 2025
"It’s a chatbot that encourages people to tap, tap, tap on hand-held small screens as they watch films on a big one."
"Users gain access to exclusive trivia and witticisms in real time (synced with what’s happening in the movie). Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has positioned Movie Mate as a way 'to get audiences back in theaters.' Nearly 20 percent of moviegoers ages 6 to 17 already send text messages during movies even though it’s against the rules.... Why not try to channel that instinct, Blumhouse argues, toward what is happening on the theater screen?"
I'm reading "Chatting in Movie Theaters Is a No-No. But What About Chatbots? Blumhouse, the horror movie studio, has teamed up with Meta on a chatbot that encourages people to use their phones while watching a movie" (NYT).
In the last moments of the film "Sunset Boulevard," the delusional actress says, "There's nothing else — just us — and the cameras — and those wonderful people out there in the dark." But the phones have taken away the dark. The "wonderful people" are interposing lighted screens between each others' eyes and that screen that used to control the flow of light.
I'm reading "Chatting in Movie Theaters Is a No-No. But What About Chatbots? Blumhouse, the horror movie studio, has teamed up with Meta on a chatbot that encourages people to use their phones while watching a movie" (NYT).
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I'm second-screening right now. One monitor has this blog on it, the other is showing the golf broadcast. However, I have no interest in leaving my house and paying money so that I can second screen. If I make that effort, I expect to be entertained enough with one screen.
What do Theaters have, that my house doesn't?
That greasy buttered popcorn, and Dots..
Mmmm greasy butter popcorn, and Dots..
mmmm
If they started making more audience participation movies (i.e., Rocky Horror), then sure. But at a regular movie, this would drive away more people than it attracts.
They’d be fools to embrace it, which is why they probably will.
What a great scene. Billy wilder and Gloria Swanson. You have wonder who paid off who for Judy Holiday to beat Swanson and Bette Davis (All about Eve) in the 1950 Oscars. Holiday could have been replaced by Monroe or Jean Hagan. I don't know anyone who could have replaced Swanson or Davis in their Iconic roles
If people aren't going to the movie theater, it probably has more to do with the actual movie product, and less to do with the inability to text their friends.
You can get any movie with extensive commentary and special features, but are people still watching movies with the attention they once did? Or are they "watching" while doing something else? I sometimes wonder if the lost genre of the "radio play" hasn't conquered after all, since I look up at the screen when I hear dialogue and just ignore all the CGI and explosions.
Hasn't Amazon Prime had that feature from the beginning? They call it X-Ray (I think? I'm going from memory, I haven't subscribed to Amazon Prime in years). I believe they collaborate with IMDB to provide notes, trivia, etc.
>since I look up at the screen when I hear dialogue and just ignore all the CGI and explosions.<
A good system, I guess, though I can't conceive of watching CGI/Explosion movies for their dialogue.
The people who own the movie business now bought it for the purpose of social engineering, and you know what? People don't want to be "engineered" socially. So the movies suck. Trying to up the level of dopamine people get in a movie theater by "layering" it, which is what this is, is not really the issue. Though it might be fun to watch a great movie like Tombstone with commentary.
I heard about this! Science journals are talking about the next generation of this technology and the natural evolution of this process; it’ll be inserted rectally and you can watch movies with your head all the way up your own ass.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s when cable TV was a thing, there was Mystery Science Theater 3000. One human a couple puppets talked back to video content.
This will drive even more people out of the movie theaters. One of the reasons I actually go to a movie theater is to immersively experience the film. Small video screens in the audience would ruin that.
This will be banned in all theaters showing “Frankenstein, Part II.” People who purchase tickets will have to lock their phones in bags like at the Dylan concert.
VH1's "Pip Up Videos" did it first.
Nearly all of these audience enhancement tricks have been tried before, but you only have two eyeballs, limited sensory capacity, and attention spans ain't what they used to be. Evolution and Natural Selection isn't kind.
Maybe at least they can give you the Meta nerd glasses where you can read it on the lenses and won't be distracting everybody with your screen glow.
TeaBagHag said...
"I heard about this! Science journals are talking about the next generation of this technology and the natural evolution of this process; it’ll be inserted rectally and you can watch movies with your head all the way up your own ass."
You sound like an expert.
There are streaming shows being greenlit with the knowledge they are "Second Screen" shows. That is, it's expected that the shows will exist a bit in the background playing second fiddle to the phone screen.
You text at the main theater chain in Austin - you get tossed out. They warn you before the picture to keep your screen dark and silent or else. This “ innovation” is asinine.
tommyesq, I remember Pop-Up Videos too. That is, I remember the genre, but can't recall any single one.
it’ll be inserted rectally and you can watch movies with your head all the way up your own ass.
Part of the focus group, were you?
We saw That Madonna Evita movie BITD. They cranked up the sound quite loud and the guy down the aisle from us was translating the movie into Spanish for his woman. It would get kinda quiet and the guy would scream his translation.
Tappity, tappity, tap. Worth every billion.
Some of these comments reminded me that during COVID, Disney introduced a feature where kids could coordinate their movie watching—they’d each be watching the movie in their own homes, but the movies were synced so they saw it at the same time. They could text each other and the texts would appear at the side of the screen, so they could “talk” to each other while watching the movie “together.”
It’s a little dystopian, but tween-age girls loved it.
"Why not try to channel that instinct, Blumhouse argues, toward what is happening on the theater screen?"
You could, perhaps, attempt to make movies interesting enough that just watching them would engage people and they wouldn't feel the need to do something else at the same time.
Or not, I guess.
thats just crazy talk, many of blumhouse works are grand guignol gimmicks, not scares but more revulsion,
Ready for a close-up, maybe. But "the people" are neither in the dark nor wonderful anymore. If you've been to a movie (or even out in public) recently, you'll know. I'll stay home and pause when I want to look up a historical reference, or just do research afterward. I've done that a lot lately with period dramas, including both Napoleon and the Bob Dylan film, both of which I watched in a dimly lit (but not dark) airline cabin on a bright screen while enrowed among the flying public.
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