Earlier this week, Deadline Wherever reported that during a panel at CinemaCon, exhibitors discussed the option of allowing patrons to text during films. It was pitched as an attempt to attract younger audiences to the theaters, even though it doesn’t actually address the reason (price of films, quality of the home video experience and rampant online piracy) why teens and college students don’t go to the movies as much as they did in the 70s and 80s. At Film School Rejects, we support a staunch no-texting policy (and no tweeting, Facebooking, web surfing, Wikipediaing, playing of Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja) at all theaters. However, instead of pointing out the fallacies of this idiotic suggestion, we’re taking a look into the future. Here is a possible timeline of what might happen were texting allowed in movie theaters. Gird your loins and enjoy this cautionary tale from Cole Abaius and Kevin Carr.

Recently at CinemaCon, Amy Miles, the chief executive officer of Regal Entertainment, birthed the idea that movie theaters should maybe consider allowing texting at certain types of movies – basically movies that asshole teens would most likely be seeing. With great and obvious reasons, everyone got up in a tiff over the statement. Tim League, CEO of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which has a famously hard-line stance against phone usage during screenings, responded appropriately: “Over my dead body will I introduce texting into the movie theater.” Granted, if you text during a movie, you’re an asshole, but is it really the worst thing in the world?