In the iPhone repair business, we hear a lot of weird things:
Recently, a man in Texas attempted to sue a woman in small claims court because she was texting during their movie date after the two met online. In a point-counterpoint set of bashing, she says she only sent three texts, and he said it was fifteen to twenty. He said he asked her to stop and she said when he became agitated, she left.
He then texted her and told her she had better pay him for the cost of the date or he was going to sue her.
You can buy the book 'White Gloves and Party Manners' here.
She refused because it was a date.
He sued her, on the principle that if the theater wasn't going to enforce their rule, he would teach her a lesson himself, calling her behavior “a threat to civilized society.”
Tensions escalated when he attempted to contact her sister to get his money back, and then increased further when Inside Edition got involved. The woman paid him back for the price of the ticket during the taping of the show. He was filleted on social media and unsatisfied with Inside Edition’s handling of his case. He now wants to go on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Honestly, who hasn’t been in a movie with a person who was texting and wanted them to stop?
Societal norms
Societal norms are changing as a result of our ability to connect with one another through technology. Whether you side with the woman who should have turned her phone off before the movie ever started, or whether you side with the man who decided to seek compensation for his date with the ‘bad texter’ poster child, the fact remains that cell phone technology has changed us.
The irony that the two of them met through cell phone technology isn’t lost, either. The 3D movie was their common interest--technology. What broke them apart? Her bad use of technology. How did the entire rest of the world get involved in this situation? Technology. He even used technology to file his small-claims suit online. Social media has not been kind to this man, but no one has come to her defense to say her rudeness was okay, either.
The point is that we can benefit from the behavior of these two by learning that being a jerk is never the answer, regardless of the situation. With the ability to easily contact virtually anyone on the planet, we have to try to make that contact not-unpleasant. Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, Twitter, and a host of others have opened our virtual front door.
