Don’t encourage the barbarians, idiots.

I saw a movie yesterday.

Before the movie began, there was an ad for Rogers Wireless that revolved around a girl who text-messages a guy sitting several rows in front of her in the same theatre, and then he text-messages her back, and then she text-messages the girlfriend that he’s cheating on, etc., etc.

So it would appear that Rogers wants prospective customers to think that they can stay connected even while the movie is playing — and, therefore, Rogers wants to encourage people to light up their cell phones and so on in what is supposed to be a darkened theatre.

That, alone, would be bad enough.

But just to add insult to injury, the film clip that plays immediately before the movie — in which the theatre admonishes its patrons to be quiet and turn off their cell phones — played backwards and upside-down this time, because someone had stuck it in the projector the wrong way.

Fortunately, the audience itself wasn’t too bad this time — partly, no doubt, because there were only about a dozen other people and they were all at least a dozen rows behind me.

No, I don’t assume that every moviegoer is going to be rude. But I’ve had enough bad experiences — especially in the suburbs — to know that I should keep my distance whenever possible.