There are a million annoying things someone else in a movie theater can do to ruin your experience, but texting has to top the list. It's not just that the bright screen is distracting and in some cases ruining your view, but that texting is inherently unimportant, especially when you're supposedly in a movie to take you away from the real world. Most of us deal with this on our own terms, either silently seething (usually my tactic) or asking the offender to cut it out, but at least one theater chain has decided to send the message from on high.

The Arizona-based exhibitor Harkins Theaters, according to a local news report (via Into Mobile), has start displaying on-screen message demanding "No Texting During Movie," or NTDM for short. The news report, which you can watch below, is your typical piece in which the theater owner says they had to do something, some moviegoers support it while others say it's ridiculous, and another particularly classy looking couple claim they know texting is rude but they do it anyway. It's people like that who keep this country moving, really.

I don't think even the Harkins guys imagine that the onscreen warning will have a big impact-- they've been asking us not to talk during movies and to take our trash with us for years now, and you can see how much good that's done. Still, texting during movies is almost a worse threat because people think they can be subtle about it, so I like to think of this all of us saying with one voice "Dude, we can see that you're playing Angry Birds, put the damn phone down." It's not exactly a people's revolution, but hey, it's a start.