No Applause Please
Every time I see a movie and the audience breaks out into applause at the end I am slightly miffed. An applause is suited for when the subject of the applause is present, such as at the end of a presentation. Even in those cases an applause is used as a way for the audience to mark the end of a speech or presentation, or as a way to tell the speaker that his time is up - but applauding in a movie theatre, where the people responsible for creating that film are 500 miles away counting money, seems absurd. Are we applauding the projectionist on a job well done, or fellow audience members for surviving 3 hours in a dark room with other members of the public without a major incident breaking out?
The next time I am at a film and the audience applauds I am going to do one of two things.
1. Stand up and accept the applause myself by gesturing my gratitude to the audience
2. Stand up, turn around, pick a random person sitting behind me and applaud in their direction. Then suggest with my hands that they should stand up, and perhaps make a speech.
It isn't just in movie theaters. For some reason people applaud in planes as well. It is a big thing to do in parts of Europe. The first time I saw it I actually started laughing. There have only been two times where I have joined in, and it was because on both occasions I had almost just died and wasn't applauding the asshole airline that almost just killed me, or the pilots - who did nothing more than not kill me, but rather I was applauding myself and my fellow passengers for we could go on living without suffering death by United. I am not sure how we pick and choose when we applaud, but as a pilot it must be good to go about what is today a rather mundane task and have people applaud you (although it is more of a 'thanks for not fucking up and killing us' applause).
I wish people would break out in applause every time I sent an email, rolled some code, published something or didn't kill a plane load of people through incompetence.
If I were to give up my no-applause fight, I would rather introduce it into other more worthy situations, such as:
* When taking a cab somewhere, breaking out into applause when I reach my destination
* Applauding immigration officers as soon as they stamp my passport for entry into the USA
* When the pizza hut guy arrives at my door (for a full minute)
* On the phone with any company, after being taken off hold
* When my operating system tells me it has installed all new updates!
* When Twitter comes back up
