The world is filled with the socialist and the individualist. Tell me if you ever watch at the cinema alone, and I’ll tell you which one are you.

A friend of mine said “WHAAAAAAAT” out loud to his computer screen when I told him I wanted to watch The Hunger Games alone.

“It is just sad,” he said.

While thinking that watching alone at the cinema is a perfectly normal thing to do, it turns out that not everyone shares my thought.

Even worse, I’m the Eve’s descendant, and he’s the Adam’s.

I have always believed that guys are perfectly comfortable in watching a movie alone. If no one wants to join him for a movie, he will happily get his fix quickly just by himself.

Girls, on the other hand, will love someone to accompany her to do something, from shopping, window shopping, grocery, and yes, to watching movies.

“Watching a movie at the cinema is something to do with other people,” my friend said. “Because when you do it alone, you can just do it at home.”

But we go to the cinema for the movies that we can’t watch at home, right?

At this second, I still don’t see why watching at the cinema alone is such a wrong thing to do.

It’s not like people who go to the movies together are actually interacting with each other. They watch the movie, not talking to their neighbours.

Sure, you can go have lunch beforehand, or go talk about the movie over coffee afterwards, but some alone time with yourself is not wrong, right?

“Why don’t you wait until Sunday? I’m sure the others also want to watch the same movie. If you have watched it first, it is like you are ahead all of us, which is not fun,” he added.

Now, I’m really confused why watching alone at the cinema has a really bad stigma.

It’s like, “Look at her, she can’t find anyone to watch with, thus she watches alone,” or “I don’t think she has any friends, if not, she will not come alone.”

I think going for a trip by yourself is too underrated. I, for one, love to travel and have some quiet moments by myself. Going for coffee with friends is great, and it’s essential, but having a date with my book over coffee is equally great, and essential.

In the post Why writing can be dangerous, Jeff Goins said that every writer is an individualist. Writing requires solitude. It’s all about being alone. It creates a sense of hyper-individualism.

Writers are so used to do everything alone, and to some extent I highly agree on this.

Don’t get me wrong, we are still in need of social interaction, and we still crave socialism, but we need more time to be alone compared to our non-writer friends. Maybe that’s why I love going to go to a cafe by myself, and my peers think that I’m a pathetic, lonely human being.

And watching a movie alone is something that we are used to do. When we are asked to go to a pre-screening and write 700 words about it, we almost never get a double pass ticket. Let me rephrase it, we never get a double pass ticket. It’s just another job to be done, alone, and we enjoy it. Why not, we get the privilege to watch a movie even before it’s available to the public, for free.

In the end, my friend and I just need to agree to disagree. After all, there’s no life at stake.

What do you think of people who watch at the cinema alone? Is it okay, or pathetic?

 

Photo by Ghislain and Marie David de Lossy/Getty