If you're wondering why a movie theater company would allow people to start doing one of the most annoying things you can do at the movies, just blame millennials.
That's what AMC CEO Adam Aron did! In an interview with Variety he said the movie theaters would be willing to go as far as allowing texting during the movie to try to appeal to the kids these days. This is his reasoning:
When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don’t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life.
He then followed this up with Tweets confirming tests of this concept in very few theaters.
via @CEOAdam
Predictably, a huge amount of backlash followed. It turns out that not many people want to pay $10-20 to watch a movie in a theater filled with distracting lights. There were also quite a few millennials that found the assumption that they couldn't detach from their phones for two hours insulting. Aron quickly changed his mind on the matter, ABC reports that he issued a statement in a letter addressed to "AMC Guests" saying, "We have heard loud and clear that this is a concept our audience does not want."