A few years ago I grappled with one of the biggest dilemmas I’ve encountered in my career as a consumer of entertainment. I had to decide whether to walk out of a Broadway play at the intermission and not come back for the second half. The play was The Little Dog Laughed. It was an excruciating experience, and showed no sign of improving. I was with my friend bronxbee, and we agonized, during the intermission, over whether we should stay or go. What finally decided us was the fact that we hadn’t paid for the tickets — bronxbee had won them in some fashion that I don’t remember — and so we eventually figured it wasn’t like we’d lose out on half of our entrance fee if we left.
So we left. It was an exhilarating feeling to realize that we didn’t owe anything to an experience that had given us nothing in return.
(I make the distinction of me as only a consumer of entertainment in this instance, not as a critic. If I’d planned to review the play, it would have been infinitely harder to decide to leave, to the point that I probably wouldn’t have.)
What about you? What has been your biggest entertainment-related quandary?
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