mattmoore.blog()

I went alone to a matinee movie this morning. I was a little early and for awhile was the only person in the theater. A couple then walked in and was ushered to the seats directly behind me.  This was at the Arclight so the seats were assigned. I went from feeling generally relaxed and comfortable before they sat down to anxious and restless. Why is it that in a large empty room when total strangers are forced in close proximity is there a tendency to want to separate?

Is this a case of diffusion–to move from a high concentration to a low concentration, thereby increasing the entropy? I don’t think so. Diffusion seems overly simplistic.  If I walked into a room of randomly scattered people and I recognized a person, I would go and talk to them. Entropy has no friends.

Maybe, there must be some evolutionary survival advantage to not cluster among unfamiliar strangers–probably because of the fear of competition for resources. Or maybe my anxiety was born of a cultural fear of being in a dark theater with my back toward two unknown people. It could also easily have been my anti-social tendencies–I was, of course, willingly watching a movie by myself.  I think I buy the first explanation (survival advantage) more readily and the reason that I didn’t move to another seat was cultural (respecting assigned seating, fear of offending, etc).

And in case you were wondering the movie I saw was Choke. It was okay.