In his defense, anything that interrupts Transformers by not being Transformers improves the film.

But that’s about the only item worth defending in Anil Dash’s anti-shushing manifesto. To Matt Zoller Seitz’s excellent demolition of Dash’s argument I will add this: the idea that behaving like an asshole justifies the normalization of said behavior is preposterous. Just because you can’t put down the iPhone and concentrate on something other than yourself for two hours doesn’t mean I’m similarly defective.

I’m not going to ask you to turn of your iPhone during a film because it’s distracting, but because your narcissism is fucking with my head. Your tiny light is making my dilated eyes constrict, which means I can’t see the movie the director — otherwise known as the person I paid good money to fuck with my head — intended me to. Your vanity transforms the film I wanted to see into one co-directed by you, and while I understand that that likely thrills you, know that I have no idea who you are and no interest in anything about you. I am reducing the complex social construct that is you to its essence which is asshole.

Your body is asshole.

Your mind is asshole.

Your life is asshole.

If you cured cancer, then the cure for cancer is asshole.

If you stopped war, then peace is asshole.

You are assholes all the way down.