So you are in a theatre and a couple kids sit down and begin engaging in a text-a-thon, following it up with some arm wrestling and a conversation where they attempt to equalize the conceptual difference between the two of them -- a complete transference of information would require more viewings of more movies, and you know you'll be around during this process, as you live in a finite township.

You are too lazy or too passive to get up and tell them to shut up.

What if you had a keypad on your arm rest? Keying in the seat number of the nuisance would send a sharp shock to their backside. Not dangerous - more like a static zap. But that's just you.

Since anyone can have the power to zap anyone else, you risk hoodlums showing up at movies just to passive-aggressively show their passive dominance, by zapping everyone repeatedly all the way through the film.

To eliminate this, each seat can only trigger a single zap during a viewing. This way a hoodlum will only be able to zap someone once, without having to get up and move to another seat, which would likely be more active then his passively-aggressive personality would allow. Also the seat would most likely be filled.

But everyone else can zap the hoodlum once. This means he could be zapped a hundred times. If he is a chronic communicator, this would show him how his actions are unpleasant to the temporary movie viewing society within the theater. If he is a chronic hoodlum, he would get a taste of his own medicine.

I get the impression this very half-baked idea has been already half-baked before. It was also partially stolen from a short story I read a million years ago about buttons everyone had that allowed them to kill one person on the planet. Would you push your button or not? But that seems extreme for a theater, especially with the loosening of the bowels.
-- mylodon, Nov 30 2007

Open-plan_20office_...20alerting_20system similar notion for open-plan offices [hippo, Nov 30 2007]

why confine this to the theatre? I think there'd be plenty of fun using this in other places such as: boardroom, open plan office, dining table, group therapy session (a la the Simpsons) [+]
-- xaviergisz, Nov 30 2007


Would be quite interactive during a viewing of Frankenstein.

(Non conductive underpants)
-- skinflaps, Nov 30 2007


How do you know what the hoodlum's seat number is?
-- 5th Earth, Dec 01 2007


You'd have to calculate it by looking at your seat number and then counting it off.

If you're off by a little bit no big deal, the person you are zapping will immediately realize that if he doesn't tell the chatterbox next to him to shut up, he risks being zapped 100+ times.

So this actually promotes more healthy social communication.
-- mylodon, Dec 01 2007


I have found that a volley of rasinets usually does the trick...but the market-driven nature of the zapping theater chair is quite compelling. Take a biscuit.
-- Monty6, Dec 03 2007



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